Happy Monday everyone!
First of all, as always - a few house keeping items:
If you're NEW here (and there've been a lot of new additions to the party!) I'm working on creating some tutorials to help you out. You can click on the links above or: See "Getting Started" and "Tutorials"
To see all the past weekly challenges - click the tabs above
Please grab the button for the Weekly Challenge (on the right sidebar) to display on your blogs! share the fun!
The limit of submissions to the slideshow is TWO, but please feel free to post as many as you like to your blogs. I will take the first two presented to each challenge.
I know that some of you have told me that the paypal button does not work, and some of you have had no trouble, i'm not sure why it's inconsistent, i've redone the code a few times... If all else fails you can donate to my paypal address which is madam_diva (a t) yahoo (d o t) com
Hello everyone, and Happy Monday!
Welcome to the first Weekly Challenge of 2014! i hope everyone had a great holiday season.
We had a great Christmas, the boys were totally into the magic this year, which made it totally awesome for me and B-rad. 
For the first time since we got married we spend the entire Christmas Day at home together. It was so nice not to have to rush off to a gathering or a supper. 
We opened our gifts, and i made some pancakes. Then we played with all the new toys, and B-rad set up the new Wii, and then we had bunwiches for lunch - watched a movie together, had a very festive meal of Christmas Spaghetti for dinner, and then put the boys to bed. 
On Boxing day (Dec 26) my mom and dad and brothers came over for the day and we had Enchiladas
My brother engaged Chewie and my niece LeeLoo in an EPIC light saber battle
Meanwhile B-rad and Ozzie sang a few songs together.
On the saturday following christmas we went to B-rad's parents acreage about 45 out of town, and had a big family sleepover. I ate way too much food - lasagne and cheese dips and chips and bacon-wrapped water chestnuts and so much chocolate.... that's all part of Christmas right?
It was pretty laid back
On New Year's Eve we kissed the kids good night and said: "See you next year" which they thought was funny, and B-rad and i drank some wine and ate popcorn and watched The Life of Pi. B-rad set a time on his phone so we'd know when it was midnight so we could kiss. aw. Romance.
and so, here we are.
Before we get into the challenge - first a few things;
1 - the slideshows!! they are happening. I've set up the slideshows to post each day at 1:11pm until we are all caught up, so come back every day to see the latest one. A huge thank you to Suzanne Wilka who collected and uploaded all the images for these slideshows. You should know that organizing the slideshow is a huge amount of work, which is why i wasn't keeping up. So, thank you Suzanne!!!
2 - here are the links to those slideshows in case you missed them:
Weekly Challenge #136 Colour Colour Everywhere
Weekly Challenge #137 Duotangle: Knights Bridge over Tipple
Weekly Challenge #138 Fun With Borders
Weekly Challenge #139 UMT 8s Parte Dos
3 - i have set up a newsletter, sorta. You can subscribe to it HERE or in the Subscribe tab above! Now, the idea for this newsletter is NOT to send one each Monday before the challenges. That is too much work. But i thought it might try to write a newsletter once a month-ish... Frankly, people kept asking me if i had a newsletter, so i thought i'd give it a try.
4 - a note about entering your images for the slideshows. Those of you without blogs or image sharing sites like flickr or picassa, please continue to email your images to weeklychallenge at mail dot com (not gmail, just mail). Everyone else - Please PLEASE PLEASE submit your SITE SPECIFIC URL in the linkey machine. I understand if sometimes you forget, that's fine.
I am running into the problem where people put their webpage into the linkey machine because, let's face it, they will receive a lot of traffic to their blogs if they do. More often than not those blogs have absolutely NOTHING to do with Zentangle, art, or these challenges. That is NOT what this platform is for, so please, kindly, take your search for traffic somewhere else.
Also, i've given Suzanne the go-ahead to skip any links that don't direct her to the submission within 30 seconds or so of looking. Before i stopped compiling the challenges i was pretty ruthless and if the link did not take me directly to where i wanted to go, i skipped it and went to the next on the list. ***Let me be clear that this is ONLY because of the amount of time it takes to compile the list, not because we don't love you... because we totally do.***
Okay, so i think we've covered the NEW housekeeping things.
Weekly Challenge #149: "Twenty-Fourteen"
Here at the Diva Weekly Challenge - typically the first Monday of the month is reserved for a UMT or a Use My Tangle post where we try out a tangle created by you. However, i decided that the beginning of a new year only happens once. a year. :)
So, this week the challenge is to use the theme New Year, or 2014
Those of you who have already subscribed to the Newsletter or are a fan of my facebook page have already seen my submission for this week's challenge.
I just wanted to tell you that i am HEAD over HEELS in love with the Uniball Signo Gold Pen...i'm using it everywhere - it's so luscious. This picture doesn't even do it justice. (i'm not being paid to tell you this, by the way, i really really do LOVE them)
If you have a blog, add the site-specific URL where your tile is posted to the linkey machine below! Don't forget to link back here so that others can join in the fun! (if you don't know how to find this, you can see my half assed tutorial here) Also, please feel free to come back often and visit the links of those people on the linkey machine - don't forget to leave a comment or feedback, everyone loves feedback. ;)
If you don't have a blog but still want to participate, you can email your tile to me and i will put it in the slideshow. (send submissions to: weeklychallenge at mail.com) [not gmail, just mail]. I just ask that you put in the subject line: Challenge # ________
The deadline for each weekly challenge is Saturday night so that i can round everyone up by Sunday. What this means is that i will stop adding tiles to the slideshow on Sunday. You're still more than welcome to do the challenges and add your name to the linkey machine. - although to be honest the deadline is pretty forgiving.
I will be more diligent with the linkey machine - by editing out the ones that don't work, the doubles, the links that lead to nowhere, the links that go just to blog home pages (this is why we need those site specific urls), and the spam. And there is some spam. PLEASE do not put your *home* page in the linkey machine... please? for me??