Travel around the world with the Which Way Challenge
To Mt Fuji, Japan –
Or around Eastern Australia
To New Zealand
And finally to Switzerland.
I found my “Way” to this challange via Cyranny’s Cove. It seems like a host: Sonofabeach is looking for someone to take over the challenge.
Are you interested?
Something to Ponder About
Much of the time our focus is spent looking down at our smartphones, at a book or document, or even on young children? In keeping our focus downward, we often miss important details or sights above and around us.
Have a look at the following photo : –
Not one person in this photo is LOOKING UP at the splendor above them.
There is immense beauty above our heads, if we open our eyes to it.
This week on Friendly Friday I am asking you to join in and create a post sharing your interpretation of the prompt : –
LOOKING UP
Here is something I would have missed if my daughter had not LOOKED UP –
Unusual things can be found Looking Up.
Instructions for Joining In:
Find more Instructions on joining in with Friendly Friday here
Everyone is welcome to join in with the Friendly Friday Photography challenge.
The challenge is alternately hosted each Friday by the bloggers:
Something to Ponder About and The Snow Melts Somewhere
Pingbacks – Needing help creating a link back or pingback to your post – click here
Something Fun to Ponder About this Friday!
Whether you are new to blogging or have been writing for some time, blogging is, or can become, a personal branding story, a legacy of self. What does you blog say about you and the personal brand behind the blog? These six questions helped me unpack the purpose behind my blogging journey.
Q: ” The best posts and stories make the audience’s benefit amazingly clear. What is the real benefit of your writing?”
A: I read to learn or gain knowledge, and I write to share information, for education or entertainment. I also write to document things that are important to myself and hopefully others. It makes me happy to write and I feel compelled to put words down on paper or in blog format.
Q: How does your story fit into the world? Is your blog helpful to someone?
A: Is my writing relevant to others? I don’t know but I hope my words are useful or entertaining, in some way. I write with the objective to share knowledge and to further my own self-inquiry. Perhaps writing stems from an inner urge to find meaning with external matters. The spinoff for me, is the surprising development of a nurturing and positive blogging community.
Q: Do your blog posts walk readers through a learning curve of information and share how issues discussed might impact them?
A: That very much depends on the topic of the post. This sort of blog posting is more suited to a tutorial style, and I tend to speak generally about potential impacts in posts. I gain a lot of inspiration for topics from the blog community.
As blogger Marlene from InSearchotItAll posted: “A negative mind will never give you a positive life.” How could a positive life spring from a negative mind? I like to think positivity is infectious.
Q: Beyond education, the best stories forge a bond between the story-teller and her audience. Whether through vulnerability, candor or shared experience, stories where the audience walks away with heightened emotional intimacy are the stories that win. How do you foster an emotional connection with your readers?
A: I do hope the tone of my posts is personal and conversational but I am no story teller. Writing a blog post is like confiding in a dear friend, but a friend that lives far from my location. By being honest, thoughtful and thinking hard about situations we might all find ourselves in, I’d hope I relate to and connect with those who read and comment on my posts.
Q: Is your blog about the past or where you are headed? Does your writing examine the past whilst reflecting the future, in terms of dreams, hopes and the future?
A: Both. There is so much we can learn from the past it would be stupid to focus solely on the future. In particular, I enjoy discussing traditional proverbs that have sageful advice anyone can use. no matter their stage, or walk, of life.
Q: What makes your blog stand out from others?
A: I think that is a question for the readers of my blog. I could not be objective at all in answering this, and thus I’ll politefully decline.
How would you answer these six questions?
You are welcome to re-post with your own answers, but are under no obligation to do so.
Here are just a few blogs, (in no particular order), who’ve been inspirational to me, in my blogging journey. Thank you WordPress community!
Yvette from Priorhouse Blog
Pooja from Stories from Europe
Moon from ACacophonous life
Manja from ManjaMexi
Snow from TheSnowMeltsSomewhere
Donna from Retirement Reflections
Lorelle from A Mindful Traveller
Ineke from Scrapydo2
Sabine from InCahootswithMuddyBoots
Chris from lifeofrileyow
Ally from Thespectacledbean
Ju – Lyn from AllThings Bright and Beautiful
Anne C – from To See the World in A Grain of Sand
We have been so very desperate for rain in many parts of Australia, and finally the rains have arrived. They have come late in some areas, have received far too much in other areas, and not quite enough in still other areas. But the raindrops have been falling. Yay!
