Category Archives: Uncategorized

That’s Just Cheating! Flower of the Day, Jan 27, 2016

That’s Just Cheating!


IMG_2004 (1)

Yes, sure.  I’ve done a lot of playing around with this image but I don’t consider that cheating, do you?  So what could it be that I’ve done that is slightly unethical?

IMG_2004
If it isn’t perfectly obvious from this unedited original shot,

IMG_2003 (1)

then perhaps it will be in this closeup.  Honest, folks, I didn’t notice when I took the original shot.  I was working fast and just going up and down the street taking shots of flowers.  It wasn’t until I got into the eidting phase that I notice what was wrong with this particular bunch of flowers!!! Cee’s said it before. I need to slow down. Perhaps after the art walk!

http://ceenphotography.com/2016/01/26/flower-of-the-day-january-27-2016/

Color Your World Chestnut

Chestnut

IMG_0288

Art by Mieke Herman, photo by Judy

Mieke burned this image into wood making use of a magnifying glass and the sun!  It helps that she lives in Arizona part of the year.  Can you imagine the control this would take?  No mistakes allowed.  She later added paint as well.

IMG_9956

Version 2http://jennifernicholewells.com/2016/01/26/color-your-world-chestnut/#like-8825

Spilling the Cream

Spilling the Cream

 

This is a challenge from barbwit: https://stanwatkins.wordpress.com/

See her cream-colored pictures at link!

Pretty in Pink: Fun Foto Challenge Jan 26, 2016

IMG_1943

Pretty in Pink

Found this little charmer along the street in La Manzanilla yesterday.
Just right for Cee’s challenge.

http://ceenphotography.com/2016/01/26/cees-fun-foto-challenge-pink-or-magenta-flowers/

Blog-out

 

IMG_2448 (1)
 

Blog-out

Dark genius sits there pondering and staring at the screen.
His features in reflected light glow a sickly green.
He works his cyber screwdriver slightly to the right.
His only tool––the keyboard––is his weapon in this fight
…………………………………………………………as every blog on WordPress skews slightly all at once.
He’ll show his third grade teacher for calling him a dunce!

He tugs a little here and there, adjusting cyber screws.
And just for fun, he adds a few zeroes to my views.
He knows that I am watching and he senses my excitement.
He chuckles that my false success has been at his incitement.
Then he shuts down the internet––Facebook, WordPress, Twitter.
and my seconds of great happiness turn just as quickly bitter.

Bloggers the world over are turned back onto themselves.
Photos trapped in media files or stacking up on shelves.
No place to reach out for a friend for shut-ins who, once freed
to roam a universe of blogs now sit in dire need
of someone just to talk to. To realize they are there.
They sit staring at their screens, though all of them are bare.

Week after week we wait for our deliverance from this blight.
We miss the internet all day, and even more at night.
I’m thinking about former friends, now lost across the miles,
tripping over poetry surrounding me in piles,
thirsting after comments about every brand new thought.
Having no fast outlet, my brain feels like it’s caught.

Bound up in old creations that have no place to go,
with no easy outlet, the thoughts are coming slow.
Jammed up creativity is worse than constipation,
for writing with no readers is just mental masturbation.
It’s true that I have friends to call and writers’ groups as well.
But they have not the patience to hear all I have to tell.

A blog gives me an avenue to fill out a whole world
with thoughts that for a lifetime, I’ve kept inside, tightly furled.
For those of us who always have felt slightly alone,
the Interweb has seemed a placed created to atone.
In the darkened hours when others are asleep,
we live that midnight life we’ve kept within us, buried deep.

History moves ever onward despite glacier, war or flood.
We see it trailed behind us in footprints etched in blood.
So we’ll survive the cyber war when it comes to pass
by spending more time with our friends, calmly smoking grass
or sharing drinks at Starbucks, devoid of texts or apps,
but we’ll miss our midnight family filling in the gaps.

 

The prompt: Life after Blogs– Your life without a computer: what does it look like?
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/life-after-blogs/

Okay, I must add a comment here, where everyone can see it.  See that fifth line in the first stanza, where the line is skewed over to the right?  WordPress doesn’t let you do that.  Every time I put spaces in to make that happen, they erased them.  So, as usual, I prevailed upon my tech expert/volunteer co-blog-administrator okcforgottenman to find a solution.  As you can see above, he found one and I’m not surprised.  What I am surprised about is his solution, that was nothing short of genius!  His solution was to put in a line of periods in front of the line until it was out where I wanted it and then to CHANGE THE COLOR OF JUST THOSE PERIODS TO WHITE!!!!  Tell me that isn’t genius.

