... no winter whining...

First of all, I want to say Thank You to everyone who participated in the first of our "No Winter Whining" series... it was a such a success, more than I had anticipated it would be.

I also wanted to send out a shout of Thanks to the team... I may have contacted Jen with the initial idea, but then Jen jumped in and pioneered the Facebook and Pinterest pages, and I am so happy she did, without those, our little event would have been less than stellar! Lynn and Laura jumped in helping to welcome all the participants when they were able, sharing ideas, making recommendations, cheering us on and offering words of support. Without all of them, we could not call ourselves a team! Yay Team!

The team has viewed all the entries and we would like to send a "virtual snowball" to who we think symbolized "no whining because it's winter" the most....

... and do you know how hard that was?!

There were so many lovely pictures; mountains, birds, flowers, crafts, streams, ducks, chickens, trees, horses, pups, signs, and so much more, along with so many sentiments of everyone looking for some colour in this normally bleak season... it was so hard to choose...

... but when it comes right down to it, the whole point of this little game is to embrace winter, not to let it get you down, find the beauty where you think there is none, and appreciate the season for what it is and what it offers... because there is no use whining about it, winter comes once every year and Mother Nature will never let us down.

So, how to choose... well, it came down to this... if in the middle of winter you saw a moment you just could not miss taking a photograph of, no matter how chilly the weather, no matter what the circumstances... and you would do anything to get that picture before it disappeared... then throwing on a coat over your nightgown and standing out in the freezing cold for 45 minutes to attempt to get just the right shot, then we think that goes above and beyond the call of duty to combat no whining, it's just winter! And so, we have chosen Emily Schiller as the winner for this week's finding colour in winter who attempted this feat and snapped a lovely shot of a "blue" heron... we're sending Emily a virtual snowball to proudly display on her blog if she wishes.

Thanks so much to everyone we do appreciate your participation and we look forward to seeing your posts for this coming Sunday, titled Structures in winter! We do hope you will join us again, and we invite anyone who would like to join in to please do so, we'd love to have you!

We also wanted to thank all those who allowed us to post their lovely photos on our Pinterest/Facebook links.

This Sunday, Jen will be hosting the game, but you still have to come back here to link up!

Great job everyone!

Happy life!