There is an art to the juggle. Family, business, and self… all of those dreams and ambitions up in the air. It takes a deft hand, a sharp eye, and a trust in our instincts in order to deliver the goods in life.

During the month of May, Blog Nosh Magazine will be featuring stories inspired by the founder of Pepperidge Farm, Margaret Rudkin, as part of our Celebrate the Heart and Art of Motherhood carnival. Margaret Rudkin was a mother who faced adversity and not only rose to the challenge of the juggle, but revolutionized an industry.

Her story, her work, the way she artfully wove motherhood and business, resonates with the lives of many mothers, parents, and entrepreneurs in our community. With this in mind, we shared Margaret’s story (along with the NoshTube video in our sidebar) with a group of commissioned writers, with the hope that they would feel a bit of it resonate within themselves. People, they delivered.

They delivered because that’s what we do. As writers, as parents, as innovative leaders and entrepreneurs, we look adversity in the eye and we recognize opportunity. Margaret’s story struck a chord in me because what resonated was not the fact that she made her first loaf of bread in order to help her son who was suffering from food allergies, but rather that her stepping up to the plate to solve an immediate problem revealed to her a talent for business that she never realized she had.

In today’s economy, so many of us are solving problems on the go, perfecting the art of the hustle so that our families’ needs are met, and consequently building new lives for ourselves. Through the first posts we share with you in our writing carnival, we delve into stories from designers, authors, artists, teachers, and innovators. Including one from a stay-at-home dad, which we have our current economy to thank for and for which we are thankful.

The economy that we face down each day makes Margaret Rudkin’s story all the more relevant to tell. We invite you to explore the ways that our writers’ stories overlap and build upon each other. Dig deep into your own story and ask yourself, possibly for the first time, how you have reached the point at which you are today. Is this what you had planned? For better or worse, reframe your own story with deliberation.

And we’d love for you to share it with us. We’ll be selecting 5 posts from the general carnival to feature on our front page during the month of May, with your permission. Share your post with your audience, then add it to our linky so we can find you.

Finally, we are immensely proud to share with you that Pepperidge Farm found such inspiration in your storytelling that they are donating $10,000 to Feeding America, in addition to the 9.2 million pounds of food Pepperidge Farm has donated since July 2005, 1.9 million pounds this year alone. The story of need and innovation is as relevant today as it was when Margaret founded Pepperidge Farm in the 1930′s. Blog Nosh Magazine is honored to be part of the inspiration for this donation, along with you and your own storytelling. hint, hint… Share your story! You inspire.

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.

February 14, 2010, at approximately 7:40pm CST, the entire editorial staff of Blog Nosh Magazine was slaughtered in a fudge-drenched St. Valentine’s Day Massacre unlike anything seen this side of Al Capone’s “Best & Worst Chicago Pies” blog. Gummi Bear body parts of the Channel Editors were found strewn around the Editors’ lounge like banana split toppings tossed by a three-year-old. Anti-high-fructose-corn-syrup slurs were found written on the walls, suggesting that this may have been an organized crime hit by the South Side Splenda Squad. There were no survivors.

In related news, Blog Nosh Magazine is hiring.

You read that right: Blog Nosh Magazine is hiring! And yes, our entire delectable editorial staff has fallen victim to an attack by a perpetrator who may or may not resemble a half-eaten chocolate doughnut.

Since our launch in 2008, Blog Nosh Magazine has grown by portion sizes that would make Richard Simmons faint. We made attempts to match our growth through shortsighted procedural fixes that were the equivalent of adding a leaf to your kitchen table. After too many additional leaves and not enough additional legs to support the extra weight, we inevitably collapsed in the middle.

We currently have 300 unread submissions in our queue. Enough said.

