RightJack Articles

Planning a wedding can be difficult and having a dream wedding can prove to be more complicated. Every bride has envisioned her wedding her entire life and wishes to have the perfect wedding day. Unfortunately, not everyone can afford a grand wedding in an expensive villa or have the best wedding videography. If your budget is a little tight, there’s no time like now to come up with ways to save for your special day. You are probably still on a stage where you can make a few changes on your decisions like picking the date, location, invitations, flowers and rings. Here are a few money saving tips you can do to make that dream wedding a reality.

• Get yourself organized. This is the best way to save money. Get started by making a wedding checklist to keep track of everything like contact numbers, receipts, estimates and contracts. Organizing all your paper work will help you on big decisions like choosing the right location to fit your budget.

• Trim the guest list. This is the fastest way to save money on your wedding. Although this is a difficult process because you want everybody you know to attend the wedding. Cross out from the list the names of the guests who are possibly just obligated to attend but will not feel bad if they are not asked to come.

• If the wedding ceremony and reception will be held in a hotel ask for a discount if your family and friends are also planning to stay in the same one. Book these rooms ahead of time to get the best rates.

• Avoid planning your wedding date on holidays and consider having it on a Friday or Sunday. Holidays and Saturdays are usually in high demand for weddings and other especial events. Some services like rental rate will provide discounts on lower demand days.

• You should book everything in advance especially the wedding reception and catering services because last minute bookings usually have the highest charge.

• A buffet service rather than the plated sit down service will save you a significant amount in the labor cost.

• On the day itself, follow the schedule for the ceremony. Musicians usually charge an hourly rate and will charge more if asked them to perform beyond the time range in their contract. The same goes for the charge for the limousine service.

• If you are lucky enough to have an artistic friend who is familiar with flower arrangement and invitations then feel free to ask them to lend their talents. This will help you save hundred of dollars.

• Insert an RSVP card with your wedding invitation. Do not forget to put your contact number on the card so the guests will be able to respond right away.

• Consider alternative wedding locations like public parks or conservatories. This will not only save you an extra hundred dollars but your wedding will be unique as well.

• Hire a good videographer. After everything is over, the only thing left will be your memories and your wedding video. The wedding videography will preserve and capture the most treasured moments you have on your special day. Nothing can fix a poor wedding video. Not only did you waste your money on hiring a bad videographer but you also ruined your last glimpse of your big day.

A wedding is a momentous occasion; you should not worry on the huge amount of money you are going to spend on it. Just follow these money saving tips so you won’t break the bank and have a little extra to spend on that honeymoon.

Get prices on wedding videography for your wedding at http://www.memoriesputtomusic.com

If you’ve decided to create photo books, you might do well to think a little about page layout. Most likely your photo books are going to be combinations of words and photographs. You’re probably aware that some online photo gallery and storage sites offer you the opportunity to make photo books. These photo books are professionally printed and look like real books. Why not invest a little effort and make the page layout look like a real book too?

There are a few basic principles graphic designers use to lay out pages that you should be aware of. While there are no hard and fast rules to a creative discipline like graphic design, there are some principles that all graphic designers are thoroughly versed in, and in practice rarely, if ever, violate. These principles are simple, and don’t require the kind of visual talent you’d need to paint the Sistine chapel, by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, they don’t require as much talent as taking good pictures to understand and apply.

The first thing you need to think about when you are arranging things on a page—in this case, you’re arranging pictures and text to make a photo book—is how arrange the elements on the page. This includes thinking about what stuff goes on which page, and where to put it relative to the other elements. That is an important notion—the notion that things are placed relative to other elements. Graphic designers think not only about the elements they put on the page, they think about the arrangement in terms of what those elements, as shapes, do in terms of giving the page structure.

If you really want your pages to look aesthetically pleasing, you should think about the shapes that the elements make out of the empty space that remains on the page. This is called negative space, and your first priority is to make sure the pages of the photo book you are creating look organized. One way to do this is to think of the page in terms of a grid. The grid is never visible in the finished page, but think of your favorite newspaper. Think of how the columns, the photos and the headlines are arranged. Even though you don’t actually see the grid itself, you can look at the pages of this newspaper and know where the grid is, can’t you? A grid is a great way to organize pages, not just for beginners but for professional designers.

