Featured Posts – Share Your Post Links

October 26, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha

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‘PLEASE KEEP SENDING IN THE LINKS.’

Today’s featured blogs posts are:

Do step in and show some love.

I just launched my Self-hosted Site. Yes! After sufficient dillying and dallying, it’s finally live. Please do step in and say hello to me 🙂

How much do we need community? Are you a lone Wolf or a social animal? An interesting read with many facets.

High-dose biotin with progressive MS – A patients’ review Living with MS must be a struggle like a lot of chronic ailments. Jamie – a new blogger friend in the house – shares her opinion on usage of high-dose biotin, based on her experience. Do say hello 🙂

How are you? Do you speak the truth? When we keep quiet, we suffer in silence. I like this short post.

It’s time to change Undiluted fact. Parenting is not a game of ping-pong because our actions influence the lives of those in our charge.

‘Do you want more eyes on your words?’

Well then, add your LINK INTO THIS LOOP.

Comments are disabled here to keep the loop tidy. Any comments or link you want to send can be added through the link in the post.

Thank you for your understanding and regards.

‘We create a cohesive community when we come together.

We will be having our monthly blog party this weekend – Saturday 29th – Sunday 30th. It’s a Halloween themed party. Stay tuned and hope to see you in your dreary, scary drags.

Wordless Wednesday

October 26, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha7 Comments

Blog

LAUNCHING OUT!

October 25, 2016October 26, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha46 Comments

After so much dawdling and tardiness, I’m finally launching my new self-hosted blog, The Art of Beautiful Expressions.

Many weeks have passed since I purchased the domain name, started the site though very slowly. With each day that passes by, I realize that not only has my delay become dangerous, but it’s a hindrance to the growth of my new blog baby 🙂

Why another blog?

I have several ideas that I want to explore and my current blog A Cooking Pot and Twisted tales is quite chockfull with this and that.
I needed other avenues to write on other things, to write about writing, photography, the spoken word, blogging etc. To share bits and pieces of my experience, tips, know-how and also to learn from others.

I choose to self-host this time around because I plan, hopefully, to be able to face my writing career fully and maybe earning a bit from my site will help to pay those hard to ignore bills. To be honest with you, I am getting to a point where I no longer want to do just anything to pay bills, but to do the things that I love and hopefully as my site grows, as my learning grows, with the passage of time, the possibility of making reasonable income will also arise.

It’s not an easy call to chase after one’s dreams at times, but with a pragmatic approach, it’s doable and one of my dreams is to get to the level of working full time for myself. It will take sacrifices to get there, but hey, nothing good comes easy.

This is a learning curve for me. The Art of Beautiful Expressions is far from being a perfect site yet, there’s a lot of tweaking to be done, a lot to write on, a lot to learn and a lot of growing to do, but I’m going to take it a day at a time and put in my best each given day.

Please, do join me now and again, peek in to say hello and by all means, I hope that you will SubScribe. I believe that there’ll be bits and pieces of useful this and that. Thank you for your support.

Jacqueline

My Thinking Corner

Tuesday Trickles – My Thinking Corner

October 25, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha5 Comments

When we begin to feel guilt for failing in doing certain things, it’s a good indication that we are possibly overloaded.

It’s often better to cut out trivial chores and pastimes here and there and face the vital stuff until we are able to get it together.

It’s also okay to be kind to yourself when you fall behind. No! You don’t have superpowers 😉

Some days I’m stuck, not knowing what to write – I guess that’s why 50 blog post ideas and activities to beat the bloggers’ block is great, but I also realized that it’s okay not to be fully optimized in my thoughts every day. Some days, my brain just wants to be chill.

Jacqueline

Every Tuesday, I share snippets of thoughts that I call ‘My Thinking Corner.’

I would like to invite you to participate. The challenge is quite simple. You can check this link for more details.

A Click A Day

Let’s Make A Call – A Click A Day

October 25, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha18 Comments

Times have changed so much that telephone booths are almost becoming relics now that everyone uses a mobile phone.

I remember years back at home in Nigeria when the phone booths were far and few in-between and the queue as long as half a mile – maybe I exaggerate on the length, but you get the idea – and everyone waited patiently to take their turn to make that phone call.

Friendships were struck on these lines, quarrels picked and fights were fought when someone appropriated the phone for too long. All in all, it was an interesting time.

Nowadays, everyone is bent over their piece of gadget and hardly say hello again.

Rononvan's Weekly Haiku Challenge

Love – Ronovan writes weekly haiku challenge

October 25, 2016October 25, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha13 Comments

When I saw Ronovans’ prompt for this week’s haiku, ‘heart and petals,’ my romantic thoughts drifted to love. I am a die-hard romantic realist – whatever that means. Ha, ha 😉

Image result for images of heart shaped flowers

Heart-shaped petals
on pristine sheets
honeymoon is underway.

You laid petals for me,
my heart you captured
with actions of pure love.

Image result for images of heart shaped flowers

Short Stories

Finding Pleasure Again

October 24, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha16 Comments

Eyes shaded from the morning sun that made them hurt after a while, Richard allowed his gentle, trained guide to lead him down the footpath for a walk.

His heightened sense of hearing could pick up the various sounds far and near – the Seagulls calling to each other, the crashing sound of the waves hitting the banks, a loud honk from a shipping vessel, the slapping sound of a jogger’s trainers, his nostrils picked up different smells in the air, from the fragrance of the burgeoning flowers to the fishy smell of the seafront not too far from him – Richard smiled in pleasure .

It has taken lots of therapy to get to this level of acceptance and to begin to find little pleasures in life again After the accident, adapting to his limp and the sudden loss of his eyesight after 50 years of perfect vision has been a tough call, but for once, he felt happy to be alive again.

InLinkz

Thank you, Louise, for the photo and Priceless Joy for hosting this charming platform where we unleash our stories

Blog

50 BLOG POST IDEAS AND ACTIVITIES TO BEAT THE BLOGGERS BLOCK.

October 24, 2016October 24, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha20 Comments

Blog Post Ideas, Activities, Beat Bloggers Block, Photography, Writing, Info-graphics, Google Trends, Inspiration, Motivation

So you’ve started a blog, but coming up with fresh ideas to publish is a challenge? You are certainly not alone. It’s a challenge that most bloggers face especially given the fact the for your blog to succeed, great content matters.

Without engaging content, you will not keep your audience’s attention and this ultimately leads to blog dormancy and failure.

Based on my experience of as an author of a blog that has run for only 18 months and in that short while, has over 1,800 published and well-received posts, I’ve compiled a help list of blog post ideas and activities that you can bookmark and refer to as often as you need to and this list is more than enough to keep you busy for a while depending on your publishing frequency.

Now, let’s quickly go through them.

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Featured Blogs

The Wooden Image – Mundane Monday

October 24, 2016 jacquelineobyikocha6 Comments

Mundane Monday Challenge is created to find beauty in almost everything.

The challenge is simple. Find beauty in everyday mundane things, capture the beauty and upload the photographs.

It’s just an old, odd piece of wood that I saw while taking a walk. It could be classified as dead and rubbish but I had this pull to pick it up. I like to work with my hands on wood or pottery. It has a way of calming my mind.

An image of a polished piece, with a carving, popped into my head, but I resisted and continued with my walk.

I felt that it would just lie in the pile of things that are eyeing me to do them, just like my basket of unfinished knitting and I decided this year to stop all the ‘start and not finishing’ projects as much as possible.

Now, for the past two days, the image meant for the wood has been taunting me that I wonder if I should go and find that piece of wood?

Jacqueline