Happy Holidays: Peace & Love to All...

"Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love!" Hamilton Wright Mabie 

"Sending Best Wishes for the Holidays to You and Yours!"

RIP Teena Marie (March 5, 1956 – December 26, 2010): Below She sings Fire & Desire with Rick James Also linked here: FIRE & DESIRE
She will be sorely missed. A gifted singer from the great days of R&B with the best...

A Thought ...

Dear Santa,

My wish for the coming year is more goodwill and abundance in the world and less misery and scarcity!

Please don't mix these two up like you did last year!

...

Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays!

Buone vacanze!

Joyeuses Fêtes!

ハッピーバカンス！

节日快乐！

أعيادا سعيدة!

С праздником!
С Рождеством Христовым!

تعطیلات مبارک!

हैप्पी छुट्टियाँ!

¡Felices Fiestas!

גליקלעך האָלידייַס!

Շնորհավոր Տոն!

Boas festas!

Happy Holidays everyone and thank you for your visits and comments!

Thanks for all the wonderful support...

Until Next Time…

Ask. Believe. Receive.©

Elizabeth Obih-Frank

Mirth and Motivation

Positive Kismet

To Whom It May Concern: You are Beautiful

"Accept your own beauty. You are beautiful no matter what your mind tells you. That is a fact. If you are aware of your own beauty and accept your own beauty, the opinion of others doesn't affect you at all." don Miguel Ruiz

The gardens at Omega in Rhinebeck, NY

We live in a world where external beauty is often placed on a pedestal while inner beauty, truth and morality are not as appreciated. Today, I invite you to consider yourself beautiful for all the special ways you honor those around you and for all the things you do to keep your life vibrant. Do you think you are not beautiful? Why? Who has interrupted your ability to express who you truly are? You are beautiful...

BEAUTY by Charles Baudelaire
I AM as lovely as a dream in stone,
And this my heart where each finds death in turn,
Inspires the poet with a love as lone
As clay eternal and as taciturn.

Swan-white of heart, a sphinx no mortal knows,
My throne is in the heaven's azure deep;
I hate all movements that disturb my pose,
I smile not ever, neither do I weep.

Before my monumental attitudes,
That breathe a soul into the plastic arts,
My poets pray in austere studious moods,

For I, to fold enchantment round their hearts,
Have pools of light where beauty flames and dies,
The placid mirrors of my luminous eyes.

We can't afford to enter the New Year with this mentality of being less than the perfect child of God we truly are... Below I have added a few more notes and poems to jug our memories and remind us why we are cherished and beautiful regardless of what others think or say...

In Photos: Seven Reasons Summer Season is a Favorite…

"A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken."  - James Dent

 FLOWERS

Highline Park Flowers...

 GOOD MOOD FOOD

Chocolate chip cherry vanilla ice cream

Summer always seems to breeze in quickly and fade away before we have time to properly bid it adieu. When I saw Red Riter's prompt, I was amused and then thought, why not? We write about Autumn in fall and winter in December and on... Why not mix it up and revisit a season we love and reminisce a bit.

What do we like about summer? What do you look forward to doing in the summer? Walk with me down memory lane... Yes, I know we are about to embark on a few long months of winter weather here on the East coast.  Even as some of us escape to Florida or a sunny island or two, most of us will stay behind and brave the dropping temperatures... brrr. Before we go traipsing into the sunset of a summer day, let's remember: Do bundle up; it's still cold season!



For this week's Tell The Truth Thursday prompt, Red Riter offers a great question:
What was/is your most favorite season?

Don't get me wrong, I do love winter wear but there are more things I love about the summer time... First off,  it Shifts my Mood, puts a smile on my face and puts a spring in my step. Then there is the Weather, Food, Fruits, Flowers, Outdoors, and Travel.... Join me below for some more photographic reminders of good ole summer time... Think chocolate cherry vanilla ice cream!



On another wonderful note, Alysha of SupermomAlysha blog has graciously chosen Positive Kismet as the super blogger of the week for her Friend Finding Fridays blog hop. Yippee and Thank You! Alysha randomly selects a blogger from the previous week's blog hopper list and features them on her blog hop.
By now, you should know that blog hops are the non-secret, number one way to build connections, comments and a following on the blogger platform. Join the fun, add your blog to her page, follow as many other bloggers as you wish; almost all return the favor... Don't forget to leave a comment as Google doesn't notify any of us when a new follower joins our blog. :-)

Phenomenal Quotes to Take into the New Year

♥♥♥“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Attributed to Nelson Mandela's Inaugural Speech and via Marianne Williamson

Quotes are like bright sunflowers, adding color and wit to our day

What's your favorite quote, and why?
I regularly add quotes from all over the planet to both of my blogs, here and here, and I enjoy finding new ones to add and learn from. I do love quotes because they express, succinctly, much wisdom about the human condition. When I recently re-read the blog prompt above from Wordpress' Plinky, I thought it would be impossible to find one quote that tops them all; even one quote that embodies all the powerful wisdom that I find in quotes.

I started sifting through my blogs and added several below. I added the quote above because it has always resonated powerfully with me and encapsulates every thought, word of wisdom, and encouraging advice we can share with each other... What do you think of that long quote above? There are more...