Rain is appreciated also by the thirsty plants which respond with a flush of growth and some with flowers.
Raindrops are also a photographer’s delight. After the rain is the best time for photographs.
The photo below is a microcosmic world in itself. The leaf forms are a metaphor for our planet, the raindrop a metaphor for the oceans, the individual drops the rivers and streams running into the oceans, and the minute hairs the people of the world, dependent on the water drop for life.
Some organisms are 90 % water. 60% of an adult human body is comprised of water.
Water is essential resource for life. Raindrops are precious.
Unfortunately, some creatures like the ones below also like the rain.
They are not so welcome.
Create a post sharing your interpretation of this week’s Friendly Friday prompt –
Raindrops
Instructions:
Find more Instructions on joining in with Friendly Friday here
Friendly Friday Photography challenge is alternately hosted each Friday by
Something to Ponder About
and
Pingbacks – Needing help creating a link back or pingback to your post – click here
Something Fun to Ponder About this Friday!
Our lives become so busy, it is only in reflection that we can truly appreciate some of the places we have visited in our lives. Through our photography, memories come alive.
Sometimes things change immensely, whilst others stay very much the same.
This week on Friendly Friday, I am asking you to Re-visit your memories, places and experiences.
The prompt ‘Re-visiting’ might mean something entirely different. It might simply mean a return to a place, but in another time. A ‘before’ and ‘after’ photo, of a project, from start to finish, or a time warp showing changes from one decade to another. Such as revisiting the changes from baby to child or child to adult. It might even be a place you wish to re-visit one day.
Such as a little village in Denmark.
You are limited only by what revisiting means to your imagination.
Photography Challenge
Friendly Friday Photo Challenge is alternately hosted at The Snow Melts Somewhere and Something to Ponder About, each Friday.”
Like the former WordPress Photo Challenge, we’ll post a prompt each Friday and invite you to create a ‘Friendly Friday‘ post using one or more photos of your choice, relating to the weekly prompt.
Write as little, or as much, as you like in the post. That part is really up to you!
Once you hit publish, come back here and leave your comment and link for your Friendly Friday post, in our comments section. Find further instructions here.
The New Friendly Friday Logo
Snow and I have created individual logos, for Friendly Friday, that you may like to add to your Friendly Friday post, but this is entirely optional. This week, my daughter created a new, unique logo using her quirky art. You are free to use this logo, or the former one, in your post if you wish.
And don’t forget to add a tag, and pingback to Friendly Friday.
This will make it easier for us all to find you and your post.
See you again in two weeks!
Amanda
Share your ‘Pathways’ photos on Friendly Friday.
The Photography Challenge
Friendly Friday Photo Challenge is alternately hosted at The Snow Melts Somewhere and Something to Ponder About, each Friday.
Similarly to the former WordPress Photo Challenge, we’ll post a prompt each Friday and invite you to create a Friendly Friday post using one or more photos of your choice, relating to the weekly prompt. Write as little, or as much, as you like in the post. That part is really up to you!
Then leave your comment and link for your Friendly Friday post, in our comments section here. Find further instructions below.
This is my first week hosting the challenge and I’m looking forward to seeing your own interpretation of this theme. Here is my version of the challenge logo.
Friendly Friday Logo
Snow and I have created individual logos that you may like to add to your Friendly Friday post, but this is entirely optional.
In sourcing suitable photos for this prompt, I am reminded of an old adage that states, ” Life is a journey not a destination.” Pathways can be a metaphor for life. Let us walk along some of my ‘Pathways.’
When we are young, it seems we skip along pathways so very quickly, enthusiastic about life and what it has in store for us. We are keen and readying ourselves for loads of new experiences.
In adolescence, life is frequently twisting and turning in on itself; spontaneity rules the day. A few don’t see their destination. Some choose to follow a path wherever it takes them; whilst others are more concerned with experiences, than the actual destination, itself.
