Ch. #135--Anything Goes POSITIVE with the Opt. Twist of: Embracing the Unexpected…Send a Surprise (or a Card with a Surprise)…Midway

 

Hey folks! Welcome back to the Path of Positivity Challenge Blog! It is the third Monday of the month and that means that it is time to present the midway for Challenge #135. It is my fond hope that each of you and your own families continue to stay happy, safe, and well, wherever it is you live in this big wide world of ours. 

As we are a unique kind of challenge blog, it is important for you to understand how things work. Please be sure to check out the START POST FOUND HERE for the specific details related to this month's challenge, and you can find out all the general details you need to know in order to participate, by clicking on the 'Challenge Details' tab (located at the top of the blog). For your convenience, a summary of the most important rules can now be found in the right sidebar under the heading 'General Rules'.
 
Right now, it is time to continue with our midway. Here is a refresher of the details for our current twist:

  

Challenge #135

Anything Goes POSITIVE with the Opt. Twist of 

Embracing The Unexpected:

Send a Surprise

 (or a Card with a Surprise)

 

This year's goal is to Embrace the Unexpected in our lives (click here if you'd like to read more in depth about our overall theme for 2025). No matter how much planning we do throughout our years on this earth, we're going to come across circumstances that we can't plan for. These unexpected things may be small or they may be huge and life altering. The only thing that we can control is how we react to these events. So this year, instead of BRACING for the unexpected, we are going to flip that and get in the habit of EMBRACING the unexpected. This will help us to train ourselves to look at these types of events in a different light.

To help inspire you on this journey, each month we will be doing things such as creating fun unexpected projects, working with items we might not typically work with, taking approaches that are different from what we normally do, offering up the unexpected to someone in our life, etc. So, let's get to the details for this month's challenge.   

How are you with surprises?! For myself, it depends on the surprise. I'm typically uncomfortable with them--cue our 'surprise' wedding shower where I thought I was meeting up with my maid of honour and her boyfriend who also happened to be our MC, to go out to a play, only to find myself entering a room full of family and friends ready to celebrate our upcoming nuptials. I so would have dressed and done my hair differently had I known…sigh… Or, then there was the time that a first cousin that I am not really fond of (who lives hundreds of kilometres from us, so it was really quite unexpected), just showed up on our doorstop for a visit! Then he proceeded to tell me that he resented me most of my life because of how close I was to our grandparents. Huh, say what now?! Though there are surprises that I do like. For ex., when hubby comes home from shopping every once in a while and there is a lovely chunk of chocolate at the bottom of the bag that I can actually eat (allergies prevent me from eating a LOT of sweet treats; which, come to think of it, is probably a good thing in the long run for both my waistline and my sugar levels). I also had a friend who would send me these unexpected packages filled with tons of crafting goodies every few years. It was always so much fun going through the parcel and seeing the wide selection of little items she sent me. I'm sure that you yourself have experienced both good and not so good surprises throughout your life as well.

So, for your optional project this month, we want you to brighten someone's day by creating something that you can send as a good surprise to someone special (or give in person) or send a card that has a surprise in it. With Christmas and other December holidays coming up, it is the perfect time of year to surprise someone.

While there are many different things you could do, here are some examples to get you thinking:

• Find or bake a treat that you can drop into a neighbour's mailbox.
• If you happen to have children still in school, create little gift bags for their teachers.
• Take a holiday picture of your family and send it to someone that you haven't seen in a while.  
• If you live in the States, create a Thanksgiving card for a college student or someone that you know might be struggling a bit and add a gift card.
• Buy some socks and underwear and drop them off for unhoused people in your community.

Remember, the twist is completely optional and you don't need to follow it in order to win. However, in order to be considered eligible for this month's goodies, remember that general types of projects/posts will not qualify for the honours and prize UNLESS they are also positive, inspirational, motivational or encouraging in some nature. Additionally, even if a project may qualify as positive, if your post promotes negativity, hatred or anything of an abhorrent nature, your project will be disqualified. Honours and Prize include:

• $6 worth of images from Scribbles Designs, for a person chosen in a random draw based on all qualifying entrants.
• A badge for the following honours: Top Pick, Most Inspirational, Random Winner, DT Delight.

To help inspire you further down the path of Embracing the Unexpected: Send a Surprise (or a Card with a Surprise), check out the wonderful projects my Design Team had the opportunity to create. Clicking on each team member's name will take you to their blog where you can check out the details for their inspirational creations. 

 

 

 

 

 Thanks again to my astounding design team! As always, each of them have their own unique avenues of creation which I thoroughly admire. Each of these designs has demonstrated the theme of Embracing the Unexpected: Send a Surprise (or a Card with a Surprise) splendidly, and I hope we have motivated you throughout this challenge to come up with your own work of handicraft. Be sure to go and visit these accomplished ladies so you can see just how their projects tie in to the twist.

 

Why not join us, if you haven't entered already? Create a project and/or post that is positive, inspirational, motivational or encouraging in some nature and join our link up. How about stretching yourself by also opting to follow the twist?! While it isn't mandatory, we'd also love to find out how this month's twist affects your own life. How do you typically deal with the unexpected in your life? Do you view it with trepidation or take it on as a challenge? This month it is time to send someone a lovely surprise. It doesn't have to be expensive or fancy. It doesn't have to cost any money at all. Just something from the heart to brighten someone's day. Be sure to check above for some specific ideas if you aren't sure how to get started. If you want to share your process on how you decided your project, you can write a sentence or two in the body of your post, write a sentence at the bottom of your post next to the link up for this challenge, or simply leave a comment on this post if you'd like. 

 
Also, I know that the participants would love for you to go and pay them a visit. Remember we're creating a Path of Positivity to follow one project at a time and we'd love to see you somewhere on that route even if it is just by leaving a comment on an entry from someone who has touched you somehow with their project and/or post! You can find our list of participants and enter our latest challenge yourself by clicking HERE and scrolling down to the bottom of the post.

 

GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY…

Please show your support to our wonderful sponsor, Scribbles Designs, by going over and checking out their work and saying hi if you have the chance. You may also just find an image or two to add your your collection!

Thank you so much to this awesome Canadian company for their
continued support of this challenge blog!

Don't Forget...

Winners for challenge #133 will be posted as soon as I can manage to finally get the post done. I will try to work on it later tonight after supper. If you want to check out our Top Picks for October, you can find the post HERE.

 

If you ever have any questions be sure to leave me a comment.

 

Click HERE to head to the current challenge post & link up!

 

 

We look forward to seeing you participate!