So we are starting from scratch and we are inviting you to join us at our newly reinforced table. We are looking for dynamic new perspectives to help us spotlight fresh voices and delicious content. (psst… okay, not totally from scratch, as our Channel Editors are just too good to let them all go…)

Channel Editors are experts in their chosen genre. Blog Nosh Magazine features the strongest content from the most intriguing writers because our Channel Editors have sharp taste and a discerning eye. However, the nature of the beast requires turnover among our Channel Editors from time to time, crisp slants, a new broad view. Think you have what it takes? Bring it to the table and apply.

Check out our Gummi Bear Resources department for more details.

Welcome to Blog Nosh Magazine’s first special-event carnival, as we share stories of hope this holiday season in support of the Tide Loads of Hope program, a mobile laundromat offering laundry services to families affected by disasters.

Tide Loads of Hope is a traveling breath of fresh air and a sigh of relief for families nationwide suffering from natural disasters such as hurricanes, wildfires, and floods. In times of crisis, Tide has learned that it is the little things that help us maintain what can sometimes feel like our last threads to normalcy. Little things like clean clothes. With this in mind, the Tide Loads of Hope truck is returning to New Orleans this holiday season in order to offer some holiday hope and free laundry services for families still struggling.

We’re celebrating Tide’s efforts in three big ways:

1. We’ve dedicated the whole magazine to Tide Loads of Hope for the Holidays by commissioning some of the most amazing bloggers to write about the importance of hope at the holidays. Their work is brilliant and inspiring. I know you’ll be heartened to read each gorgeous post on our front page.

2. We’re inviting you to lend your own voice to this uprising of hope. Join the blog carnival by sharing your own stories of hope, and enter your own post link in the blog carnival below. Three posts will be selected from carnival participants in the linky to be featured on Blog Nosh Magazine, too. We can’t wait to read your contributions!

3. We’re going to New Orleans to talk with Katrina survivors to tell them about your hopeful messages. We want you to join our live two day event in New Orleans, Sunday and Monday, December 13 and 14, as Blog Nosh founder and editor-in-chief Megan Jordan from Velveteen Mind (whose personal story of natural disaster recovery inspired this partnership), Mishelle Lane from Secret Agent Mama, and Deb Rox from Deb on the Rocks tweet stories of resilience from laundry recipients and volunteers on the ground.

Follow along on twitter via #loadsofhope and be sure to follow @TideLoadsofHope. More importantly, engage with us and tweet back your own messages of hope, helping us show the residents of the Gulf Coast that their voices are still heard and their stories still remembered. The Loads of Hope truck just completed a stop in Atlanta, GA, and will be on their way to Louisville, KY, so help us spread the word and reach out to families in need of a break.

When you join the carnival with your messages of hope, be sure to invite your own readers to participate in this online event by linking to the chocolate-covered center of the carnival here at Blog Nosh Magazine. You are invited to grab any of the Tide Loads of Hope graphics you see here, including the tee shirt badge below (linked to http://tideloadsofhope.com), as all proceeds from sales of Tide Vintage Tees support the truck and keep it on the road, ready to help when disaster strikes nationwide.

Blog carnival hosted by Blog Nosh Magazine, sponsored by Tide Loads of Hope.

The editors and writers behind Blog Nosh Magazine are a motley bunch. Our stories are hilarious, colorful, transcendent, painful, absurd, and strong. They are what define us, make us interesting, and sharpen our eye for stories that we know will resonate with you.

I am not an exception to this rule. I have my story, as well, and as much as I try to fight its attempts to define me, it colors my every day.

Four years ago, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast. When she left, she took my home with her. Down to the bare slab of concrete. I was far from alone in my loss.

Her reach was astonishing. Her strength was impressive. Her cruelty was deplorable. And yet, she left us with spirits far better defined than we thought possible in the days and hours before August 29, 2005.

Our feature today begs a little favoritism as I republish my own first writing of my family’s experience on the Mississippi Gulf Coast during and after Hurricane Katrina, playfully titled Victor Vito, after a Laurie Berkner song. Many of you have read it before, far more never even realized that I had a Katrina story. That’s one of my favorite things about the editors of Blog Nosh Magazine: we do not wear our tragedies on our sleeves. We are so much more than what we’ve witnessed. Plus, we much prefer to knock your socks off with them when you least expect it. It is then that we know you are listening.

