Play time.

Noah Scalin, author of 365: A Daily Creativity Journal, sent me to the toy room today. Still focused on my theme of “words,” I searched my children’s toys for the ingredients to “make something.”

Mr. Potato Head seemed a suitable playmate. I styled and posed him and snapped a few photos. Then I went to the living room to engage my husband in some creative brainstorming.

“If Mr. Potato Head were standing at a Chicago intersection begging for money, what would his sign say?”

Jim—quick-thinking genius that he is—spouted these words on his second try …