Were you stuck at home last week for a day or three while a blizzard raged - and at times fizzled - outside?

My school did online learning, and Little L helped me prepare my lessons. Since I'm teaching creativity and flexible thinking, one of my lessons was, "What Can You Do With a Bowl?"

I figured everyone has one, and it could be fun.

Little L wanted to star in every video I made. "Okay, today we are going to do a lesson," she would say over me, just as I started to say, "Hi, kindergartners!"

I had her demonstrate what you could do with a bowl. Her first idea was to use it as a steering wheel. A great idea, especially if you have a bowl laying around in your car.

Now, to be quite honest, the bowl in question is our Barf Bowl. We obviously have one clear use for it, and Little L came up with a second use for it last year when it was sitting next to my bed, where I lay facedown, unable to move. She had already recovered from her own stint using said bowl (don't worry, we washed it after) and now I had it at the ready - just in case.

Bouncing with the energy of the newly recovered, she put one foot in the large silver bowl and skated around the carpet of the bedroom.

"Look, Mama, I'm Barf Bowl-ing!" she sang, as I tried tilting my head to the side to take a peek.

Back on Day 1 of the snow days, Little L and I sent out my online lesson and waited for the responses. That night at dinner, we told Axel about the lesson we'd prepared.

"Hmmm, what can you do with a bowl?" Axel pondered while finishing the last of his salad.

The ideas started pouring in.

"You could put water in it and use it as a mirror," Axel suggested, taking a bite of pasta.

"You can just use it as a mirror!" Little L corrected. Turns out Axel hadn't been thinking about the metallic Barf Bowl, but a different non-reflective receptacle.

And on and on we went with ideas. Finally, we had to pry Little L away from the table to get her ready for bed.

"But you know what else you can do with it?" I could hear her saying, as Axel walked her to her bedroom.

The next morning, inspired, I got out my notebook to write down our ideas. This would make a fun blog post, I thought.

Turns out that while our family excels in generating ideas, our recall is quite lacking.

So here is a list of ideas we came up with for what to do with a bowl. I encouraged the students - and my family - to try to think of as many different ideas they could, and to be original.

1. Foot bowling (also known as Barf Bowling).
2. Bug catcher.
3. Litter box (bowl).
4. Put your artwork in it.
5. Hang it on the wall like art.
6. Put your dishtowels in it.
7. Hide Axel's phone under it and listen to him walk around the house lamenting how he can't find it.
8. Once Axel finds it, he could put it in the bowl to keep track of it so he won't lose it again.
9. Put leaves that you rake in it.
10. Extra storage for winter hats and gloves.
11. Garbage can.
12. Put plants in it.
13. Shovel snow with it.

This is just a teaser. We thought of probably 100 brilliant ideas that we promptly forgot.

But here's my point. Next time you want to have some fun over dinner, ask your friends and family what they would do with a bowl.

Let's just hope they're not feeling queasy.