We’re only one month in and 2026 has shaping up to be a doozy. Thank goodness for the positive experience of participating in the Photo Blogging Challenge. This time around, host PJ set the theme “Make Your Month Colourful” and I set out to do just that.
Given it’s mid-winter here in the Canadian Rockies, the landscape is mostly (dirty) white. Yes, there are coniferous trees and mountainsides and a few other things with muted colour, but Nature is generally pretty subdued this time of year.
So it seems fitting that the theme includes the word “make” rather than “find” or “observe” or some other more passive verb. I figure it’s PJ’s way of nudging us to seek or create moments of brightness, colour and joy. I took up the challenge. Here are the results:
1. One Word
I have not been choosing a one word touchstone each new year for as long as Lisa over at Peripheral Perceptions (I started in 2018). And I don’t know whether choosing a yearly word is a new or an established practice for my sister and her family. But when she posted about it in our family chat, a total of nine participated.
There’s quite an assortment of words, reflecting the mix of ages and interests in the group. I turned them into a colourful acrostic. And I hope I remember to haul this out in December and ask everyone to reflect on how it went, having a touchstone word for the year.
2. Eat the Rainbow
“Eat the rainbow” means chowing down on a colourful variety of vegetables, fruits and other plant-based foods. Why? It’s a great way to consumes diverse nutrients, antioxidants and phyto nutrients. And the benefits include improved health, reduced inflammation, stronger immune system, lower risk of chronic diseases, etc. My daily lunchtime salad is a long-standing habit that helps me “eat the rainbow” on a regular basis.
3. $%€@#&?‼∞≡∑¢!
I’ve been channeling a colourful language version of Mr Grinch this winter, his famous “stink, stank, stunk” line in particular. There have been three bad smells in Canmore this winter: sewer gas, slash pile smoke and stinkdamp. The sewer stench has been a long-term problem, hopefully resolved in 2026. The smoke from burning slash piles (photo) is an asthma-inducing side effect of creating community fireguards.
The stinkdamp hit closer to home. Actually it came into our home. Back in November, we started getting a weird smell in our basement. I wrote about it in my PBC post. We’ve since concluded the then mystery smell is likely stinkdamp – underground gases coming up through the slab. And I’ve smelled it while walking around the neighbourhood, too. There are a lot of old coal mines here, and a developer started blasting back in May. The blasting program ran for 6 or 7 months, so maybe that opened up a few new ways for the underground gases to flow.
After taking the room where the stinkdamp smell kept building up back to the studs and joists, we’ve undertaken a few steps to remediate the situation. And no, we didn’t find any mold! Rebuilding of the room is just about done and we have a less disruptive Plan B in case the smell comes back. I $%€@ing hope not!!
4. Late Sunrise / Early Sunset
I know I said Nature is mostly black, white and shades of grey this time of year. But if you MAKE yourself get up before 8 o’clock, you have plenty of time to get out and enjoy any sunrise colour. This was a recent Saturday morning in Calgary, walking to a nearby shopping centre to pick up a few groceries.
Also, if you make a point of looking outside around 5 pm (just around the time I’m prepping supper), you may see a colourful sunset, too.
5. Adventure Travel
We have some adventure travel planned for the first quarter of the year – a trip to Patagonia and the Atacama desert. Heading to the opposite hemisphere is one way to add colour to a drab winter. But since we’re not there yet, here’s a shot of the colourful Chilean paper currency. The 1,000 peso note depicts Torres delete Paine National Park, one of the spots we’ll be hiking. All five denominations depict national parks, national reserves or natural monuments. We recently watched a documentary called Wild Life, that tells the story of how many of Chile’s national parks came into being. It’s well worth watching and runs about 90 minutes. We streamed it on Disney+.
There you have it…a handful of ways I made January 2026 colourful. To see how my fellow Photo Blogging Challenge participants embraced the challenge, head over to host PJ’s blog and look for the link-up at the bottom of the post.
PS – I am happy to have this post completed and published, as my WordPress plan renews shortly. Since my last renewal, the terms of service have changed such that I’m now way over the storage limit that comes with the Business Plan, so I’ll be madly researching possible solutions and implementing the best one I can find that doesn’t involve spending another C$70/month for incremental storage with WordPress.
Based on the little bit of research I’ve done so far, it’s clear I should have been optimizing my images for the platform since day 1. But that advice is not $%€@ing helpful now that I’ve got more than 70,000 images uploaded and 900 posts published!!! I’ve got my fingers crossed that what ever solution I opt for doesn’t wreck everything!