Are you planning on using text, either to tell a story or to caption your photographs when you create photo books? There are a couple of things to bear in mind. Firstly, color. As tempting as it is to use pretty colors on a prettily colored page for your text, if you want people to be able to read the text in your photo book, the color of the text and the color of the page need to be as different as possible. That’s why most books are black and white—it makes it easier to read.

MJ Johnston writes for a variety of websites, including Digitalphotoalbumsite.com, site that offers advice on the quickest and easiest way to build a digital photo album, as well as free online photo storage.

Do you take a lot of photos? Do you have a lot of old photos? Have you thought about how to display them? Chances are you have them all stored on a hard drive or a photo archiving website, if they’re digital, or in a shoebox if they’re paper. Chances are all those precious memories are being ignored. If you would like a convenient way to share your memories, and generate interest in them, consider creating photo books.

Create Photo Books For Your Family

Photo books are a lot like photo albums but a lot more permanent and durable. Photo books also have another advantage over albums—they can be reproduced. You probably have lots of photos of your family, documenting your whole life together. Why not put them together in digital photo books you can give to everyone in your family? Organize them by year, and if the photos aren’t already digital you can scan them or have them scanned, and you can easily create custom photo books at many of the websites where you upload and share your photos.

Create Photo Books to Document

Your Family Tree Have you researched your lineage? Do you know your ancestors’ life stories, and have the pictures to prove it? Why not document your family’s history by creating photo books? Just think—you could take everything you know about your family tree, combine it with photos, and create a photo book to give to all your family members, even your extended family. All you’d have to do is scan those old photos, or have them scanned, and assemble a photo book from them!

Create Photo Books to Remember Your Vacation

What was the best vacation you ever had? Whether you took a year off to travel around the world, or a long weekend to go to your favorite fishing hole, you probably have lots of fond memories of that vacation—and lots of photos too. Chances are, those photos are probably parked on a hard drive or in a shoebox somewhere, aren’t they? Wouldn’t they be better in a professionally printed photo book that you could make for everyone who vacationed with you? Memories, after all, are made to be cherished—and shared.

Create Photo Books to Commemorate Your Pets

Do you have fond memories of your favorite pet from childhood? Most people do. Do you have a pet now? If you do, you probably take lots of photos of your pet. If you haven’t taken lots of photos of your pet, you should probably start. What better to cherish memories of your lovable pet’s place in your life than assembling all your photos of that pet into a photo book?

Create Photo Books to Show Your Love to That Special Someone

Finally, remember how you met your significant other? Over the years you’ve spent together you’ve likely taken quite a few photographs. Why not surprise the love of your life by giving them a photo book of your prized memories, customized just for you and the love of your life?

MJ Johnston writes for a variety of websites, including Digitalphotoalbumsite.com, site that offers advice on the quickest and easiest way to build a digital photo album, as well as free online photo storage.

Have you started to create photo books out of all those photos you take yet? It’s easy, if you store your photos in an online gallery. Many online galleries offer you the opportunity to print photo books of your photos. You can have the photo books you create bound like real books, the kind you buy in the bookstore. You can print multiple copies for whomever you see fit to give them to.

Knowing it’s so easy to have photo books printed, what do you put in them? No doubt you have lots of photos, but how do you organize them? Your photo books will be more interesting if you organize them by theme. For example, you’ve probably organized photo albums primarily chronologically. You take some pictures of your dogs, your cats, a beautiful sunset, your mother, your kids, a sporting event, your kids sporting event, a fishing trip with the guys, etc. You dump them all in an album together, more or less in the order you took them.

Organizing the photo books you create chronologically is alright, but think about this: will everyone who will be interested in the photo books you create want to see all the photos? If you think about it, they probably won’t. The kids will want to see pictures of themselves and of the pets, and your spouse will be bored to death by the fishing trip pictures. Your buddies, on the other hand, know what your spouse looks like, could care less about those cute pictures of your fat cat trying to stuff himself into a shoebox, and just want to see the pictures of the fishing trip you went on with them. Why not, then, organize your photo books by theme?

You took the time and energy to buy the camera and figure out how to use it. Why not take a little more time to organize your photos into themes for each specific audience? That way you can create photo books you know your friends and family will enjoy. It just might encourage you to take more pictures too. If your kids love the photo books you create of your beloved pets, wouldn’t that spur you on to take more photos of your pets?

