Kat Eye Studio

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And the winner is…

Today’s photo is another one from the foggy morning we had on Thursday. I love the look of the end of autumn in Parco di Monza here, the colors still bright but the leaves are sparse on the trees and thick on the ground. Not only have the trees mostly lost their leaves, but the fog has arrived and the air has a decided chill to it… winter has arrived here in northern Italy.

But I have a bit of summer to give away today!  The winner of the flower postcards is… EVA of the blog to be determined!

Thanks so much for all of your comments and feedback. I learned there are more ways to read a blog than I had really thought about, and I also learned that some changes are just not noticeable. In a lot of ways, that’s a good thing! I want this place to keep the same look and feel every time people visit, while also being able to update and upgrade as new features come along.

So I’ll give you a little blog tour of what’s new in the last couple of weeks…

1. Find Your Eye E-course tab – I added the tab with a teaser a couple of weeks ago and filled in the course description this week. I am so excited about this course, I’ve been working on developing it for months and am in the final throes of completion (hence, the need for KaNoJoMo). It will start January 9 and will run 6 weeks. I’ll tell you more about it in the coming weeks! Registration will open soon at wishstudio and I’ll let you know when that happens too.

2. I put my last name on my profile. This may seem like a silly minor change, but to me it’s about owning my work and bringing my whole self to this space in the virtual world. My full name was appearing in other places I was writing online, so why not here, in my own space?

3. You can follow these links to easily subscribe or find me in all of these places. Before, I had a badge for Facebook, a badge for Flickr and the Followers block on the sidebar. When I wanted to add Twitter, I needed to free up space and make them all easily visible. Since you already follow me in one way or another, you probably don’t even notice this space.  Pretty soon I’ll have blog buttons available for my Find Your Eye e-course and for Exploring with a Camera to share that will use some of this space too… Watch for them!

4. I added a “Search” box for the blog. I only post the Top Labels on the sidebar, and go through and periodically add and remove based on the labels I’ve been using, so this search bar lets you easily find things on the blog that aren’t available as Top Labels. If you want to see photos from say, Paris (which is not one of the top labels), you can type that in and find all of the posts that reference Paris. I don’t know if anyone else will use it, but I’ve been writing this blog long enough, I’ve discovered that I can’t even find things all of the time. 🙂

5. The “Join In” section is not new, but I wanted to highlight that I change things here periodically, depending on what’s going on and what I personally participate in. Coming up VERY soon is the Mortal Muses “We are Thankful” blog hop. More information is available here or if you click on the image in the sidebar. I hope to see you in the hop!

For those of you who wondered, I changed the blog header in mid-September (the subway image is from my last trip to Paris) and added the tabs sometime this summer (I actually can’t remember when anymore). The color of the tab section changed when I changed the header image in September, probably making it more visible now that it’s orange.  Thanks so much for participating and leaving your comments! I learned a lot. And if you are sad you didn’t win, there are more postcards that will be given away… since I finally got my order. 🙂

I will not be posting on the blog for the next week, I have a seriously intense week of work this week and will not even be online starting tomorrow. Another reason for KaNoJoMo! (I managed to not join anything this week, even though there were a couple of temptations along the way.) That also means that the next Exploring with a Camera will be delayed for a week or two until I can get things caught back up.

So with that, I wish you a great week, and you’ll hear from me later!

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What’s new? (Giveaway time!)

Yesterday was the first really foggy morning in Parco di Monza of the season. I love fog, how it blankets everything and slowly reveals more as you move through it. I like this photo, which gives a hint of what the day is going to become, all sun and blue sky, while still showing the deep fog that exists down below. Maybe it’s an analogy for the direction in our lives, when we are having trouble seeing where we might be going. Instead of looking forward, try looking up.

I’m inviting you to take another look today too. I know many folks use blog readers – I do! – and don’t visit my actual site that often. I’ve made a number of changes lately, and so I’m inviting you to come by and take a look!

To motivate you, I’m going to have a little contest too… Come explore the site a little bit, then leave a comment with what “new” thing you specifically like on my blog, to enter to win. Contest will end on Sunday morning, 7am my time, and I’ll randomly select a winner from all of the comments that include something specific. If you are new to my blog, just comment on what you liked the first time you visited! I would love to hear your thoughts.

What will you win? Hopefully, a set of postcards, either those pictured below or one of my new sets, if they arrive soon! I ordered more postcards in September (I still owe some to a few of you, I haven’t forgotten) and they have been lost in the mail twice. I know, I wouldn’t believe it either if it hadn’t happened to me. So they should be reprinted and mailed this next week and I’ll be able to get them out to you. If they don’t arrive in a timely manner, I’ll find some other interesting Italian thing to give away to you. I have some ideas brewing!

