Category Archives: Bandwagons

menu plan Monday, National Blog Posting Month

A menu plan to ease us into NaBloPoMo

Happy Halloween! One of our Halloween traditions includes a big pot of chili waiting for us when we get home from trick-or-treating. It also includes our friends who moved very, very far away over the summer, which means it’s possibly going to be a sad Halloween for us.

At least we still have chili.

Monday: Chili
The aforementioned chili.

Tuesday: Spanish Chicken Cutlets
Poppy picked this one out of a Cook’s Illustrated magazine a few weeks ago. I’m thrilled that she’s willing to try something new! I hope it’s a good one.

Wednesday: Out?
My dad is visiting this week, and he, Pete and I all have birthdays over the next couple of days. He’s going home before any of them happen, though, so we’ll probably go out to celebrate on Wednesday. Unless we do it another day.

Thursday: Carne Asada Tacos
This one comes from Freddie Prinze Jr.’s cookbook, which I received this week from Freddie himself. Seriously. I’ll tell you more about that next week.

Friday: Popcorn?
I’m not sure we’ll have time to eat an actual meal between soccer practice and “Dr. Strange.” So it might be dinner at the movies for us.

Tomorrow is the first of November, which means it’s the first day of National Blog Posting Month. I’m going to give it a go again this year, so you should see a lot of posts around here over the next few weeks.

Still hungry? Check out the Menu Plan Monday linkup at OrgJunkie for more menu plans.

Art with kids, Bandwagons

The Butterscotch Sundae children are growing tired of the 100-day project

So as it turns out, we have been very sporadic in our 100 days of art project. Rather than 100 Days in Which We Do Art Every Single Day, it’s turned into 100 Days in Which We Do Art Sometimes. That’s an improvement over the number of days we’d been doing art, though, so I’m still marking it down as a win.

A photo posted by Nichole (@nicholebutterscotch) on

Last week we started making some papier mache bowls. We let them dry for far more days than they actually needed, and then when we went to paint them I realized that our paint had all dried out. I tried to resuscitate it with some water, but it was too far gone for me to save. I’ve added Acrylic Paint to my ever-lengthening list of Art Supplies We Need.

So instead of painting our little bowls on Monday, we took our inspiration from Beautiful Hello and made our own geometric watercolors. Pete requested a LEGO Darth Vader, and Poppy wanted to make a cat. I found some silhouettes online and printed them, and the kids started tracing them onto watercolor paper. Pete grew tired of the project pretty quickly (this seems to be a recurring theme), so I took over the Vader project. We made dots and lines on our paper, and eventually it turned into some very cool artwork. This has been my favorite project so far.

Yesterday I wanted to try to do some sketched copies of photos. I put a grid over our photos in Photoshop and measured a grid out onto our papers, then we started to sketch the image square-by-square. Poppy abandoned the project after one square, and Pete never started. I finished mine, though, and then I colored it in with watercolor pencils. It is not terrific, but I’ve never done any portraits at all before so I figure it came out pretty, pretty OK.

This week I discovered that I love watercolor pencils. We only have two packs of them, one in earthy tones and one in primary colors. I’d like to get some more. What’s your favorite art supply?

menu plan Monday, National Blog Posting Month

Fare thee well, NaBloPoMo

2 Comments

Let us all greet November 30 with a grand and glorious HELLO. These last 30 days, we have marked my birthday, Petey’s birthday and my dad’s birthday. We have discussed ’80s movies and Thanksgiving movies. We have played pinball and started a book club and spent an entire day together via my camera.

Once again, folks, we have survived National Blog Posting Month! And the world shall continue to turn, and my family shall continue to request dinner. Here’s what we’ll be eating this week:

Monday: Meaty mac
Every now and again Pete grabs a box of Hamburger Helper and says “Hey, can we get some Meaty Mac?” when we’re at the store. And sometimes I say yes. This is one of those time.

Tuesday: Grandma’s birthday dinner
We’re taking my mom out for her birthday.

Wednesday: Butternut squash ravioli
Harris Teeter had their butternut squash ravioli buy-one, get-one-free this week, and it reminded me that Poppy used to enjoy them. We’ll see if she still does!

Thursday: Cracker Barrel chicken tenders

This time last week we were having a slightly larger poultry experience.

Friday: Breakfast for dinner
We’ll be having eggs, veggie sausages and hashbrowns.

NaBloPoMo November 2015

Looking for more mealtime inspiration? Check out Menu Plan Monday at OrgJunkie.com!