blue are the dog days of summer
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See how the most popular colour fares in Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Blue and Yellow.
Tag: summer
Two Cents Tuesday Challenge: Routine – Week 2
is it hoarding if it’s organized?
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Half of our horde has been back in the academic grind for a week now with great success. The courses are inspiring, the professors better than expected and the schedule, well, not everything can be perfect but it is only until December when the collegial masses get a 6 WEEK break. Nice to be young. Across the Bored took the opportunity of one less body in the house to put all the paperwork lying around from the summer in order, file the bills, catch up on correspondence and get back to the arduous process of going through 20 years of accumulated boxed ephemera that has been sitting in the warehouse. Multitasking was going relatively well until the computer stated in no uncertain terms “Unable to save – Memory scratch disk full”. What? How is that possible? Didn’t we just go through this 2 months ago?
Odd that these files seem to take up an inordinate amount of space and much like all of that stuff in the physical storage facility, must be gotten rid of. Story of our life that we save so much that only we are ultimately interested in and then heart-wrenchingly have to dispose of like stale left-overs or unwanted houseguests. Would that there was an easy, Zen way to deal with this phenomenon and not have to wrestle with the body-numbing paralysis that sets in whenever we turn that piece of paper or fiddly bit over and over in our hands wondering “Are we going to need this 3 months after we throw it out”? Or worse still, the dreaded terrors of not being able to find that one thing you really really needed because in a fit of disposal anxiety you didn’t do one last triage on that box you dropped off at the Goodwill….
Do we ever learn from those things that we seem to do over and over again or does it just transform into something different but similar as time goes by? Like this fortnight’s Two Cents Tuesday Challenge, we might need to change our – Routine.
Last week we asked “How does routine appear to you?” – The drive to town every morn, that pair of shoes always worn, wake-up calls or favourite malls, superb meals or special deals, meditation, daily prayer, yoga mats or just a love of all that …
We would love to see your vision.
For all those who are new readers to Across the Bored, some great entries and the guidelines for this fortnight’s challenge can be found here. Need more info – Have a look at HOW DOES THIS WORK.
Two Cents Tuesday Challenge: Calm – Week 2
zen and the art of the tourist
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Glorious sunshine after a cold, grey dawn brought out the masses along the waterfront yesterday and we decided to join them in a decidedly un-local move. Having come to this summer destination for as long as we can remember, we have become inured to the throngs spilling off the cruiseships and the ever-changing spectacle of festivals and street shows designed to please. There were a few faces that had been around for a while who put on a great show for families with small children and posed good-naturedly for photos with random people they would never see again and so we waited until the crowd had moved on, threw some coins into the sturdy white bucket and asked if we could take a photo. Not only were we rewarded with a smile and a bit of conversation but a couple of hugs thrown in for good measure. Just what the doctor ordered to lift our spirits.
The life of the busker has been co-opted by local government to become an intrinsic part of the summer tourist trade. Licenses for prime harbour real-estate and the bustling shopping strip now require an initial outlay of hard-earned cash; paperwork and schedules replace once easy decisions to just get up, out to make visitors to the city smile and perhaps scrape together a few bucks in an afternoon. All inclusive vacations have made it hard for those who earn a living with their talent on the streets. Once-a-year travellers don’t always understand the art of outdoor entertainment, they see it and the artists who perform as just another part of the scenery, a living, breathing bit of pleasant backdrop and rarely as people with families, dreams and often, a mission in life. Just like us.
When faced with unbending rules and regulations and those events in our daily existence that give us pause, we must, like this fortnight’s Two Cents Tuesday Challenge and Plasterman, attempt to stay – Calm.
Last week we asked “What does calm look like to you?” – A placid lake or crystal snowflake, curled up cats, meditation mats, denim blues or an afternoon snooze…
We would love to see your vision.
For all those who are new readers to Across the Bored, some great entries and the guidelines for this fortnight’s challenge can be found here. Need more info – Have a look at HOW DOES THIS WORK.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Foreshadow
watching, waiting for the wind to give dreams flight
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Get ahead of the entries of the Weekly Photo Challenge: Foreshadow.
Travel Theme: Simplicity
eat, play, love
simple
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Take an uncomplicated approach to the entries of Where’s my backpack?’s
Travel Theme: Simplicity.
Travel Theme: Motion
moving forward – it’s a good thing
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Take a spin through the entries of Where’s my backpack?’s
Travel Theme: Motion.
Travel Theme: Beaches
simple pleasures
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Park yourself on the sand in the entries at Where’s my backpack?’s
Travel Theme: Beaches.
