I put in my 30 day notice for my apartment yesterday, it made me feel queasy.  I am not having second thoughts, my husband and I have been talking about moving away from Los Angeles since we met (seven years ago, long before he was my husband), so this re-location isn’t a spontaneous decision.  I was queasy because I really didn’t want to give up my our apartment (this whole halves-y’s on everything, sheesh).  Remember the awesome studio re-do I did, that I never showed you?  You know the one with the chalkboard painted wall and the beautiful wood built-in desk, shipping station and shelves? Well, there goes the security deposit (another reason to feel queasy).  I might think it’s the best thing ever, but I am sure my landlord won’t feel the same way. It is pretty awesome though.  This week after work (shipping and class), I am going to shoot everything for my virtual moving sale.  I am going to sell my Royal typewriter (above), the movers are going by weight and that thing has got to be 80lbs, it is a serious piece of equipment! It’s been a lot of pre-planning work thus far, I am already tired and the month has just begun.

Decisions they are so difficult for me.  I wish I could tell you that I make quick decisions and once I make up my mind it’s a done deal. Unfortunately, it takes me ions to make a decision and then once I do I agonize over whether I made the right one. It’s an affliction I tell you. The decision of where to move was a very difficult one. I love Northern California, love it, want to marry it.  I always have and I probably always will.  After writing out our laundry list of pros and cons, which surprisingly came up about even, it felt like a coin toss decision was in order (metaphorically speaking).  I felt like I was on one of those home shows where I get three choices and have 45 minutes to choose the biggest investment of my life. Oregon we loved, but more as a place to visit, I couldn’t see us living there (now Seattle where we didn’t visit, I could totally see myself living there, but I digress…). Napa Valley will always hold a special place in our hearts, we honeymooned there and it was pure magic.  After going through every scenario ten million times over we decided on North Carolina. We could live really nicely in North Carolina. We could have a beautiful home and I could have a mini farm and a studio. My husband thinks my decision was based solely on my desire to have a miniature cow and fainting goats, he’s partly right, he also promised me a pony. It’s hard not to be bribed by a pony, just sayin’. Things are full steam ahead, we sold his car today (a huge deal not to have a car in Los Angeles), we are selling mine next and getting a car with future kids in mind (I said no way to the mini van).  We will be off to drive cross country the first week of May. I would tell you that I am thoroughly looking forward to driving cross country and if you asked me a few months prior I would be doing a happy dance, but after driving with my husband these past few months around the country, well, the cross country trip does not seem as appealing.  No, he will not stop so I can shoot a once in a lifetime photo opportunity, nor will he allow me to drive, do we share the same taste in music? Absolutely not. Will he be obsessed with the GPS device? Why, yes indeed. Will I be able to close my eyes because driving long stretches makes me sleepy? Not a chance. This will be a challenge to be sure. Wish me luck…

I thought I would show-off a sneak peek of our virtual text book for Creative Captures 101. What started out as a 5 page pdf has grown into quite the project! Michelle, my co-professor in Souvenir Foto School is also a graphic designer and we both agree that being a designer makes it completely impossible to narrow down your choices for yourself.  We struggled with how this was going to look.  In the end we wanted to make it feel like a real textbook, with well loved (and read) paper pages, a linen cover, filled with timeless (and time tested) information.  We are hoping our students are excited as we are about this new addition to the course.  With Creative Captures 101 starting this Sunday I almost forgot to make the announcement for scholarships–we give away 3 each session.  I have mentioned in the past I started Souvenir Foto School when my salary was cut in half and my best friend’s husband was laid off from his job, so I certainly understand that having a creative outlet like this can be a huge bright side to unfortunate economic events.  Our last scholarship recipients added such energy to the class, they were eager, worked extra hard and truly participated in making the class even better.  We hope that our new recipients will be able to do the same.  We have already given one of the scholarships away, so we have 2 scholarships available.  If you would like to be considered please email me and let me know why you would like to be chosen. Good luck!

They say that besides death, moving is one of the most stressful situations you can put yourself in. ‘They’ are right. I am quite exhausted from all the planning and prepping and we haven’t even decided on a place yet, let alone start the actual move. I have moved quite a lot in my time, mostly in the same immediate area though. This is a much bigger move, which we have discussed for months, so I have been both mentally getting ready for it and physically (no, I have not been lifting weights or anything).  I thought I would share some of the things I have done in case any of you are thinking of a move or know someone that is or just want to be prepared for the future.  I am not much of a collector but I do own a lot of books.  A few months ago I went through my massive collection and weeded out which ones I was willing to part with.  I am probably going to do this again soon. After I created a stockpile of books I went to my Amazon account where I had created an Amazon seller account, I chose to sell my books, but since I didn’t want them in my apartment I shipped them all to Amazon fulfillment to sell, pack and ship. I in turn sat at home and had the profits deposited into my bank account electronically.  Talk about easy peasy. I must have sent them over a hundred books.  That brings my collection down considerably and makes for a lot lighter future moving day. If you don’t know about this program, I highly recommend it. The profits are a lot less than if you sold the books yourself, but to not have the headache of packing and shipping one-off books is so worth the extra fee.  Knowing that we were going to move, I had decided when I designed my new studio space to have everything in organized boxes so I could seamlessly transport the studio when the time came and it would be super easy to get back to work wherever we landed.  Instead of having drawers built-in for my custom desk (which I never did show you), I ordered multiples of these letter boxes. All of the things that I would have put in a drawer I put in these boxes, I even went one step further and  added acrylic inserts in them, so everything had a place and I didn’t just have boxes of ‘stuff’ (for the record I don’t do well with ‘stuff’ I don’t even like the word). For my shop inventory I bought Kraft photo boxes, they are the perfect size to house the inventory and had the bonus nameplates on the front so I could identify what is in each box. Come moving day all I will need to do is pop the top on them and my inventory is ready to go!  This solution may not work for everyone but I can tell you having my studio ‘portable’ has made life a lot easier and more organized.  Whatever I don’t use on an every day basis I can just move to the garage or the supply closet with ease. My studio space is very small so I need to be able to utilize as much of it as I can.

Now for the quips part of this post.  I am going to have to sell some of my possessions it’s time to, but I know that a garage sale is not the place for such precious items as my beloved Gocco and a few of my Lensbaby lenses. Any ideas of how I should go about selling these things? I want to be able to sell some excess paper, envelopes and supplies that I can’t throw away, are not that great for donation but would be welcome in the right person’s hands. Should I create a moving sale page on the blog? I’m open to suggestions.

P.S. These flowers were for sale at a Farmer’s Market in North Carolina.  I loved that the vendor displayed the stems in Kerr jars, so charming!

If you asked me if I would ever have a photograph of a cemetery on my blog I would probably furrow my brow and wonder if you were talking to me. How random. That’s how I felt about these cemeteries, yes plural.  It seems in the South there are many of these small burial plots, they just hang out on the side of the road minding there own business.  What I neglected to shoot was that there was a Target right across the street and this cemetery was flanked by two very nice homes.  If we end up choosing to move to North Carolina I will not be living next to a cemetery. The one above was in Marietta, Georgia and my father-in-law said that a lot of these cemeteries were Civil War graves. They are all over so it really puts into perspective the scope of the blood shed of that war. I just found these grave sites in such odd juxtaposition with the 21st century all around, this one was really (no exaggeration) on the side of a major street. It was like getting out of the car and stepping back in time.