Blog Nosh Magazine

That One Time, When We Made Raisins In the Back Yard

Originally published on I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus

Mom and Dad were industrious types, like their Irish-English ancestors before them. (Unfortunately, they became the end of the family line in that trait.) So it didn’t surprise me that they spent half a day picking grapes at a pick-your-own-grapes place shortly before I arrived for a visit. It didn’t even surprise me that they had picked a few 5-gallon buckets full, even though it was just the two of them at home then. Ten cents a pound! What more do you need to know?

Clearly, though, something had to be done with all those grapes before they went bad. So Dad and I embarked on our Make Your Own Raisins In the Back Yard project. The back yard in question was in Arizona, where it was well over 100 degrees, dry and sunny, so that was in our favor. All we had to do was figure out where we were going to put all the grapes while they turned into raisins.

Play, Pray and Dust

Originally published on Once Dead, Now Alive.

Thought-provoking books challenge me to think outside the box, sometimes out of my comfort zone.  After reading "Red Moon Rising: How 24-7 Prayer is Awakening a Generation" by Pete Greig, I had the chance to participate in a week long event of 24-7 prayer at the church I attend (link). There, rooms were available for people to pray/connect with/worship God. One room had available clay and other art materials; the intent was to encourage creativity, using the supplies as an expression of worship or as response to God's presence.

I am not an "art person"--even to step into that room WAS a step outside the box. I took some wet clay and pressed it onto a piece of paper, the result a brown splotch. Almost immediately I thought about Genesis 2:7 and myself being made of the dust of the earth.  Then I began to write:

Holly throws herself under the alternative fuel bus

Originally Published on June Cleaver Nirvana

Holly has been doing a lot of thinking. Holly has been doing extensive investigating. Holly finds that the best solution to her problem may be installing one of these:

Holly has decided that a porta-potty, johnnie-on-the-spot, porta-john may be her only option.

She has decided that this is the location for her new purchase:

Why would Holly who lives in a lovely suburban neighborhood in a house that could (but doesn't) have a white picket fence with complete indoor plumbing choose to install a porta-potty, johnnie-on-the-spot, porta-john?

How to Cook Spagetti Squash as a Summer Squash

Originally published on Kalyn's Kitchen

This time I'm writing about one of my very favorite summer vegetables, spagetti squash (also spelled spaghetti squash), so it's luckily for me that WHB can be about any type of herb, vegetable, plant, or flower. I learned from Wikipedia that spagetti squash is also called vegetable spaghetti, vegetable marrow, noodle squash or squaghetti. Squash is something I'll be eating a lot of over the next few months as my garden starts to produce it in copious amounts.

Squashes are divided into winter squash (which ripen late in the season, can be stored through the winter, have hard outer rinds, and must be eaten cooked) and summer squash (which can be eaten rind, seeds, and all, and which can be eaten raw.) I like every type of squash, but in my garden I mainly grow summer squash since the winter squashes produce huge vines and take a lot of space. Winter squash is something I'll be buying from the Salt Lake Farmer's Market later in the season.

Month One: Just Write, Dammit.

Blog Nosh Magazine has been live for exactly one month today.  One month!  Look at all that we've accomplished in one month.  All the blogs we've introduced to new readers, all the new genres we've explored.  It has been a spectacularly satisfying launch and I have no one to thank but you.

Thank you to our readers.
Thank you to our bloggers.
Thank you to our editors.

The way Blog Nosh Magazine works is that our channel editors scour the blogs in their genre and choose the most moving or entertaining or enlightening posts in the archives of those blogs.  The hardest part is learning to click beyond the front page of a blog.  That is, perhaps, the hardest part of reading blogs for all of us.  Taking the great leap into the archives.

Then again, as a blogger, one of the hardest things is to convince our readers that we are more than our front page.  That perhaps those posts we wrote in the first week of our blog's existence are just as valuable as the posts we write today.  More interestingly, perhaps those old posts are also the most true.  You never know.

We change as writers with every post we publish.  It is, at the very least, interesting to shed light on our archives from time to time.  Whether we do it through the "favorite posts" sections of our sidebars, the self-backlinks within the context of our posts, or by allowing publications such as Blog Nosh Magazine to focus the spotlight for you.

Thank you to the 44 bloggers that have allowed us to shine the spotlight on their work in this, our first month of Blog Nosh Magazine.

Although we only published her yesterday, allow me to share with you the story behind the process of spotlighting just one of those 44 bloggers... 

Permanent Scars

Originally posted on Okay, Fine, Dammit

The minute Emma was born, I knew something was wrong. I’d swallowed a horse, fought its hellish bucking to the death, turned myself inside out, until I won. Until she slid breathlessly — literally — into the world. I listened for her bourning cry but it did not come, because she was not breathing.

I lie there, split apart at the seams and bleeding out, and watched the scene as if from above. I bore witness while the midwives pumped oxygen into someone else’s baby for eleven minutes before they called 9-1-1, before two ambulances delivered both of us to a nearby hospital. It was all for naught anyway — by the time we got there, she was breathing on her own as if nothing had ever happened.

When we left the hospital for home, Emma was perfect in every way but one: she would not nurse. She could not suck. I knew the powers-that-be wanted to remedy the situation with a feeding tube, to rapidly ameliorate the problem and neatly close out our file, but she was our second child and so I had faith in my body, and in my baby. Somehow I held patience as she lost weight.

 

Learning to Accept My Autistic Son

Originally published on Mother of Confusion

My son was born after midnight during the cooler days of May, before the Central Valley could blaze triple-digit temperatures.

The delivery room was packed full of people. The doctor, several nurses, my husband, my parents and my mother-in-law were in attendance. As my son emerged into the world, I expected him to gasp and then cry about the abrupt ejection.

He did not.

Instead he was quiet and blue. The umbilical cord was wrapped around his slender neck several times. Of course I didn’t know that yet, but the jubilant faces of the others gave way to peaked, pinched expressions.

When I asked what was wrong. The response was, “Nothing. Everything’s okay. It’s okay.”

The reassurances scared me. I was only 20-years-old, but already I knew people lied when things were really, really wrong.

Learning Curve

Originally posted on Christine Mason Miller's blog.

Here's where it started: a layer of paint.

***

From there I applied my first layer of papers, which I applied with spray adhesive.

***

And then I kept going:  more paint...

***

Here's where it started: a layer of paint.

***

From there I applied my first layer of papers, which I applied with spray adhesive.

***

And then I kept going:  more paint...

***

10 Ways to Teach Basic Music Skills to Your Children (Even If You're Not a Musician)

Originally posted on Real Life

After college, I taught K-8 General Music, Chorus and Drama for 4 years. When I had my first daughter, I organized homeschool music classes for a while, and began teaching private piano and voice lessons from home.

Around the beginning of the year, parents usually start asking me about getting music lessons for their kids. I usually don't take on more students in the middle of the year. Sometimes, they'll get someone else, and sometimes they say they'll wait till August, and I put them on the waiting list.

There are several reasons your children might not be able to start lessons right away:

• Lesson times are unavailable
• You have monetary challenges
• The child is not quite old enough
• Your schedule is too packed

There are also several ways to start teaching basic music skills, even as a non-musician parent. I'll outline a few things you can do at home to make sure your child is ready for lessons, gains music skills as a homeschooler, or just wants to have some creative fun. These suggestions are more for younger children (6 and under), but if your kids enjoy them, then go ahead with them.