A 'lil HooHaa

Messing with the blogging world since 2005

20 days of chill writing challenge

20 Days of Chill: Favorite winter comfort food (Day 2)

The winter is a fine time for food.

My issue is I don’t have a certain comfort food for the season. That goes for most seasons. My comfort foods, in my eyes, are good at any season.

Chowder in the winter! Mmmmm!

Chowder in the winter! Mmmmm!

These foods include pizza, hot dogs, peanut butter, a good burger or steak … and especially a nice pint of Guinness.

But there’s one thing that is great all year, but amazing awesome in the winter.

Clam chowder.

Maybe I should say clam chowdah, as I enjoy the New England version.

Now, I realize this can pose interesting issues in regard to freshness as many places aren’t clamming when it’s cold. But if you find a place with good chowder on a cold winter day?

Oh my!

That doesn’t mean I don’t love chowder other times of the year. But this is definitely a comfort food and in the winter it can totally warm you.

In fact, this week is supposed to drop down into some bitter cold in my area. In the freezer is some chowder I brought back from this amazing place on the Jersey Shore. It might be the perfect way to warm up.

I also have a recipe I’ve used in the past for some chowder. The last time I made it, though, I read it wrong and put way too much pepper in it. Hence it being a wasted batch. I may have to work on it sometime and make another batch. I also look forward to seeing what others come up with … maybe I can find a true comfort food for the cold months!

This post is part of the 20 Days of Chill Writing Challenge hosted by A ‘lil HooHaa. Please check out the site if you’d like to see others or join in. And for those participating, take a moment and check out the other participants!

T-SHIRT ALERT: You can also get the official t-shirt of the 20 Days of Writing Challenge by going to the TeeSpring campaign. It will run for 21 days (through Jan. 25), but make sure you get your shirt. They are $15. A total of 10 need to be ordered for the campaign to go through. If 10 are not sold, then there will be no shirt made.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!

20 Days of Chill: Spilled Milk (Day 1)

Does anybody actually cry over spilled milk?

Well, I am sure a baby might, especially if it goes all over him or her. But that saying … why would anybody cry over it?

Would you do the same for water?

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Or soda?

Or beer?

Scratch that last one. Many people probably would.

The actual saying seems to be done two ways — “Don’t cry over spilled milk” and “don’t cry over spilt milk.”

Basically, don’t cry over something that’s happened that you can’t change.

According to the website Know Your Phrase, there’s not much on the history of this phrase outside of the earliest reference coming from a book in 1888.

How was it used? Some dude was just robbed of all his money, and then the saying appeared.

The website also notes the saying might go back to the 1600s from a book where a quote apparently reads “No weeping for shed milk.”

I kind of dig that one.

That brings us back to modern times, though.

Today is the beginning of the 20 Days of Chill Writing Challenge. It’s my hope that many reading this are also linking up and taking part in this challenge. If you want to plan ahead and see the “rules” as well as the dates and themes, click here. It will be 20 days worth of blogging bliss, or so I hope.

If not, it’ll be 20 days of blogging hell.

However you look to take it, so be it. You’re in, now. It’s like the Hotel California — you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Just remember, there’s no crying in blogging. Especially over spilled milk.

This post is part of the 20 Days of Chill Writing Challenge hosted by A ‘lil HooHaa. Please check out the site if you’d like to see others or join in. And for those participating, take a moment and check out the other participants!

T-SHIRT ALERT: You can also get the official t-shirt of the 20 Days of Writing Challenge by going to the TeeSpring campaign. It will run for 21 days (through Jan. 25), but make sure you get your shirt. They are $15. A total of 10 need to be ordered for the campaign to go through. If 10 are not sold, then there will be no shirt made.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!

20 Days of Chill Writing Challenge: The themes

It seems like only yesterday that I posted about the 20 Days of Chill Writing Challenge.

Now, we are just a few weeks away from the start of it!

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As promised, here is the theme list. This will, hopefully, allow each of you to maybe get a start on things. I hope we have a bunch of people who participate.

Remember, have some fun with this. Interpret as you see fit. These posts can be fact, fiction, true or fake — all up to you. Test your writing chops.

The themes below came from many submissions I received. I randomly drew from those and a few I submitted and here’s what we have. Some of these themes are quite interesting. Others a pretty simple and forward.

Remember how this works — the day the theme is supposed to be posted, write a blog post, make it go live on your blog and come back here and link up. The hope is everybody will go and visit/comment on the other blogs. Without that, a challenge isn’t successful.

