Kat Eye Studio

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Final of the Favorites: Open Ended

Open Ended
Castello San Sebastiano da Po, Italy, 2009
As the title denotes, this is the last of my scheduled “Favorites” posts. I’m glad I scheduled these, not just for the review of my favorites but also to give me a bit of a break without disappearing altogether while I was in the midst of the big move. This will be the last of the scheduled updates on “Italy time.” Monday morning I’ll change my blog over to Pacific time and will start writing from scratch again. I’m already full of things to say!! See you soon.

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New Schedules + Favorites: Covered Parking

Covered Parking
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2009
I only have three more days of “favorite” pictures left on the schedule and then I’ve got to get myself back onto the regular blogging bandwagon. You can probably tell I’ve scheduled these posts on Italy time and then I’m writing them as I can. For some reason, I’m reluctant to change my blog back to Pacific Standard Time. I know, I’ll get over it. It will be too confusing not to change it.
So what will my blogging schedule be? The same as Italy, where I write in the morning? Do I change it up to write at night? Do I write whenever and schedule? How is it all going to work out? To top it all off I’m going part time at work (yay!!) but not immediately, so that means it will be a while before things settle out.
I was chatting with a friend at work today about my work schedule and said, “It’s fun to figure it all out!” I honestly didn’t know where that comment came from. I mean, it doesn’t feel very fun right now. I’m a bit overwhelmed and tired. And then I stopped and realized, my statement was totally true. When I stop focusing on my tired/overwhelm of the moment, I am excited to figure it all out. Even though I don’t have a routine right now (and I looooove routine), I have the possibility of figuring out something new. I have the possibility to combine some of the best parts of my Italy schedule with my Corvallis schedule and see what happens. 
Add ingredients, shake well, taste. Stay tuned to see how it comes out!

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It’s Open! + Favorites: Tiny Pieces of Bliss

Tiny Pieces of Bliss
Barcelona, Spain, 2010
Today is one of my all time favorite images. A favorite favorite, if you will. With this happy image I also have the happy announcement that registration is OPEN for the July-August Find Your Eye series of classes!  Woohoo! You can find the course details and register here. If you have any problems with registration please let me know ASAP, since I’m still working out the bugs with this new system. I already had a couple of issues after my initial announcement to newsletter subscribers, but I think they are fixed. Now I know why stores do “soft openings” before the official opening. 🙂
Wow, has this been a crazy week. I can’t believe I’ve been in the US a week already, time is already flying and I’m exhausted. You know when you put together a plan on paper, and it all sounds good, but executing the plan is so much harder than you envisioned when you wrote it all out? Yeah, that’s where I am right now.
For some reason, all of my energy was focused was on the “leaving Italy” part of the plan and I didn’t quite expect the “arriving in Oregon” part of the plan to be as much work as it has been. I think maybe I underestimated because it’s so much easier to get things done in the US as compared to Italy. Things are more efficient here, I speak the language and know how and who to call. Since we are coming back to the same place we’ve lived before, it all seems like it should be ready and waiting. But the boxes still need to be unpacked, trash service set up, addresses changed… you get the picture. The list is a mile long.
Even with all of the millions of details that still need to be done, we are now in our house and sleeping in our beds. We are cooking at home and don’t have to eat out anymore. Stevie the cat is doing well and seems to be adjusting without incident, much better than when we moved to Italy. All in all, things are good.
If you ask me how I feel about being back in the US though, I couldn’t even begin to answer you right now. I’ve been too busy to feel anything. In a couple of weeks or a month, I’ll probably have more to say on that topic. For now, it’s back to that mile-long list.

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Arrived! + Favorites: Island of Stone

Island of Stone
Civita di Bagnoregno, Italy, 2010

We’ve made it! Whew. It was quite the sprint there at the end to get ourselves, luggage and cat here. I was getting quite nervous at the airport before we left when the airline check-in agent had to consult her “official rule book” to see if she could accept our cat’s health certificate from the vet in Italian instead of English. Luckily, the rules were only explicit about certificates for dogs being in English and so our cat was approved to fly with us. What a relief. 
We had a short connection in Amsterdam and our flight was late out of Italy, but we made that too. The only thing that didn’t make it on the plane with us was one suitcase and my husband’s bicycle, which came on a later flight and were delivered to the hotel later. One more thing down. 
We got into our house Friday to see the state of things. After being rented for two years, you wonder about how it will look. The house looks great overall and the new floors we had installed look nice. We picked the flooring on the internet, so we wondered about how that would turn out too!

Not only that, it was fun to see the piles of mail for the Liberate Your Art postcard swap – yay! There are already a lot of envelopes and more to come. Some of the envelopes are beautifully decorated, which is awesome! I didn’t expect that but it is a lovely touch. I will take some pictures to share with you in a future blog post.

A few other random notes in my head this morning (way too early, for the time zone I’m in, by the way):
  • Superhero Summer Camp is open! You can see all of the details and sign up here.
  • Exploring with a Camera: Thresholds is still going on, if you want to join in.
  • I’m going to be giving away a couple of Find Your Eye registrations, but you have to be a newsletter subscriber to be eligible! Sign up for the newsletter if you haven’t already.
  • Thanks so much for all of your votes on my portfolio in the  One Life 2011 photography contest! It’s fun to see the numbers go up. I really appreciate your support. I think you can continue voting once per day through July 29, if you are so inclined. (I can barely remember to go vote for myself, so I certainly don’t expect you to go vote for me that often.)
  • I have another Letter to Kat to post tomorrow. Are you enjoying these? I am so appreciative of the advice that has been shared by these wonderful women. If you have advice for me on repatriating after living abroad, I welcome it! You can email me personally with your note or to provide a blog post for the series.
  • There is a new site that just launched, Seek Your Course, that is there to help connect the creative community with classes available online and at retreats. I’m so excited about this site because it’s a great idea to connect people who love to take these amazing creative courses with people who love to teach them. In fact, I like it so much you’ll see me there as a sponsor on the sidebar! 
I just wanted to stop in and say hi and that we are here! This will be another crazy week for us as we get moved into our house and start restocking and unpacking, so I’ll pop in here and write when I can. 
Happy 4th of July tomorrow to all of my American friends!

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