Sunday, July 17, 2011

Food for thought…

The other day I was listening to the radio in the car, and I heard something that startled me so much I actually had to pull over to get my head around it. The interviewee (didn’t catch who he was or where he hailed from, sorry) was saying that if you have:

a)      a car
b)      money in the bank
c)      a little extra in your wallet/purse

you’re in the top eight percent of the world’s wealthy.

Eight percent! Now I’m aware that my life is pretty comfortable from a global perspective and I’ve heard statistics on poverty before, but something about that one brought me up short. Maybe because those are things that I’d class as essentials, rather than extras. And I never would have guessed that I’m better off than 92% of the rest of the world. I don’t know about you, but while I’m fairly definite with my kids about the difference between “needs” vs “wants”, I’m not always so good at distinguishing it for myself! (Particularly when the end-of-financial-year-sales kick in…)

Frankly, it inspired a “Pollyanna / count your blessings” moment. Which brings us to Layout Seventeen:



Happily, I re-discovered my album-for-me a week or two ago. (Unpacking those last few boxes takes a while, huh?) This is where all my contemplative / experimental / don’t fit anywhere else layouts go. I’m hesitant to call it an art journal because so far it’s really just scrapping, but it pretty much fulfils that role. Good fun – and satisfying.

On a final note, I need some advice. I finally worked out how to do a blog background / header (hurrah for on-line tutorials!), but do you think I could find how to get rid of the old background? I could not. So if any of you who are more technically-minded than me – which appears to be anyone over the age of oh, say, four – could help me out, it would be very much appreciated!

Happy scrapping!

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Layout Sixteen

Well, it has been a while since I last visited Blogland! I think this year’s goal of one-layout-a-week has well and truly fallen by the wayside, although not as badly as any of the fitness aspirations (which I’m starting to suspect I only ever include to make all my other goals look slightly more achieved than they actually are). Never mind; creativity always has peaks and troughs.

Managed to get a bit of playtime in yesterday though, so here’s Layout Sixteen:



Several months ago (back when fitness was still on the agenda), I was out for an early morning walk on what promised to be a pretty dreary day weather-wise, and the sunrise was a really unusual and striking deep yellow and steel grey. I’ve been waiting for a chance to play with that colour combination ever since; I’d never think of putting those two together on my own. It was fun, too – might set myself a few more challenges of that kind.

Until next time, then :)