{Originally published on Chaos In The Kitchen}
first appeared on Blog Nosh Magazine on March 30, 2009

I love french toast. Our family has always made french toast for special breakfasts, more so than pancakes, eggs, or waffles. I have always enjoyed making it for the kids when they were little but now that we are so busy in the mornings before school we don’t have it very often. A great weekend recipe is a huge batch of french toast, with all the extras sliced into sticks and stashed in the freezer for the grab and go convenience of school mornings.

I made these with some indulgent challah bread but any Texas Toast or thick cut sliced bread will work. The nice thing is you can buy the ”priced to sell” stale bread since you will be soaking it in egg and frying it anyway.

{Originally published on Cranky Fitness}
first appeared on Blog Nosh Magazine on June 25, 2008

Since this is Cranky Fitness, what are the chances you’re going to be reading some incredible new weight loss method guaranteeing permanent results?

Yep, you guessed it: pretty much zero! However, it’s time again for Crabby to climb up on her soap box again and offer…

Advice about Self Improvement that You Already Know.

Today’s question: What’s the Secret to maintaining weight loss (or any other self-improvement achievement) for the long haul?

The answer: Accountability.

Yawn. There’s nothing sexy about Accountability.

Making a commitment to Accountability is sort of like getting married to Mr. Rogers, or Eleanor Roosevelt, or Walter Cronkite. Accountability is not Hot and Hip and Hilarious. You’re not going to have the rollicking good times you’d have going out to party with Blissful Ignorance, I’ll Start Tomorrow, Hell–Why Not, or “LA-La-La I Can’t Hear You.” But you’re also not going to wake up in some scuzzy stranger’s seedy apartment with your underwear on your head, reeking of White Russians and Kentucky Fried Chicken Nuggets and hating yourself. Accountability will cut you off and call you a cab before you self-destruct entirely.

Accountability doesn’t have to be quite as dull as you think, however. Mr. Rogers (did he have a first name?) and Eleanor and Walter probably had a few tricks up their sensible cardigan sleeves for keeping things interesting, don’t you think?

(OK, enough of that analogy, lets scrub those images right out of our heads!)

So here are a few tips on how to make Accountability your life-long partner. (You can still have an occasional sizzling fling with Reckless Irresponsibility too, as long as you don’t let it get too serious).

1. Best Basic Accountability Tool: Write Everything Down
Not forever, but when you need to. It works, damn it. Keeping a journal or blog record or spreadsheet or whatever is a huge a pain in the ass–but it’s the quickest and most effective way short of solitary confinement or a coma to get back on track when you’ve strayed.

{Originally posted at Beyond Megapixels.}
first appeared on Blog Nosh Magazine on June 26, 2008

***
One of the most important things your photo should have is an ability to hold your viewers attention. There are a lot of techniques that can be used to help you compose your shot so that people will spend more than a second looking at it. Besides keeping your viewers focused on your photo, the techniques below can also help emphasis your main subject.

There are many ways to hold your viewer’s attention. Here are five that you can easily start off with:

1. VIGNETTE

A vignette is a gradual loss of light and picture quality towards the
edge of the photo due to poor lens construction. Although it is
considered a lens aberration, a vignette is helpful in drawing the
viewer’s attention towards the center of the photo. It also adds
character to a photo since it makes it look like it was taken with an
old camera.

CC Photo by australian overanalyzer

To add a vignette to an existing photo with Adobe Photoshop, refer to our previous article found here.

{Originally published at Mommy Pie.}
first appeared on Blog Nosh Magazine on June 26, 2008

I own three bridesmaid dresses. I’ve been to countless wedding ceremonies. I’ve happily purchased hundreds of dollars worth of gifts for my friends’ celebratory passages into traditional family life.

Most of those unions have lasted. Some have not.

With my 40th coming up in just a few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about about time, and fate, and the very different, and sometimes unexpected, paths our lives all take.

However I got here, this is my life. I embrace it wholeheartedly. And I wonder, where’s the ceremony for singles who have found in themselves the one they’ve been looking for all along? What about the ones who, for better or worse, never do marry another?

I’d like to think that someday I will find someone to have and to hold. I do hope so. (Especially after getting to know so many of you married mamas through your blogs.) But, what if I don’t? It doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

Because I’m happy. I actually want what I have. And although occasionally, I do pine for little things here and there, in reality, I know all I need is family. No matter what shape it takes.

Hell, I may just wind up marrying myself.

I’d certainly never be accused of marrying for money. And there’s no one who’d love MP more. I’d never cheat on myself, and I’d never have to worry about divorce. I wouldn’t have a choice but to work through the hard times.

Not only would it symbolically celebrate my love affair with my daughter, it would serve as a reminder of my commitment to giving myself what I would give to a spouse. Love, time and respect.

I’ve got it all worked out.

1. THE PROPOSAL
Executed flawlessly. Because I’m a mind reader, I’d know exactly how I’d always imagined it. Definitely a story worth telling over and over.

And over.

Channel Editor applications are now closed.

Delectable! Our thanks to the more than 75 of you that applied. We have responded to all applications received, so contact Megan if you have not received an initial reply.

It will take us some time to review all applications, so lean back and enjoy the literary feast we will present over the next few weeks. New submissions will remain closed until after the relaunch and for good reason:

One of the missions at Blog Nosh Magazine is to offer your previously published outstanding posts more time to luxuriate in the spotlight of a site’s front page. However, in our early days, we were publishing content far more quickly than we do now. Up to 15 posts a week in the beginning! We have since learned to give our treats more time to digest and would like to revisit some of those early posts. Be sure to visit our front page each week for new features. We want you to read them. For the first time or fourth. We chose them because their timeless appeal deserves savoring.

Savor the writer’s art. Savor the written story. Savor the writer’s tools. Savor the written word.

In celebration of the art of the word and our impending relaunch, Blog Nosh Magazine is giving away a copy of a belly-laugh-worthy game, Blurt! The makers of Blurt! are long-time sponsors of both Blog Nosh Magazine and Velveteen Mind, so take a moment to check out the game, consider adding it to your game nights and, as I use it in our family, your parenting arsenal. Comment on any post at Blog Nosh Magazine now through March 17, 2010, and you will be entered to win.

Speaking of your parenting arsenal, we are thrilled to present Tribal Art for Kids by Pepper Paints, our first feature, published on June 25, 2008. Be sure to click through to Kristen’s front page and wish her 11 year old daughter Molly a happy birthday!

Nosh Notes from the Editor by Editor-in-Chief Megan Jordan from Velveteen Mind.

{Originally published on Pepper Paints}
first appeared on Blog Nosh Magazine on June 25, 2008

Our afternoon started like this; with some Jackson Pollock splatter painting:

Then like this:

Then they realized how much paint they had on their bodies and it could have been all down hill from there.

But, really it ended up being the kind of experience that we (crazy parents!) hope for!