You can even add text to your photo books. This can range from the very simple and obvious, merely describing what’s in the picture, to more complex storytelling. For example, you can come up with witty captions for the fishing trip photos (if ever any vacation inspired witty captions, it’d be a fishing trip, wouldn’t it?) You can, of course, include ordinary information like dates, times, places, and people’s names, but you can also have some fun with it too. In fact, you can add more text than just the description of the photos if you want. For example, if you take pictures every time your son has a little league game, you can include reports on the game and even box scores.

MJ Johnston writes for a variety of websites, including Digitalphotoalbumsite.com, site that offers advice on the quickest and easiest way to build a digital photo album, as well as free online photo storage.

How do you select the right online gambling casinos? This is a serious dilemma as if you choose the wrong casino for the wrong reasons it could result in you having serious problems at the end of the day. Seeing that the gaming industry is so huge and it provides so many different online gambling casinos, the process of selecting one can be tricky if you don’t have the following guidelines.

Step one; you need to locate reliable online gambling casinos. Therefore you should go online and do a search for the websites which provide this information with tips from experienced gamblers. Once you see a casino that you like then you thoroughly check it out before actually signing up. Your best bet would be to choose a casino that has been around for a while, as a new casino can fold, which simply means you losing all of your deposits and winnings. Step two; search for a casino with a good payout percentage. This percentage is determined by the number of games vs. the amount being paid out. Ensure that this payout percentage applies to the games in which you play and not to the website as a whole.

Step three; choose online gambling casinos that provide superb customer support. If this trait is poor or lacking at an online gambling casino move on to a different one immediately as high quality customer service is a must. When I say superb customer service, I am talking about quick response to emails as well as live chats, in which all of your questions or queries can be addressed. Step four; choose online gambling casinos that have a wide variety of games, because remember you are gaming online therefore you can play more than one game at a time. However, this is totally up to you if you like a specific game and only want to sign up with that website then the final decision is totally up to you.

Step five; search for online casinos with great bonuses and payment systems. These two features are very important, let’s first deal with the bonuses, these are here to encourage to play at the site and some online gambling casinos offer some great bonuses so search properly. As for the payment systems, you need to be able to access it and understand everything there is to know about it as this is the way in which you put in funds and withdraw winnings, so it’s a very important aspect of gambling online casinos, most gambling sites will deposit your winnings directly on your credit card, this is probably the easiest and best way of receiving your payouts.

Step six; get a good software package, this simply means that the website should be easy to use and to navigate through, also you should be able to play a few games to see how everything is working before actually creating an account or depositing money with them. In closing, the best thing when selecting online gambling casinos would be to seek the help of the professionals, and their services are made available to you on the internet.

Sarah Harrigan is a professional casino player and reviewer. For straight talking honest advice on online gambling casinos be sure to visit her website for comprehensive reviews on the best USA online casinos and winning casino strategies.

Every picture tells a story, doesn’t it? If every picture tells a story, then combining pictures surely must tell a story. You can add words to the story, too. Wouldn’t that be a great way to present your photos, especially those documenting an event with family or friends? It’s easy to do. Many websites, the kind that offer you the opportunity to create online galleries of your photos, also allow you to create photo books. If you want to use this medium to tell a story, its’ easy!

The first thing you need to think about to create a photo book to tell a story is, not surprisingly, what story you want to tell. This may seem obvious, but there is a subtle side to it. Let’s say you want to create photo books of your son’s little league season. Do you include every single photo? Well, you could. But chances are, you took a lot of photos. You don’t need to include them all, do you? Probably you won’t want to. Think about what happened over the course of your son’s little league season, games lost and won, and special moments for your son, such as his best plays.

Select your photos so that they tell the story of his season. It will be even better if you plan the photo book before the season starts. That way, you can make sure you get the photos you need to tell the story, not just the occasional snapshot when you think of it. You will need a few photos to document the general action of each game, and not just the highlights of your son’s play if you want to do this right. You may be wondering why you’d need to tell the story of the whole team, instead of just your son’s contribution. If you think about it the answer is obvious—the photo book you create isn’t just for you, it’s for your son. If you document the whole season well, your son can give copies to his teammates as well. Wouldn’t you rather have a photo book that your son will enjoy, that will enhance his stature amongst his peers, than just a photo book to make you happy?

