beach scene lifeguard tower and truck
Terri Webster Schrandt

Sunday Stills Monthly Color Challenge: All Colors of Red, White and Blue

Welcome back to the Sunday Stills Monthly Color Challenge! Having just celebrated America’s 249th birthday, I thought using the colors of red, white, and blue would be a fun photo challenge this week.

red white blue bouquet

For those participating in the challenge, feel free to use shades of red, white, and blue combined or separately.

The Red, White, and Blues of Water Safety

The month of July also inspired me to write more about water safety, since summer activities around the water hit their peak in the northern hemisphere.

Back at the Sacramento State Aquatic Center, students gear up sporting red and blue life jackets.

putting on life vests

A watchful lifeguard ensures the safety of students on the obstacle course.

college students wearing life vests

When I was the aquatic director in Sacramento, we campaigned to keep our public swimming pools open with private and corporate donations. Here, one of my Pool Managers graciously took her turn modeling good lifeguard behavior in front of City Hall.

Lifeguard in blue and red
Save Public Pools campaign

Speaking of Safety…

There are restrictions on the use of professional-grade fireworks in nearby Spokane County. However, here in Stevens County (considered a rural county with 46,000 residents), people buy the illegal ones. Then, they set them off all over the various neighborhoods. We “enjoyed” the light show several years in a row.

Fireworks
Over Our House!

Summer in the City

Our small towns also get into the swing of the season with street flags and signage on Main Street. The town of Chewelah is a 30-minute drive north of where we live.

American flags
Flags Downtown Chewelah
Chewalah Flag
Chewelah Welcome

“Ev’ry heart beats true ‘neath the Red, White and Blue.” — George M. Cohan

In larger cities like San Diego, California, the colors of red, white, and blue are found everywhere, all year round.

Red Topped boats
Colorful boats in San Diego Harbor

My daughter never forgets her sweet dog, Gideon, who passed away in June 2022.

Patriotic Gideon

“Love has no age, no limit, and no death.” – John Galsworthy

A Hint of Feathers

My nesting Western Flycatchers, AKA Say’s Phoebes, FINALLY fledged on Friday. Wow, say that fast three times, sorry. 😉 I’m saving most of the photos for next week, but I’m satisfying my red, white, and blue theme with these:

Bird pics taken with Lumix FZ300 camera.

Flycatcher near table
Fledgling likes red and white

“Freedom is that spark where every fledgling gets to grow its wings to flap on cheeping.” ~ Unknown

Fledgling Flycatcher
Fledgling Phoebe

Sharing for Becky’s Simply Red and Johnbo’s Cellpic Sunday.

red white blue swatch

Sunday Stills Photo Challenge Reminders

The Sunday Stills weekly-themed photo challenge is easy to join. You have all week to share and link your post. Please use your own original images, whether new or from your archives.

  • Please create a new post for the theme or link a recent one.
  • Entries for this theme can be posted all week.
  • Tag your post “Sunday Stills.”
  • Don’t forget to create a pingback to this post so that other participants can read your post.
  • I also recommend adding your post’s URL to the comments.

If you are participating in the photo challenge, I’m excited to see how you will interpret the various shades of red, white, and blue this week! Creativity is encouraged, so please share your own photographs (old or new), poems, original short stories, and music inspired by the theme. Join me next week as we explore the theme FEATHERS.

I’ll leave you with this winter image to help virtually cool those who are dealing with summer heat!

Winter fun with dog and 4WD
Bitmoji Birding

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92 comments

  7. […] The French flag flying in front of the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) in Reims, France.Poster at the Musée de la Biere (Museum of Beer) showing a triumphant woman enveloped in the red, white and blue flag of France and hoisting a French beer. A mural on the corner of a building showing a masked woman wrapped in the red, white and blue flag of France (Lille).Fridge magnets for sale in a Parisian market, in the red, white and blue colours of the French flag. At the flea market in Paris I found these notebooks with Fabrication Français (made in France) on a tiny French flag. More of Terri’s Sunday Stills in Red, White and Blue. […]

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  12. LOL for the cooling red,white and blue closing Terri! When we lived in a small town July 4 was THE event of the year. Parade, fireworks, bbq’s you name it we had it. Here on Kiawah it is also a major event but somehow because we have so many out-of-towners for the event it loses something for me (although our visitors absolutely love it!) I watch the fireworks from my bedroom window LOL. Terrific, fun post.