So it’s kind of like a mystery giveaway – either the postcards or something behind door number two!

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Mail Time!

Wouldn’t you love to get mail in a door like this? I know I would! I loved all of the door letter slots I saw Bath, adding to the door personality. The ones marked LETTERS are cool, but kind of humorous to me. What else would the slot be for? Milk delivery? I found it interesting that much in England is labeled or named. Many houses don’t just have an address, they have names like “Victoria House” and “Park View” etched in stone above the door. So I guess it’s only fair that the mail slot has equal labeling importance.

And today, it is important because it’s Postcard Drawing Day!  Many of you think that today is a holiday in the US because of Labor Day, but this is the real reason, so you can all be online to find out if you won, right away. Too bad I don’t speak enough Italian to convince the government here we need a day off for this momentous occasion as well. 🙂

And the winner is…. Lisa, of the White Cotton Tee photography blog, aka L Gordon on Flickr. There were 42 entries, after eliminating the duplicates and unidentifiable Anonymous “Happy Sunday” comment. And Lisa was number 6! Congrats Lisa, send me your snail mail address and the postcards will be on their way to you.

But, you are all winners, do you know why? Because if you commented to win, I will send you your very own postcard with a personal note. Just send me an email at kat[at]kateyeview[dot]com, identifying your comment and include your snail mail address. Who wouldn’t like some mail from Italy? I might even have to order more postcards, perhaps with a window theme as requested. Everyone deserves some happy mail! I enjoyed reading all of the comments and appreciate the participation in this first-ever giveaway of mine. (And don’t worry, I promise your personal information will never, ever be shared. I will send the postcards and delete all info!)

Another piece of great news I am excited to share today is that I’ve joined the Mortal Muses photography site as one of the nine muses. There is a post from one of the nine muses each day, with their photo on the current theme and one from the Flickr pool, where you can participate by uploading your photos for the next theme. I was so excited to see my photo selected a couple of weeks ago in the black and white theme, and now I get to wax poetic once every nine days and be part of this wonderful team of photographers! Come on over and start participating with us.

One final shout out today… My 9-year-old son and I are participating in the Wish.Play.Create playgroup in the wishstudio. You can still join in too! We just finished up the Week 1 project yesterday, Mixed Media Love by Shona Cole. We had fun together playing with paints and coming up with the poses to go with the artwork provided in the class. Brandon said I had to use my own pictures, I couldn’t use him, so I had to get in on the fun more than I had planned. I’m glad I did, because this finished card perfectly expresses how I’m feeling right now.

 Up, up and away, borne on the wind of creative dreams.

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Flowers, Postcards and a GIVEAWAY!!

Bath had the most beautiful flowers. In window boxes, hanging from streetposts, in roundabouts – just everywhere. Bath does flowers so well that they are routinely excluded from the “Britain in Bloom” contest for towns, since they always win. For good reason, everyone wins when a town is so full of beautiful, happy blooms.

I love flower pictures – they just make me happy. So I had some postcards printed with a few of my favorites that I’ve posted here. I got frustrated a few weeks ago when I wanted to send a postcard with a nice photo to someone, something with just a pretty picture and not a touristy one, and I looked all around Milan and couldn’t find anything. Along came a discount from Moo (an awesome printing company!) in my email inbox, so I decided to make my own!I went through my posted photos and realized that, for all of the flower photos I take, I really don’t share that many of them here. I will have to rectify that! But here are the posts to show the photos I chose a bit clearer:
Making Ideas Real from Murten, Switzerland
Blissful Color from Barcelona, Spain
Abundance from Split, Croatia
Illumination from Nice, France
Stepping Along Flowers from Varenna, Italy

I am sooo happy with the result, I thought I would give away a set of them here. This set of five beautiful 4x6inch color postcards could be yours – to send, to frame, to stick on the fridge or at your desk – whatever will make you smile! All you have to do is enter the giveaway.

Here’s how to enter:
– Leave a comment on this blog post by 9pm PST Sunday 5-Sep. Please be sure to include a way for me to contact you (a link to a blog, an email, a blogger profile, or an identifier if I already have your email) so that I can get your mailing address if you win. If I can’t contact you, I’ll pick someone else.
– That’s it!

I’ll pick the winner on Monday morning, Italy time, and will let you know. So enter, and you could be smiling at these lovely blooms in person soon. Spread the smiles, tell your friends too!