Probably the best way to create this particular photo book is to adopt the sports yearbook format. That means one entry or chapter per game, with pictures, box scores, standings, and any interesting anecdotes from on and off the field. You may also want to shoot pictures at some of the team’s practices as well. If you do it right you could have a lasting testament to your son’s season, one that both he and you will cherish.

This particular example is based on a sports season but the principles used to create photo books with a narrative apply to any other subject. It could be your vacation, your daughter’s first ballet class, or even giving the dog a bath. All you need to make a story is a beginning, middle and end.

MJ Johnston writes for a variety of websites, including Digitalphotoalbumsite.com, site that offers advice on the quickest and easiest way to build a digital photo album, as well as free online photo storage.

On a recent Princess cruise my wife and I decided to go to the art auctions since this particular trip had a lot of sea days. We were introduced to Alexandra Nechita pieces, both originals and numbered reproductions. We watched several videos about her in our cabin. At first we were quite taken in by the whole story and her Picasso-style paintings. But by the end of the trip I was soooo over her, and wondering if the whole thing is a sham.

I guess that would naturally lead to the question of whether Picasso himself was a sham. I mean this style of artwork reminds me of LSD-induced hallucinations while staring at a colorful carpet. It’s that imagery from the mind’s third eye captured in a still shot, and I guess that’s why it’s considered genius. But is it really any good, or is it only good because everybody else says it’s good?

It isn’t really fair to compare Picasso to Nechita. I have been to the Picasso museum in Barcelona and it takes you through the periods of his life. The man was a brilliant portrait and landscape painter much of his career. He developed the abstract style which he is so popular for slowly over the course of years. It was the final segment of his legacy, but is what he became famous for. So he was actually a well-rounded painter.

Nechita started off by painting that style. I mean, right out the gate like when she was five years old. They called her a child prodigy, a genius. She didn’t even see Picasso’s work until after she started having shows of her own work. It’s said that the first time she saw his paintings she tugged on her mother’s dress and said “Mommy look! That man paints like I do!”

Cute story, yes. And the paintings do have a uniform quality with good use of colors. But are they worth tens of thousands of dollars? Are they really pleasant to look at? Or do the people who buy them just collect paintings because certain artists are trendy? Are her paintings the emperor’s new clothes? Do those crazy half-cocked images with heads sticking out of shoeboxes and kindergarten-like hands constitute quality art any more than your kid’s crayon drawings on the refrigerator? I guess the answer is in your own eyes. Providing, of course, you have the ability to use them in an unbiased and purely observational manner.

By the way if you are interested in collecting art and buying it right, you can’t do better than on those Princess cruises. The exact same pieces are going to cost hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands more from land-based galleries. That doesn’t mean the land-based galleries are ripping you off – they have high overhead and are in the art business. Princess buys in huge volume for their large fleet of ships and is in the cruising business, so there is no real overhead to have to justify. Just a parting tip.

For more social commentary please visit http://www.stupidityinsociety.com

So there we were, my husband and I, in our mid fifties, having to shut down our 8-year-old, online animation software company after pouring our entire life savings into it. Seeing our money gradually disappear during those years was like squeezing honey into hot tea and watching it melt away. The reason I use honey as an analogy is that we really loved our business and there was a certain sweetness in giving all we had for something we believed in so dearly.

I will never forget the feeling of letting our staff go during that last year, little by little… and moving out of our space… and closing down the websites… and turning off the phones. Can you imagine what it was like for my husband and myself to have nothing but credit cards left… at the age where we should begin winding down to retire?

Yesterday I heard on the news that President Elect, Mr. Obama, is inheriting one and a half million people having lost their jobs in the U.S. My heart goes out to these people because I personally know the terror of having nothing, not knowing where the rent money will come from and continuing to borrow, borrow, borrow to pay all the credit card bills.