I must confess that I do have favorite authors/poets/mystics that I reference more often than others. People like Kahlil Gibran, Rumi, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Martin Luther King Jr, Eleanor Roosevelt, and a handful of others. But I am hard-pressed to say, this one or that one tops them all. Below, I have added several that I love. Add yours to the list and start the year with some wise words... The New Year awaits.

Be Bold As Love...

“All good fortune is a gift of the gods, and you don't win the favor of the ancient gods by being good, but by being bold.” Anita Brookner

Elephant driver bathing with his owner

This week, we have single words as prompts for our Writer’s Workshop exercise. I love the idea of running wild with a single word and finding an organic way to make meaning of that word. What does the word mean to you? What images come to mind? What ideas are prompted when you think of this word?

The word I chose from the list is BOLD. I like the idea of "bold" especially as we wrap up a rather strenuous year. I want 2011 to be my year of embracing the bolder me; going for the gold, maximizing my potential, and enjoying the abundance that comes from acting with faith and boldness. What are you planning to do in 2011? What word would you like to take with you into the New Year?



This Week’s Prompts:
This week I want you to write a post inspired entirely by one of these words:
1.) Simple.
2.) Angst.
3.) Excruciating.
4.) Enchanted.
5.) Bold.

As I mulled over the word, I was reminded that we act boldly when we are in love or when we are defending loved ones. Right? How many times have you spoken up, acted fiercely when your loved ones were being challenged? We go to bat for them because love is bold and often fearless. We take great chances for love when we connect with another soul and it takes patience and boldness to keep up with our children during their growing years.

So why, for some of us, doesn’t this boldness translate into other areas of our lives? We need to be bold as love in other areas of life especially when it comes to personal growth. No? How are you planning to go bold in 2011? I offer more thoughts and music on the subject below…

Each Day is a Gift...

"Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. And today? Today is a gift. That's why we call it the present." ~Babatunde Olatunji

Kids at play by K. Weller

Gift: a notable capacity, talent, or endowment; something voluntarily transferred by one person to another without compensation; the act, right, or power of giving. Merriam Webster Dictionary

Every day of the week, except weekends, I get Joel Osteen’s “Today’s Word with Joel & Victoria.” Each message helps me start my day with a hopeful spirit and work at focusing on the good; not always an easy task in these challenging days. Today, I got a message bearing the title of my post and it definitely got me thinking… Each day we have life is a gift. How are we spending our day? What are we focused on? Are we treating the day like the gift it is? Are we putting off today what we hope to do tomorrow? 

We go through our daily routines focused on the chores ahead, mindlessly moving from one event to another with not much thought on the here and now. Our eyes and minds fixed on the future; the what-ifs of our wishes, desires and plans. We pay short shrift to the present, as we barrel ahead with visions about what the future offers. We ignore the fact that what we do today affects what happens tomorrow… I am guilty of this too.  

Sometimes, in our future focus, we ignore the needs of loved ones, forget friends birthdays,  and spend time worrying about future events that haven't happened. We push an argument or quarrel that needs to be addressed and forgiven under the table, in hopes that it will go away, or perhaps, that it will return to be addressed another day.  We sit with the pain of ancient hurts and postpone, again and again, an opportunity to seize the moment and heal the wounds. Tempus Fugit. When someone in your life has hurt you deeply, remember the pain and don’t inflict such pain on others. I share this because I remember the death of a childhood friend.
 More below…

Autumn Photos: Falling in Love with Fall Again…

"Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves."  John Muir

Halsey Pond in the Fall

Autumn Brook by Olegas Kurasovas

Autumn is such a wonderful time of the year.  Isn't it? It welcomes what I like to call the 2nd half of the four seasons that most of us enjoy around the world. I never tire of watching the foliage change colors in the fall and, on any given day, you can look around you and see nature perfectly coordinating and combining shades of gold, red, browns, orange, yellow and variations on those shades and, of course, the evergreens.

A few other things that make fall so precious is the harvest, the abundance of fall foods, and the many holidays that fall during this time of year; Halloween, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah. There is a beautiful park in my village, Halsey Park, and it has such wonderful life forms and changing leaf colors that you can't help but want to visit it again and again for a walk and to reflect on the beauty of nature.  As Yoko Ono said in a wonderful quote "...Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence..." 



For this week's prompt, MamaKat has given us a selection of excellent questions to answer and while I am tempted to ramble on about each one, I will stick with autumn as it's the perfect theme for this time of the year... that is before the snow blows in and covers everything with its soft, blanket of white.

The Prompts:

1.) Have you ever had a fight with a long time best friend and never made up? Do you think about her from time to time and think about contacting her? What would you say? What if it didn't work out? What if it did?
2.) The perfect fall photo...share a picture that defines fall for you in your neck of the woods.
3.) CONTROVERSY! Are the new security measures performed by the TSA really that bad? Take a stance!
4.) What inspires you to write?
5.) "If you could relive any moment in your life, what moment would you choose?  Write about it."

Naturally, I chose #2 and must admit that I couldn't help but add a few more than the requisite one picture. As I sifted through both my personal collection and the gorgeous photographs I gleaned from National Geographic, I had to share a few more with you... See the rest of my photos below and do share what you love visually about fall.