September's Write-Away Winner

Thank you to everyone this month who participated (there were 41 of you) by sending in a post on the theme of "Colors" and thank you also to Marybeth Whalen at Cheaper by the Half-Dozen, our lovely guest judge, without whom there would be no winner.

What a wonderful way to celebrate my 1,000th post.

. . . And the winner is:

Toney Babies with Love You Purple, Love You Blue

Megan is a mother to two beautiful girls, Cara and Gillian, living in Rochester, Minnesota and has been blogging at Toney Babies for going on three years. Intelligent, fun and caring she's one of those bloggers that I feel as if I've known and enjoyed a very long time--because a year and a half is practically an eternity in the blogosphere.

Honorable Mentions:

Notes of Jubilee with The Day of Angry Colors
Production Not Reproduction with Orange
The Home Team Wins with Colors
Our Little Tongginator with Seeing Color

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Here are a list of the entries in the order they were received:

1. Positive Frenzy with Colors of Life: God's Painting
"Morning’s magical transformation; the blaze of fire waxes fiercely into a perfect sphere of blinding light; sparkling crystal sands, azure-blue ocean, and the golden fiery sun. God’s canvas is painted so masterfully. He has created nature’s eye candy that changes with the open and close of each day."

2. Mozi Esme with Colorful Souls
"The year: 1991. The place: Helderberg College, South Africa. The students congregating in the Student Centre were Black, Coloured, White. As we looked out over the rugby field and vineyards in diminishing daylight, we sang to the accompaniment of guitars and piano."

3. Whitterer on Austism with ABA - The Incredible 5 Point Scale
My incoherent speech delayed youngest son howls at me. Not a mellow yellow, more of a fire breathing red. How I long for the calming, cool waters of green. His words, if they are words, are so distorted that I can’t make out their meaning?

4. Production Not Reproduction with Orange
“Would you like to wear red shoes or blue shoes?” I ask my two-year old, dangling the options in front of him. “Orange!” he chirps with a smile.

5. Homeschooler's Guide to the Galaxy with I'm Green, Gold and More
I am the green-gold of sweeping prairies rippling in long winds as the sun drops toward evening. I am the fresh, green of sprouting seedlings after the rain.

6. The Home Team Wins with Colors
His eyes were supposed to be brown. I already had one brown-haired, brown-eyed boy, and I was supposed to have another one who looked just like him. Just like all ten of my siblings look like me. That's just the way it was supposed to go.

7. The Extraordinary Ordinary with The Color Red
I want my kids to be angry. Isn't the color of anger bright red? Yes. Color my children bright red. Color me red while you're at it. Yes. I mean it. When life calls for it, paint my whole family as red as a tomato, or a fire truck.

8. Flea's World with Why I Like it Here
When we first moved to Tulsa, nearly two years ago, leaving friends in Orlando seemed like the most difficult thing ever. Not that I wasn't happy to be here. Y'all know that I LOVE Tulsa and have wanted to live here for the last 20 years.

9. In the Gutter with I've Got a 2200 Mile Hole in My Heart
Summer. What does summer mean to you? As a child, summer meant long hot days at the beach with Hawaiian Tropic glistening off my skinny little arms creating mini-rainbow-like oil slicks as I slid into the cold water of Lake Powell.

10. Family Musings with The Color of Our Character
It still happens. Skin color still matters to some people. In the town I used to teach in, there was an unwritten rule that if a white girl had ever dated a black boy, then she was off limits to all of the white boys. I as appalled when a fellow teacher shared this with me. I knew I was in a rural town, but couldn't believe that people really thought this was acceptable behavior.

11. My Neurotic Spot with Melancholy Chasing Color
As the shroud of gray descends upon the season to hug it close like an old friend, I try to comfort myself with the knowledge of the brighter moments that will seep in. It is September now, and the weather shifts quickly like a fly in motion. Most of the time on the path to winter and solitude, but not without the stray brightness of a moment in the fall.

12. Shabby in the City with Color
Color is a happy thing. Dogs don't know what they are missing! I'm guessing waistlines are very much that way too (I'm missing one you see...). Many of my own happy memories involve color which also often involves smell and even tastes.

