#A2ZChallenge Reflections & Giveaway Winners Announced: Jingle Jangle Jungle

The A to Z Blogging Challenge has come to an end.  This was the fifth year that I participated in the challenge.


What set this challenge apart from the others for me was that this was the first time that I had two blogs entered.

This year, for this blog, I chose to play a sort of game. Each day I chose a word that represented the letter of the day and I presented 3 songs.  The ‘game’ part came in where I asked you, the reader, to comment with your songs that used the same word.

Each year that I’ve participated, it seems that something has gone awry. This year was no different.  I was really excited in that I had all of my posts written and scheduled prior to the start of the month - I think this was my only saving grace this year.

We got off to a good start, I was able to respond in a timely manner to comments and visit other blogs that had joined in the challenge.

But then..Week two arrived, and I feeling a bit under the weather and it really slowed me down considerably.  To top it off, the batteries in my mouse died and my battery recharger stopped working (it was only 15 years old!) Thank goodness, I had seen that one coming, and coincidentally had ordered a new one. It arrived the day the old one died.

On Week Three, my computer started to ‘not cooperate’.  Two days in a row, my monitor decided to take it’s time to turn on. To remedy this, I changed the settings in my system to not let the system go to sleep, and set my screensaver to a darker screen.  Each day, I would ‘restart’ the system (not turn off/on). By the end of the week, I was still feeling as tired as my computer was sounding. (One of the external fans had died, and another was making a lot of noise). This seemed to work fine until Friday evening of the 26th, when I shut down the system without even thinking about the consequences.   When I turned on the system Saturday morning, I could not get the monitor to respond at all.

After spending the enter weekend trying to do everything that I needed to do by phone, I was able to have a repair service make an emergency house call on Monday afternoon.  I ended up having to replace my monitor, 2 external fans, and the power source. It was the power source that was making all the racket.  I’m so glad that I had all of my posts scheduled so they automatically went out!

Despite all of this, I will most likely participate again next year.

This year, I also had a giveaway that you could take advantage of.  I would like to extend my Congratulations to Audrey S, who won the Gift Card and to Brent S who won the Bigfoot Lives T-shirt.  I am still waiting to hear back from the third winner - Cindi K to claim the book prize. Thank you everyone for joining in the fun! - Cindi, please respond to the email I sent you asap so I can hook you up with your prize.





A few of you have requested, so here is the list of the posts for this blog:

#AtoZChallenge : Angel
#AtoZChallenge : Blue
#AtoZChallenge : Cry
#AtoZChallenge : Dog
#AtoZChallenge : Eyes
#AtoZChallenge : Fall
#AtoZChallenge : Girl
#AtoZChallenge : Heart
#AtoZChallenge : Inside
#AtoZChallenge : Just
#AtoZChallenge : Kiss
#AtoZChallenge : Love
#AtoZChallenge : Magic
#AtoZChallenge : Night
#AtoZChallenge : Only
#AtoZChallenge : Please
#AtoZChallenge : Queen
#AtoZChallenge : Ride
#AtoZChallenge : Stand
#AtoZChallenge : Time
#AtoZChallenge : Under
#AtoZChallenge : Valley
#AtoZChallenge : Walk
#AtoZChallenge : The Dreaded X
#AtoZChallenge : Young
#AtoZChallenge : Zoo

Thanks for the fun!  I look forward to doing this again next year - without all the health and computer issues.    Click HERE to see the recap for Literary Gold.
 
Did you participate this year?  Did you enjoy this year's theme? What should I do for a theme next year? I’m open to ideas…