Obviously, this huge provocation in our lives was cause to rise to the truth of who we really are, and to what is truly important. Our efforts doubled to wipe out whatever unknown, unseen resistance to abundance was holding us in this pattern of not “having,” although we were applying all of the teachings about “allowing” from Abraham, “scientific prayer” from Ernest Holmes, and many other teachings from amazing, awakened beings like Byron Katie, Eckhart Tolle, Ramana Maharshi, Pujya Deepakbhai, Lester Levenson and more. But why was “The Secret” not working for us, not to mention for so many other people we knew who were also applying these teachings? Something was missing. We were in the dark, but the dawn was breaking…

Finally, the Light has begun to fill our lives with Its Presence. Of course, It was always there, for It is who we are. But now we are waking up to our own divine presence. I don’t claim this as a boast about my husband and myself; what I’m saying is that we are examples of a higher consciousness that has inevitably become more alive in our culture today. What has happened is an Awakening, and I see it wherever I turn. Tens of thousands of people are awakening to some degree, all over the planet. For my husband and I, it has been a very long journey.

We are discovering through experience, which heretofore was intellectual understanding or a deep sense of knowing, that everything we could ever want is already here, within us. So our so-called struggle to make money, to allow abundance, to prosper, to get rich, to have abundance consciousness, was all affirming that we did not have that which we very much desired. An element of this awakening, that we are discovering as we are gradually “waking up,” is that our attachments (and aversions) are losing their potency and we are becoming more neutral about whatever is happening. We are also losing our attachment to any outcome.

The magic of all this has been such a surprise for us - it is that as we become less attached, this is creating an “opening” for having. It is dissipating the resistance that we have been unconsciously creating by being so very attached to wanting. And so the miracle that we have discovered is that the less we want, the less we are attached, the bigger becomes the opening to “allow” abundance to land in our laps. Now, instead of spending so much time worrying, we are spending more and more time letting go, surrendering to the truth of our Being, which is where abundance and freedom live. And that is our highway to abundance consciousness.

Chava is a ThetaHealer, Oneness Deeksha Blessing Giver, volunteers with a meditation program at Terminal Island Prison in San Pedro, CA. She taught fine art for 11 years and now invests in real estate and helps people learn how to generate cash. Visit her website at http://www.HighwayToAbundance.com

One of the things that I have discovered in my journey of personal development is that I must make the choice to step into success or I will just stand in failure. I find that it is necessary to apply pressure to myself in order to move forward and take those steps into success. Do you apply pressure to yourself? Let me ask you a question: do you wait until the last minute to finish a task, project or chore? Are you one of those people who accomplish 70% of the project in the last 10% of the time?’

If you said yes to either of those questions then you are applying pressure to yourself. Some of us work better by doing little bits and pieces of the project, task or chore as we go. Others work much better when they are under the gun. When they know they ‘gotta get it done’, ‘it’s due tomorrow’, ‘it’s due in two hours’.. Some people are much better when they are applying that pressure to themselves.

We need to be able to recognize where we fall on that scale and realize how best we react because if we don’t apply any pressure at all to ourselves then we are we are not going to learn, grow and step up into the success that we want in our lives. We all want success in our lives, whether it is emotionally, in relationships, with our family, in our businesses, or with our finances. We all want some form of success in our life, if not in ALL of these areas!

Many times, we human beings waste time feeling guilty. By doing this we are wasting our own time and energy. When we get to the point of the deadline for that project, task or chore and we’re feeling so guilty – ‘oh why didn’t I do something sooner? I should have spent more time! Why did I spend my time on that thing and not get this project started?’ As human beings need to learn that it is okay and to recognize that’s how we cope best, we work best under pressure. So stop feeling guilty about it! Stop beating yourself up, because when we stop beating ourselves up and wasting energy on the guilt, we have more time and more energy to invest in the project, chore or task we want to complete.

The other thing that we do, in order to not apply the pressure, is we hide behind our responsibilities. I used to do this so well – hide behind my responsibilities. Many times when I have talked to people about a home-based business, they say ‘oh, well I don’t have the time to do something like that. I am so busy! I have my family. I have my job. I have my charities. I have my hobbies.’

We all have those different responsibilities in our life. What we need to decide is ‘Is this project/task/business something that I really want to do or rather is this task/business/project going to create a result that I want. You have to begin by deciding what result you want in your life and then arrange your time based on achieving those results. Ask yourself : ‘Are there things I could rearrange or even drop all together to make time to do this?’