13. Notes of Jubilee with The Day of Angry Colors
"Tell us a story mama. Tell us!"
I looked up at the sky my eyes skidding past the vibrant greens of the willowy grasses and leaves of the trees surrounding the field in which I toiled.

14. Past Continuous with Colours of Our Childhood
Looking back at the past
Is like shaking the coloured fragments
Of a kaleidoscope
Jewel-bright mirrored-myselves
Looking back at me.

15. Pensieve with Sing a Rainbow
Perhaps one of the most taken-for-granted indulgences offered by Invisible God is His gift of color to us; He certainly could've created a world in shades of gray had He wanted to. Instead, He gave us promise . . . a pledge . . . His covenant . . . in the form of a rainbow.

16. Orange Shirt Guy with Colors
Her hair would be brown - of this I was pretty sure although I could get a glimpse only every minute or so. During the next push, I confirmed Brown - and a headful of it. Throughout my life, I've always been relatively well connected to moments in time via photographs, smells, and music - I've always known and been aware that those three items will instantly transport me back in time to a specific moment.

17. Just Livin' Large with Everything Comes in Chocolate . . . Except Tomatoes
I'm having a rough time these past two weeks with my weight loss plan. I'm doing everything I'm supposed to be doing, I'm staying within my points, we've been walking 4 times the past week (which is 4 times more than we went walking the past two weeks!) and I still can't seem to get past this spot on the scales.

18. Toney Babies with Love You Purple, Love You Blue
"Mommy, who do you love more? Me or Cara?"I'm surprised to even hear this from my 3-year-old, but there it is. "Gilly Bean, I love you purple and I love Cara blue." I tell her this without missing a beat. This is the essence, I think, of being a mother. Having a "right" answer ready when the questions are thrown at you.

19. TJ Hirst.com with Blooming Without Color
I am colorless. My pale skin has virtually no pigment. I was born with white hair, and some in school used to ask if I was an albino. I would respond that I don’t have red eyes—my eyes are translucent blue. Still, my optometrist diagnosed me with ocular albinism, so I’m not sure that I am totally correct in that statement.

20. Gappa with Colors
I have always wondered if babies in-utero, at full term , could open their eyes and see around them. While we associate seeing with opening of eyes, maybe they do not need to do so, given the neuroplasticity of our brains.

21. The Spices of Life with Color Wonder-full
Antonio stayed home from school on his birthday, and he made some very beautiful paintings. One is called "Rainbow" and the other is "Bird Prints, Starfish and Dirty Rocks at the Beach"

22. More of *You* with Seeing Green
I am drawn to the color green, and not the green of recycling, like “going green,” or green as in just any old Crayola-crayon green. Chartreuse, in particular, calls to me from the color wheel, a brilliant yellow-green, like the color of sour green apples, verging on the visual tartness of a Granny Smith.

23. Zen Mama Wannabe with When Pink Isn't Cool
The picture is still in my mind – my blond-haired son proudly holding his pink balloon at the local county fair. Of all the bright, vivacious colors in the Balloon Man’s massive bundle, he wanted the pink one. Because after all, pink was his favorite color. At the grown-up age of 6, he was neither aware nor concerned of the unspoken 4-word rule all most kids know to follow: pink is for girls.

24. Blissful Anonymity with The Colors in My Life
The people in my life can be sorted like a crayola box of crayons.Hannah is white. When I look into her eyes she is new and fresh, unwritten and unspoilt. In time her white will be taken up with a whole host of colours; until she settles on which one she really is.

25. Insert Creative Witty Blog Title Here with Look out Joel! Sentiment Below . . .
Blue. My son’s helmet is blue. There are other colors, other sensations vying for my attention, the sloppy clop of my running shoes as my feet slap the pavement, the ash gray asphalt, flecked and pitted, long over due for a reseal, the grass, sandy green, crunchy and long over due for a slow rain.

