Once Upon A Sketch - March 2014

Once Upon A Sketch has posed an interesting inspiration this month also; You only live once but if you do it right, once is enough.

I am acknowledged as a bit of a perfectionist and I will also acknowledge I have lived most of my life trying to do the right thing by everyone; I was recently told I have high expectations of myself and do not handle criticism well. I am not sure that is a bad thing!

Don't get me wrong; I am no saint! I do struggle with many aspects of living my life well, the least of these an addiction to chocolate and Coca-Cola and very little patience with a difficult mother. I am also not great when it comes to community service and tend to leave that side of things to my husband so there is definitely room for improvement.

I would not suggest for even a moment that I am a great wife and mum either but I do everything I can to support my husband and children; we are soon to celebrate 36 years of marriage and our four beautiful boys are successful young men with wives and families of their own so I must have done something right. This photo is of my wonderful husband with our youngest grandson; I am so thankful for this life! The journaling is on the back.
Thank you for looking and any comments you may leave, best wishes

Let's Get Shabby #52

Let's Get Shabby is back and have given us a beautiful inspiration; Sabrina he movie is an all-time favourite and I have both the original and the new versions but Audrey Hepburn will always be the quintessential Sabrina.

My immediate response was heritage using as little colour as possible although I have picked up the green in the striped, punched piece and the pink ribbons in the flower centres. I also needed this to be flat for a heritage album and used only scraps from my stash.

Sabrina is about a young girl, daughter of a chauffeur who aspires to a better life. The photo below was taken when I, the one at the back with long hair was about 12 years old. We grew up in a 'broken' home in very low socio-economic area and to say money was tight would be a understatement. Mum went back to her nursing career a few years before this was taken but was never a good money manager or house keeper so our living conditions did not improve much. The one thing she did try to teach us was that we didn't need to be a product of our environment and encouraged us to strive for better; to Dare to Dream of a better life for ourselves. We might not have everything but we have enough.
Thank you for looking and any comments you may leave, best wishes.