It is only later that some discover the paths they took didn’t turn out to be thoroughfares, at all; they were in fact, dead ends, or they might have been forced to make ‘U’ turns, away from the darkness and back on the straight and narrow.
Time passes and as some approach middle age, they might mellow seeming to be much more decisive about the paths, they take, in life.
As in life, every pathway has beauty – if we are open to seeing it.
To add a ping back to the host blog, simply copy the Blog Title/s, highlighted below, or the URL address for each Blog you want to link to, that is:
Something to Ponder About or The Snow Melts Somewhere or both, and paste this into your Friendly Friday post.
Alternatively, once you have highlighted the linked blog names above, you can also click the ‘chain (link)’ icon (next to the Bold and Italic icon), in your editor’s taskbar. Then paste that URL for the linked blogs, into the text box that pops up, and press enter to activate.
I should then get a notification, which means I will know that you made a Friendly Friday post! Others can then click the highlighted blog name, in your comment, to find the weekly Friendly Friday Photo Challenge and join in too!
N.B. Sometimes ping backs don’t work, so it is best to leave the link in a comment with the URL link for YOUR post, on our Friendly Friday blog post!
Let’s have some fun exploring the pathways! Amanda
As it is the start of a brand new Photography Challenge –
Friendly Friday , the one that I am co-hosting with Snow, from
TheSnowMeltsSomewhere, I felt compelled and indeed, wished, to join in!
Here is my photo depicting Inspiration; the prompt for this week.
It was hard to choose a photo for the theme Inspiration, but I feel that this work by Jasmine Kay Uy for her University of Texas at Austin Department of Art and Art History most inspiring.
How clever are the words? I also love the different interpretations and that one side is hidden from the other given two totally different meanings, depending on one’s orientation and perspective! Sort of like life can be, sometimes?
Friendly Friday will be posting each Friday – alternately between Snow’s blog TheSnowMeltsSomewhere and my blog Something to Ponder About
Each Friday, we’ll post a prompt and invite you to leave your response in the comments section.
You write a post, publish a photo and leave a hyperlink or pingback in the comments section directing us to your Friendly Friday blog post.
If you are not sure what a hyperlink, link back or pingback is, it is how we find your blog post in the world wide web.
Just highlight, right click and “copy” the url of your PUBLISHED blog post [see below] that you want to link to, and then paste this along with your comment, on Amanda’s or Snow’s Friendly Friday Blog post, depending on who is hosting the challenge that week, in the same way you would post a normal comment to their post.
A url is the computer’s blog post address that you find at the top of the blog post itself. It should look something like this format but with your blog and post name inserted.
https://xxxx [blogname]/2019/01/06/xxx[name of blog post]/
If you are really keen it would be fantastic to include in your post a Friendly Friday tag.
To do so, add the words Friendly Friday to the tags in your publishing settings on the side bar, before you hit ‘publish’. You might even want to add a hyperlink or link back to the host blogger’s blog – here is how to do that:
Firstly, Highlight, and right click the url for the host blog – https://forestwoodfolkart.wordpress.com https://forestwoodfolkart.wordpress.com – for Amanda’s blog
or https://thesnowmeltssomewhere.wordpress.com – for Snow’s blog
Secondly, paste this url in the draft post, by clicking on the chain link icon in your editor, (usually next to BOLD and Italic icons). A text box will pop up – and this is when you right click, paste or ctrl V. Press Enter and your link is then automated. if it works the text colour will change! Any problems, just ask for help!
Oh and if you happen to paste the wrong link, by mistake, just highlight and click the chain link icon again in your editor and the link disappears! Easy.
Good luck and Have a Happy Week. Do stop by for my first Friendly Friday Post and a new theme – this Friday 8pm [ Australian time]
Something that is Out of this World
but very much edible. The biggest cotton candy I’ve ever seen…. Or
if you are Australian: Fairy Floss
Also Out of this World. Abandoned, unforgiving, and definitely haunted, according to my friends who tried to stay the night here where they experienced an out of this world happening, during their overnight stay in this abandoned house.
Something ‘spooky’ To Ponder About