While we have your delectably nibble-worthy ear, we would like to take a moment and thank one of this month’s sponsors of Blog Nosh Magazine, Tide Loads of Hope. A deliciously novel disaster-relief campaign, Tide Loads of Hope centers around a simple plan. After natural disasters, nationwide, a Loads of Hope truck equipped with 32 high-efficiency washers and dryers is sent out to meet one of the most basic human needs of families in crisis: clean clothes.

You can read much more about the Loads of Hope program at http://tideloadsofhope.com, as well as my personal response to their nationwide disaster relief efforts in my Hurricane Katrina 4th Anniversary post at Velveteen Mind. Only the end is about Tide…

The funny thing about blogging is that life sometimes gets in the way. Blogging is supposed to be about our lives, though, right? So if we don’t get out there and live them, our blogs will be serpents eating their own tails: seemingly interesting at first, then very monotonous and repetitive.

Just as life can sometimes distract you from getting things done, our solutions are often monotonous stop-gaps. Nothing memorable and hardly worth the effort. Which reminds us… Father’s Day is this Sunday! Did you forget to get Dad that amazing gift? No problem, we have you covered and with sprinkles on top.

Blog Nosh Magazine is proud to present our favorite solution to those last-minute Father’s Day gift panics in the form of what we love best: MAGAZINES!

If the dads in your life are anything like the dads in mine, they enjoy splashy pictures, punchy stories, and gorgeous women. That’s putting it politely. I gave my husband a subscription to Men’s Health one year and he thanked me every month, no fail. The best part? I absolutely loved Men’s Health and just about beat him to it each time it arrived. I’d like to say that peeking into the mind of men made me a better wife, but I think it might have just made me more tolerant and patient because, wow, it’s all pretty much about desire for men. Desire to improve, desire to build a better life, and desire for, well, we are talking about our men.

In honor of Father’s Day, Blog Nosh Magazine is giving away a prize pack courtesy of MagsDirect.com that includes subscriptions to the daddy of all magazines: Sports Illustrated, GQ, and (my favorite) Men’s Health. All you have to do to win is be a US resident and either tweet about the giveaway using the keyword “@blognoshmag” or leave a comment below. The winner will be announced Saturday morning, June 20, 2009.

Update: The winner is @flesworthy! Her tweet about the giveaway was randomly selected from all of the tweets and comments. Follow her on twitter and check out her blog: flesworthy. Thanks for entering!

Sold on the idea of giving Dad a magazine subscription? Seriously, my husband asks for me to renew his subscriptions every year in lieu of another tie or coffee mug. Check out MagsDirect.com for cheap magazines and you’ll absolutely thrill him with your thoughtfulness.

Plus, you can do it Sunday morning if you forget poor ole dad.

A little over a month ago, one of our most beloved editors suffered the greatest loss any parent can imagine: Her daughter, Maddie, passed away. The hearts of the blogosphere went out to Maddie Spohr’s family in a way that our bodies could not, separated by miles but not compassion.

In just a matter of weeks, tens of thousands of dollars were donated in Maddie’s name to the Spohr family’s charity of choice, the March of Dimes. Bits of support were drummed up here and there to help support the family directly, as well, through not only financial support for funeral costs, but deliveries of food (including gift certificates for delivery from those too far away to deliver it themselves) to warm the family’s bellies and help take their minds off responsibilities for just a moment longer.

All accomplished through the compassion and, more importantly, passion of bloggers. And this wasn’t the first time bloggers have rallied together, nor will it be the last time.

As Blog Nosh Magazine transitions back into our regular publishing schedule after a month of our front page dedicated to Maddie, we would like to take one more opportunity to highlight the efforts and successes of blogger outreach. Benefiting charities, movements, families, and causes across the board, the power of bloggers is immeasurable. As a magazine championing bloggers’ skills and value, we ask that you take a moment to consider some of the more tangible good that bloggers are capable of setting into motion.