Are you applying the pressure to your own life to do what it is you really want to do? Sometimes those tasks or chores are not really things that we want to do, but we want that specific end result so we do them. We want our relationships to work well. We want our financial freedom. We want to be able to take our family to Disneyland. We want that specific end result, the successful life. Today I just assisted my husband in setting up his financial filing system, I sure did not want to spend time doing it, however I want the end result!! The end result of the nice clean, tidy organized paperwork resulting in his taxes being completed on time. I put the pressure on myself, assisted him and now I am very glad I did. Not only did the paperwork issue get better but so did our relationship because my husband felt supported.

We need to focus on the results we want instead of hiding behind the excuses of ‘I don’t have the time,I’ve got to go to work, I’ve got to take my daughter to soccer. I have got to take my dog to the vet’. Yes, those are all things that need to be done. However when we decide that achieving a certain task/chore/business is a priority that we could rearrange our time or give up some unnecessary activities to free up time if we really wanted to. If we really want that result, we could get it done, it just takes a decision. We will then stop investing in the guilt. we will stop hiding behind the responsibilities and figure out a way to make it happen.

There is a universal law, like the law of gravity called the Law of Growth;. In order to exist, we need to grow. How we grow is our choice. What seeds do we want to plant? Do we want to plant the seeds of not getting something done? Or do we want the seeds of success habits, applying the pressure and stepping into the successful life that we know we deserve. We all deserve a successful life! Ask yourself “am I applying the correct pressure on myself to create my successful life?” I hope you are!

I would love to hear about your successful life. Whether it is something you are working towards,.or dreaming about or have already. Send me an email to Carla at RetireWithCarla.com and tell me your story.

Carla McNeil a HR Consultant. She spent 20+ years in the hospitality industry she realized that if she continued doing what she was doing she would retire dead or dead broke just like 97% of the population. Carla has now discovered the beauty of a home based business. http://www.RetireWithCarla.com Call me (778) 835-4032 You’re Invited To Terrific Tuesday Teleclass
1-218-486-7200 Bridge 549706

Making money as an actor can be a tough gig - but voiceover work is one of the few ways you can top up your acting income without resorting to a ‘proper’ day job. This short article gives you 7 tips to getting more voiceover work.

Many actors achieve great success in this industry. Its fun, they make great cash, and they keep getting work over and over again. Then there are others who are struggling to even get one gig. After many years as a copywriter working with successful (and a few not-so-successful) voiceovers, and founder of online voiceover directory - I’ve been studying what makes certain voiceovers successful. Here are 7 tips:

1. Is your demo good enough?

You can promote yourself as much as you like - but at the end of the day, it comes down to your demo. You’re competing with some very talented people out there. An “ok” demo is not good enough.

2. Call back immediately. If you get a message that someone is trying to book you for a gig, don’t wait a minute. Ad agencies are usually up against very tight deadlines, and if you take too long getting back to them, they’ll simply book someone who is answering their phone.

3. Do a special offer Offer a producer in an ad agency that you’ll do a free gig - IF it’s for a charity ad. Or you could try something like giving concession tickets of a show you’re acting in to a producer or copywriter. These things don’t cost you money, but they spread good karma, and hopefully drum up some business for you in the future.

4. Get some training. If you are inexperienced, try to go on a training course. It’s a small investment in comparison to the amount of money you can make doing voiceovers.

5. Pick someone’s brain. If you are inexperienced, go for coffee with a more experienced VO and pick their brain. Ask them everything about what to expect when you do a gig - from the minute you walk in to the minute you leave. Sometimes just knowing what to expect will calm the nerves when you’re doing your first gig. You can also take a few scripts along to this coffee and ask them to crit you doing a read.

6. Spam yourself Create a database of ad agency copywriters and producers and send them a link of your voice sample. This takes time, but doesn’t cost you a penny.

7. Get a Dictaphone. Buy yourself a Dictaphone and recite and record scripts for practice. (Some mobile phones also have voice recorders.) Sometimes it’s amazing how great something sounds in your own head, but only once you hear it out loud can you really figure out which bits need improving. This is fantastic exercise - schedule ten minutes a day to practice.

You can find the full 25 Things the Successful Voicover Artist in Ebook called 7 25 Things the Successful Voiceover Artist Knows (that the Rest of the Plebs Don’t)

Voiceover and voice over are two leading voiceover talent websites. They are independent sites that are created by copywriters, for copywriters.