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  13. Such lovely photos of the summer red, white and blue!
    From Gideon to the little birds, I loved them all!
    Stay cool my friend!
    We are getting a brand new AC/Furnace today! Woo Hoo!

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  15. Beautiful displays of red, white, and blue. I love the photo of the San Diego Harbor, and the birds against the red and white checker cloth. Such a sweet picture of Angel Gideon. 💖

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  19. Hi Terri, it must be sad that the Western Flycatchers have fled the nest, but I’m sure they will be back next year.

    I hope you enjoyed the July 4th celebrations. The photo of the fireworks over your house is spectacular.

    Seeing the photo of the colourful boats in San Diego harbour and all that refreshing, cool, blue water helped me cool down. We’ve had a 3-day heatwave. The highest temperature was only 86°F, but anything over 75°F for three days is classed as a heatwave in Wales. The heatwave finally broke today – hooray.

    Enjoy the rest of your week.

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    • Thank you, Hugh! Yes, it is a bit sad to see the empty nest, but thrilling to see the babies flying strong in the trees. They were around here since April, longer than usual because of the second clutch. Soon they’ll migrate south.
      As pretty as the fireworks are, we always breathe a sigh of relief when they’re over! Glad the SD views can cool you down. We hit 100F yesterday. A cool down to mid 80s is coming, which is nice here due to low humidity. It helps that our overnight temps stay in 50sF. Enjoy your cooler days!

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  25. Thank you for that last snow-filled image Terri. It did cool me down a little … we’re still in the 80s after another sultry day. The boats in the harbor are very colorful. The Phoebe fledglings are so cute, especially that last one which you captured up so close. How lucky for you that your tablecloth was in the background and could give you one more image with red and white for this Red-White-and-Blue Challege.

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    • I’m glad the faux snow helped, Linda. 100 right now…ugh. I had the plastic tablecloth up for the 4th and the two fledglings posed so nicely with it on Friday. The red can be used all month, of course, for Becky’s red challenge.

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      • Faux snow – really! It looked realistic to me Terri. I must have forgotten how snow looked. That’s awfully hot … we are 90 tomorrow and will see severe weather again on Wednesday. I am so done with Summer’s heat and stormy weather. We have wildfire haze out there as well the last few days through Wednesday morning. The gingham tablecloth made it two fun shots with the fledglings. I know I have seen a lot of red posts by Brian the last week or so.

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      • Oh that was real snow…I used “faux” in the virtual sense 😉 I
        have more red posts to share.
        Hope your weather makes up its mind. We’ll be in red flag warnings through September the way things are looking. Wildfires everywhere, small, but needing to be put out before the winds whip them into bigger ones. 😞

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      • I thought it looked like legitimate snow. 🙂 I had saved the majority of my red barn posts from last year, intending to use them for a red theme at Christmas or Valentine’s Day. I went there on 4th of July as I saw the painting group (which I follow on FB) had been there the week before and one woman painted the barn and showed the bunting on the fence in the painting. I also went because they posted “come see and smell the lavender before it’s gone!” The weather is not to my liking, but I can’t complain when I see what is going on everywhere across the U.S. July has been bad for natural disasters, that’s for sure. We have not had high winds for a while, something that plagued us all Spring and early Summer. I think I’d like the winds that I whined about back and maybe trade them for less heat, humidity and storms.

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    • Thank you so much, Susanne! It took 3 years for my daughter to get another dog, but she will always remember Gideon. He was the blueprint for me and my dot’s friend to get his brothers from the next litter. Of course, my Aero died of cancer a few months after Gideon, but Woody just turned 15 this month!

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  28. Cute avatar of you scoping out birds from the bushes!!

    Isn’t it heartwarming to see flag-lined streets this time of year? We visited the National Cemetery and I expected to see flags on all the headstones. But Paul reminded me the the only time they do that is Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day. Would have been a good place to capture some red, white and blue.

    Love the pup picture and the blue water at the San Diego pier. Looking pictures of the new bird family.

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  31. A beautiful photo collection, Terri. I like all the photos with water in them. The colours look cheerful in your photos. I am having trouble including a link to my entry in the comment while using a mini ipad. If you could add mine to your list, that would be great.

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  38. My favorite was the guy in the red life jacket surrounded by more life jackets. Then I saw the dog. And then I saw the bird with the red checked background..so now I don’t know which one is really my favorite.

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