26. Fun at the Cook Shack with True Colors
On Sunday mornings my sisters and I would sit at the foot of my parent's bed and watch Captain Kangaroo on the small black and white TV while we waited for Dad to curl our bangs. I remember being shocked when I saw Captain Kangaroo in color, he didn't look as old as he was supposed to look, because he didn't have all that gray hair.

27. The Doctor Is In with What's Your Favorite Color?
I'm not sure why, but it was alway a question we got asked as kids. "What's your favorite color?" We all had a favorite and we didn't budge from that favorite.

28. Adventures in Babywearing with The Writing on the Wall
Each night before bed I make my sweep through the house picking up toys, finding remnants of a craft project I didn't know had been cut and glued and taped, and more Legos than you can imagine. It's an effort made many times throughout the day to keep most of the house tidy and neat and less like a thousand children live here.

29. Ceaseless Praise with The Gift of Color
When I take time to praise God for all He has blessed me with, I start with the things I need that He unfailingly provides for me and my family. And then I move on to the things that I don't need but He continuously lavishes on me.

30. Circles and Dots and Other Distractions with Michemily
Imagine two girls in a junior high school that had recently taken on uniforms. With outfits limited to navy blue, white, or forest green, color was something we longed for--to us, it brought beauty into life, it showed individuality, and in light of the new dress code, it allowed us to show some teenage rebellion (in a way we thought was big but wasn't really).

31. Suburban Dwelling Bohemian Misfit with 5 Quarters of My Orange

To orange peel potpourri littered with lavender

To cold orange carrot soup covered in yogurt honey drizzle

32. Full Time in New Mexico with What Color Is Momma's Tattoo?
I’d like to write about how my 3 year old loves coloring. How content he sits with crayons in hand and a piece of white paper stretched in front of him waiting for the fun to begin. Except, my 3 year old exerts his stubborn toddler will when it comes to learning colors.

33. I'm So Funny with It Was Red
It was red. It was perfect. And the story goes something like this:

34. Calico with Caramel Deserved It, Really
Red wants you to think she's passionate, but she's not really. She's just confident. Not really mad, just urked that her super-hero boyfriend Blue sometimes flirts with Orange on accident. Because Orange is hot, but humble.

35. A Quest for Relevance with Colors
Imagine . . . Your time has finally come, and now you stand in heaven, about to be held accountable for the actions in your life. Scenes from your existence flash around a screen before you, slowly settling into place for all to see. You notice that some of those images have vibrant colors, others are simply shades of gray, and more are so dark that you can barely make out the image.

36. The Short Years with Red and Yellow, Black and White
My hair? It's a medium dark brown.
Eyes? Hazelish-green.
And skin? It's about the shade of the "peach" colored crayon in the Crayola box.

37. All Rileyed Up with The Parent As Artist
“Can she color within the lines yet?” That is the question I face as I sit in the doctor’s office for Little No Limit’s four year old check up. The doctor has peppered her with questions, many of which Little No Limit could not (or chose not to) answer. This is not uncommon, as Little No Limit is considered speech delayed (and possibly selectively mute), as I have been told by various speech pathologists, therapists, and doctors over the years.

38. Our Little Tongginator with Seeing Color
I grew up in several diverse communities, among people of all races and faiths. My parents taught me from a very young age to do as Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated: to judge a person by the content of her character rather than by the color of her skin.

39. Peterson Party Page with The Golden Season Has Begun!
Welcome to what I like to call: "The Golden Season" (and yes, that is most certainly in quotations and italicized!) Fall is my ever favorite of the four seasons; and the reason is because the light just seems to be golden. The very sky is golden with the tinge of the leaves on the trees.

40. Butterfly Mama with Simply Perfect
My almost one year old is finally jumping onto the solid food bandwagon! As our weaning road begins to take shape, she nurses almost exclusively before naps and at night. Naptime is simply perfect. I never want to give up this opportunity to lie down with my little beauty.

41. Chrysalis with Steppin out. God's Got Style
Our Lord has a tremendous sense of style! Don't we exult in the marvellous raiment of the earth in autumn? Without a stitch or a button, God swaths the woodlands in rich hues and textures. Over desert floors and mountain peaks, He unrolls his bolts of luminous fabric for our enjoyment.

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