Without further adieu, the themes are below:

  • January 5: Spilled milk
  • January 6: Favorite winter comfort food
  • January 7: Willy Wonka’s greatest candy making secret
  • January 8: Travel
  • January 9: Invisible
  • January 12: What is “chill” and how do I do it?
  • January 13: Ten hotdogs
  • January 14: Favorite article of clothing for the winter
  • January 15: Dishing the dirt
  • January 16: The morning after
  • January 19: Word for the year
  • January 20: Newbies
  • January 21: Organizing
  • January 22: Bears, beans and beer
  • January 23: Frosty
  • January 26: 10 years ago, I was probably ___________
  • January 27: The awkward dinner party
  • January 28: Imagine that…
  • January 29: Steamed
  • January 30: And then there was one

As I noted when I first started this challenge, I have participate in several writing challenges, most recently the one done by We Work For Cheese. Alas, that one ended after last year, so I opted to do this with the idea that I love a good writing challenge. I wanted to change it up a bit, though, so this is what I came up with it.

I will also be launching a t-shirt campaign on TeeSpring for this challenge. We’ll need to sell 10 for it to go through, so hopefully we can get to that level. I’ll start it in late December, or right around the time the challenge starts as if I did it now… it ends in three weeks, thus meaning two days after the challenge starts. I want people to have the chance to buy the shirt as we go along, so I’ll start it about the time we start.

I hope to see some familiar faces, as well as some new ones, when this gets going.

Remember, this will run 20 days in January, Monday-Friday.

And always remember this — have fun!

18 Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!

Announcing the 20 Days of Chill Writing Challenge

One thing I’ve missed over the past several months in blogging is interaction. For a few months, my posts were sporadic and I haven’t visited as many blogs as I usually do.

I’m trying to amend that.

One way to do that is to be part of challenges. For the past few years, I took part in a once-per-year challenge. The goal was simple – a post per day for a full month. Each day, there was a linkup. Most participants visited and comments on everybody’s posts. It was interactive and fun.

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Last year, however, was the final year the challenge was being held. It stinks, just because it was so fun and I always enjoyed the people who took part in it.

The concept of the challenge was pretty easy. A post gave the dates and the themes. Each day, you wrote a post with the theme in mind. You then went to the main site, commented on their post (of course!) and linked yours. Then people would be visiting and commenting throughout the day. Lots of fun!

As for the themes? They differed. Some were easy, some hard, some way out there, and some straight to the point. Not everybody did all of the themes. Some did all of them. It all depended on the blog and the person.

That’s what made it fun, though.

But even more fun was the community, the comments, the interaction and everything else. I found some great blogs through this challenge and found some good blogging friends.

One of the fun parts, too, was the bloggers submitting themes to be considered. This way, it truly was a community.

So, I’ve decided to try and run one of these, too. And I’m reaching out to the Northeast Bloggers Network to hope you’ll join me. It’s my hope you’ll want to post most days, but please – even if it’s just a small part of your post – try and have the theme somewhere. This isn’t just a linkup so people can put their post somewhere else – it’s a challenge.

Here’s the deal with the challenge – and in the spirit of the former writing challenge I was a member of, there are no real rules (outside of somehow making the theme part of your post, and making sure when you link up it’s to the direct pot, not just your website!)

What’s that mean?

It means there are no length requirements. No style requirements. You don’t have to post each day. Be part of it when you can, and hopefully that means for the full challenge.

The themes/prompts are there to help guide you. Have fun with them. Be creative with your writing. Interpret as you see fit. Fiction or fact. All up to you.

With that, welcome to the 20 Days of Chill Writing Challenge!

This challenge will be held during January, on weekdays beginning on Jan. 5.

So there will be no weekends for the challenge, just Monday-Friday. That means the dates will be:

  • January 5-9
  • January 12-16
  • January 19-23
  • January 26-30

I’ll schedule my posts to be up by 6 a.m. EST each day. I would encourage each of you to check back throughout the day and visit others blogs. I believe you’ll all be pleasantly surprised at how fun this can be and how many interesting posts will hopefully be there.

At this point, I am calling on all of you for theme ideas. I’ll leave this open for 2-3 weeks, and then randomly select 20. All of them will be announced ahead of time, so you can plan accordingly.

There is (hopefully) a Google form attached here (at the bottom of the post) for you to fill out to give some ideas for themes. Conversely, feel free to post them in the comments here as I will keep an eye on this.

On December 18, I will have a post with the dates and themes as well as anything else needed.

Side note – last year, I created a t-shirt through TeeSpring for the challenge. I’ll do that again this year. They do good work and each person who wants one buys it through the website themselves. It’s a campaign, though, so we’ll need to get a certain amount for it to happen. Hopefully, that will work. My plan will be to launch it about a week before the challenge starts and keep it live for three weeks. The logo on this page will be on the shirt. I just need to come up with what color to use for the shirt!

I hope you all will consider this fun challenge. Tell your blogging friends. Let’s make it a good one! The 20 Days of Chill!

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!