A Word a Week Photography Challenge – Worker
not happy with the day’s progress
Everybody does something in the entries at
A Word in your Ear’s Word A Week Photo Challenge – Worker.
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Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Steps
LET ME WALK WITH YOU ONCE MORE
BEFORE ANOTHER SEES THE SUN KISS YOUR FACE
AND THE WIND RUN NIMBLE FINGERS
THROUGH YOUR HAIR
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Go up and down with the entries
in Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Steps or Stairs.
Travel Theme: Benches
revisiting photographs, like familiar destinations,
reveals that sometimes a part is better than the whole
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Sit yourself down and peruse the entries at
Where’s my backpack?’s challenge Travel Theme: Benches.
Travel Theme: Bridges
We build too many walls and not enough bridges
Isaac Newton
Be carried across the entries at Where’s my backpack?’s challenge
Travel Theme: Bridges.
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Your 2012 Outdoors and Nature
winter spring summer fall
“The heart’s seasons seldom coincide with the calendar. Who among us has not been made desolate beyond all words upon some golden day when the little creatures of the air and meadow were life incarnate, from sheer joy of living? Who among us has not come home, singing, when the streets were almost impassable with snow, or met a friend with a happy, smiling face, in the midst of a pouring rain?”
Myrtle Reed, Old Rose and Silver
Best is a relative term – meaningful is that place in our memory jogged by the split-second of a photograph. See the year in pictures at Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Your 2012 Outdoors and Nature.
A Word a Week Photography Challenge – Blue
You want to be free What do you do? Get yourself where The sky meets the sea
Blue on blue
A Word in your Ear’s favourite colour is inspiration for the Word A Week Photo Challenge – Blue. Follow the link for indigo inspiration…
A Word a Week Photography Challenge: Flower
Avid gardeners perk up when the subject of heirloom is broached – this peony bush has been in the garden for longer than most of us can remember; its larger than generous dinner-plate sized blooms last but a few short days and it is only then that we know that summer is not long behind.
A Word in your Ear has opened up a whole world of blossoms with the Word A Week Photo Challenge – Flower. Follow the link to view more…
Serene amid the weeds
Rose quartz necklace – Ideflex Collection
An especially bright morning called out for closer inspection of the garden that we had left, somewhat unhappily, at the beginning of the summer in the hands of non-horticulturists. It tends to be wild back there on the best of days, a hodge-podge run to ruins English garden that lets grow what it will. Like us, it resists attempts at too-neat order – flowering weeds sprout rampant in the smallest patches of dark earth and each season brings a new yield of blooms that seem not to have been there the year before. Huge bright green elephant ears beckoned as an ideal bed for a piece of jewellery finished in another climate. A chinese clavicle pendant of rose quartz from Studio BBG was the catalyst for this necklace; two large Murano glass beads, some pink jade, blush pearls and silver spacers add lightness and bring an element of reflectivity to the larger rose quartz rectangles. Feminine in nature, this lovely pale pink stone is said to be the crystal of love, emitting a calming and cooling energy. It gives inner peace and makes the wearer receptive to matters of the heart. Much like the garden…
Weekly Photo Challenge: Merge
Urban, meet wild – concrete kissing rock
A fashion photo-shoot along the causeway illustrated proof that many west coast urban areas seem to run right into the Pacific. For all that is intrinsically wrong with cities taking over once-green spaces (the subject of a future post) there is still much beauty to be found, sometimes right beneath our feet. This weeks’s photo challenge: merge and the very act of just looking down are serendipitous indeed.
Out of the sands of time
Copper and Ammonite necklace – Ideflex Collection
Summer is the one season where selfish pursuits don’t seem quite so misplaced – work takes a back seat to more hands-on creative pleasures and we get the chance to complete projects that lay fallow through the cold winter months. This gorgeous fossilized shell was found at Victoria Bead Town Designs last year and the thought of creating a piece that looked as though it had been unearthed in an archaeological dig percolated for many months before its completion this July. Called “serpentstone” in medieval England, ammonites were held to have healing or oracular powers; Hindu lore holds them to be an earthly manifestation of Vishnu. A vision of primeval sandy beaches inspired a simple necklace – tarnished beads, industrial chain and the shimmering hues of coppery peacock cultured freshwater pearls complement large bronzite ovals flanking an iridescent ammonite. Sand, sea and the perfect accessory warming up against sun-kissed skin combine to rejuvenate the soul.
ACROSS THE BORED 