This week is dedicated to those bloggers using their thoughtful influence and their passion to make a difference. One of our own, Robin from Pensieve and Channel Editor of Religion and Philosophy, has been knocking us out with stories of her recent trip to Kolkata, India (pictured right), as a member of a team of bloggers for Compassion International. As you will see, not all compassion is lived out from behind the comfort of our computers.

Now that we have our newfangled direct submissions form, I have been struggling to tighten up our “About” page. In all honesty, I am simply too close to it.

How do you define what we do at Blog Nosh Magazine?

I look at our goals:

• encourage readers to consider content from genres they would otherwise not seek out on their own, done largely by juxtaposing posts in seemingly dichotomous genres side-by-side in our daily features (for instance, we recently published a post about finding the right church next to a post about gay marriage, resulting in emails of the “Thank you, I never would have read that blog…” variety)
• encourage bloggers to not farm out (unpaid) previously unpublished original content to larger sites, in direct detriment to the quality and quantity of their own personal blog posts (this is why we do not accept previously unpublished submissions)
• foster the understanding that personal blogs are not all fluff but actually do churn out magazine-quality content on a daily basis, largely for the art of writing and conviction (when you don’t have to answer to The Man, you are more likely to let your freak flag fly: aka your true colors fearlessly, or at the very least less fearfully, show)

Regardless of how I define our efforts, I still find blog posts raving about us but simultaneously referring to us as a feed aggregator. Or I feel a personal twinge of guilt when I read posts that deter writers from sharing their content for free, in exchange for a byline and free publicity.

One) We are not an automatic feed aggregator. Our content is hand selected by editors, culled from their personal blog reading and via direct submissions. We are an online literary magazine striving to advocate the value of personal blogs by highlighting the strongest content out there, often content that has fallen into the dark and dusty archives of blogs, rarely to be seen again.

Two) I would love to pay for every post we republish, but we simply can’t. Yet. As is the case with most online publications. The difference with us is that we don’t ask you to write anything new…

The Blog Nosh Magazine audience is a curious one to me, as your slightly distracted but passionate publisher and editor-in-chief. Are you mostly bloggers yourselves or actual pure readers who don’t insist on grabbing your own share of the pixelated spotlight? (And I say that with love, as I am one of those spotlight grubbers.)

Let’s find out, shall we?

I recently attended the BlissDom blog conference in Nashville. The attendance was heavily women bloggers, which was appropriate for me because I am both a woman and a blogger and even occasionally the epitome of that combination: The Mommyblogger…

Does the air smell fresher today here at Blog Nosh Magazine? It may be because we have just launched our Green Living Channel! Or maybe it’s because we removed our stinky old method of allowing you to submit your own posts and replaced it with a crisp new submission form!

Our first Green Living post comes from Green Living channel editor Leighann of Soy is the New Black. Her Editor’s Pick is Ecology of the Home from Green Baby Guide and contains one of my favorite phrases:

Postulate A We believe in simplicity.

Postulate B If we do not actually pursue simplification of our environment and resources -

B Parenthetical (I.e., if in buying a home we do not downsize, if we do not live within our economic, ecological, and spiritual means)

Postulate C …then we will experience that uncomfortable sensation of cognitive dissonance.

“Cognitive dissonance.” Two words we just don’t see enough in blogging. I’m a simple editor, but I love big words… even when used to speak about small spaces. Do check it out and give our Green Living channel a welcome housewarming.

Want to join in on any channel, including Green Living or one of our soon-to-launch channels such as Race & Ethnicity or Sports? Blog Nosh Magazine thrives on your submissions, yet so many readers still don’t realize that they need not sit around and hope we’ll come to them. Submit your best nosh directly to us!

And don’t forget that voting is still open in the 2009 Bloggies, so if you haven’t already head over and vote for Blog Nosh Magazine in both the Best Designed Blog and Best New Blog categories! We have been meeting some amazing new readers from the Bloggies and couldn’t be more delighted.