Keep Your Junk in the Drawer

Once again, Red has rummaged through her junk drawer, found the right nail and hit it squarely on the head! New blogger or old, don’t miss reading this reblog of her advice to writers.

Jan Wilberg's avatarRed's Wrap

Crazy-making.jpg

Even gritty blogs need to have some class.

I know this because I have a fairly gritty blog where I’ve said some hard, rough things about my life and life around me. And occasionally, I’ve taken junk out of the drawer that should have stayed put, said things that didn’t need to be said, gone over the top.

So you might think I’m a fine one to be lecturing other people.

But, in this, my sixth year of blogging, it’s the advice to keep your junk in the drawer that rises to the top. Here’s why:

  1. There isn’t an endless supply of junk in the drawer. Even the biggest, deepest junk drawer has a finite capacity unless, of course, you are replenishing the drawer with new junk. When the drawer is empty or when you get to the little scraps of junk that aren’t all that interesting, your blogging life…

View original post 348 more words

Cerulean––Color Your World , Jan 25, 2016

Cerulean

IMG_2008You can’t get more cerulean than this sky, albeit obscured a bit by feathery clouds. I snapped this picture today in La Manzanilla, Mexico, where I am staying for two months. I was out looking for flowers to snap for Cee’s Flower a Day Challenge and got this bonus shot of the sky.  Then I decided while I was at it, I should get some pictures for Thursday Doors, so I wandered up three two blocks and back on the other side of the street, snapping pictures of front doors.  I love what blogging gives me license to do!

http://jennifernicholewells.com/2016/01/25/color-your-world-cerulean/

Dusty Petals: Flower of the Day, Jan. 25, 2016

                                                               Dusty Petals

There are not an excessive number of flowers in La Manzanilla, but I found these little blooms down the street in a strip of soil near the curb, well-dusted by traffic on the sandy pavers.  If anyone knows what they are, please let me know.

IMG_1923

IMG_1925

 

For more flowers, see: http://ceenphotography.com/2016/01/25/flower-of-the-day-january-25-2016-parrot-tulip/

How to Write a Blog with Bite!

th
How to Write a Blog with Bite!

Have you ever had a hot dog without mustard, onions, relish?
What is a hot dog, after all, but something to embellish?
The same is true of blogging. It has to have some spice––
an interesting title is my opening advice.
Remember your first sentence should invite us in.
An opening poorly stated? The worst blogging sin.
Don’t start you blog apologizing you have naught to say.
If you have nothing for us?  Just don’t write today.
Make your first line snappy, original and clear.
Don’t show your indecision, for you’re the expert here!!!
Nobody else can possibly know where you’re going to go
if you write about a topic where you are in the know.
Hook them with your opening–confident or funny.
Your readers are the buzzing flies. Give them a little honey!
Start right in with your topic with no wandering around.
We shouldn’t have to search for where the real message is found.
A blog is like a fine-tooled belt that you have carved from leather––
not just a pile of sentences that you have heaped together.
Do not use tired comparisons that you have heard before.
Each sentence that you write should be like opening a door
and finding yourself in a world that’s fresh and new and bright.
And then you’ll have a hot dog blog that we will want to bite!!!


Here are some links to just a few of the exceptional blogs that never give short shrift.  Read them every day and their excellence will pull you along with them. Set your standards high and you will soon have a readership that will make you want to excel,  just to keep them happy!! (photo is a stock photo from shutterstock.)

https://redswrap.wordpress.com/2016/01/03/the-old-days-of-big-wine/

https://alotfromlydia.wordpress.com/

http://teepee12.com/

https://momshieb.wordpress.com/

okcforgottenman.wordpress.com

https://ourrumblingocean.wordpress.com/

https://yournibblednews.wordpress.com

https://helenmeikle.wordpress.com/

http://thegadabouttown.com/

 

 The Prompt: What’s the key advice you would give to new bloggers:?

Cee’s Flower of the Day, Jan 24, 2016 and Color Your World Cerise

1024x768-cerise-solid-color-background

Cerise Bougainvillea

IMG_1275.jpg

http://jennifernicholewells.com/2016/01/24/color-your-world-cerise/

http://ceenphotography.com/2016/01/23/flower-of-the-day-january-24-2016-rhododendron/