31 Days Announcement & Monday’s Menu

For a few years I have followed The Nester Place’s 31 Days series during the month of October. Last year more than 700 bloggers signed on to participate along with the Nester, so it was pretty hard to miss. I admired the blogs I followed who committed to writing every day for the month of October.

But I thought they were crazy. Write every day? Um, I’m doin’ fine with my 4-5 times each week.

Besides, all my regular readers might have a hard time keeping up with daily posts.

Not to mention I would have a hard time keeping up with daily posts.

But this year when the Nester’s call for 2012 31-day participants came at the end of August and I read her talk about the challenge and inspiration – not to mention the commaraderie that comes from so many participants being in the same boat, so to speak – I was intrigued.

And then I thought since I’m not teaching preschool this year it might actually be possible to challenge myself this way. I started writing down (and crossing off) lots of potential topics. If I were going to commit to writing for 31 days in a row on one topic, it had to be something I was pretty excited about.

So I’m happy to tell you that I am excited about the topic I settled on:

31 Days of Thrift Store Transformations

I hope you will find the month of October here at AOC to be as fun and interesting as I’m finding it to be as I shop, transform, photograph, and write about my thrift store finds. My goal for the month is that you’ll be inspired to look at things in a new way, to not be hindered by any perfectionist ideals and then go on to create your own thrift store transformations.

But I do need to warn you that things will look a bit different around here during the month of October – so I’m giving a week’s notice before launching the series next Monday.

During October there will be no Monday’s Menus, though I will still be making our menus – I’ve done it for so long now it’s a habit, and one that I don’t want to do without!

I was going to end the Tuesday Garden Party tomorrow, but heard from too many of you that you wanted it to continue a bit more, so we will have the TGP on October 2, 9, and the last one will be on the 16th when we’ll have a special season-ending link-up and a giveaway. I haven’t decided what I’ll do on those three days, as far as my 31 days posts go – I may put up two posts those days. But I promise the 31 days post will be short – maybe a link to a previous project I’ve done.

There also won’t be room for any recipes, so I’ll be saving those up to bombard you will in November – ha!

But DIY projects? Oh, yeah…there’ll be LOTS of that!

Here’s our last “Monday’s Menu” until November:

Monday- Roasted Sausages, Onions & Peppers, Easy Sourdough Artisan Bread, Chopped Salad (with tomatoes, corn, feta, onions & broccoli)

Tuesday- Grilled chicken thighs, Zucchini-Feta Fritters, Green Beans with Tomatoes & Caramelized Onions

Wednesday- Stir-fry garden vegetables, brown rice, potstickers (frozen)

Thursday- (Brian’s Birthday!) Chicken dish (I haven’t decided yet…), Parmesan Rice Cakes (using rice from Wed.), Tomatoes & Feta, Broccoli Parmesan, Caesar salad, and some sort of cake – maybe his favorite chocolate-chip cheesecake.

Friday- Shrimp, corn, tomato & feta saute (I’ll saute the vegetables, add shrimp until cooked, then toss with feta before serving), herbed noodles, green salad

Saturday- Homemade Pizza- the Chicken-Pesto variety  (with loads of tomatoes from the garden!)

Sunday- Summer vegetable potato salad, bread & “frugal” pesto

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