Kat is a filmmaker, director, producer, actor, editor and my daughter.

Make sure to catch the bloopers at the end – cute! Thanks for tuning in.

To find your motivation, think about why you wanted to work from home in the first place. Perhaps you wanted to spend more time with your family or maybe you needed a flexible schedule. Take some time and think about your “why”. Write it down and keep the paper near your work space. Whenever you start to doubt your decision, read over your “why”; you will find instant motivation.

Working from home can be lonesome, especially if you are used to working in a large corporate environment and having lots of interaction with co-workers. The internet can be a great place to network with other people working from home. You can meet other people that work from home through message boards and forums.

Once you meet a few like-minded people, form an accountability group with each other. You can meet weekly in a chat room or on a conference call and discuss your goals, the things you achieved, and the things you didn’t. You can offer each other congratulations when things are going great and solutions when problems come up. You can also offer each other weekly challenges; and that friendly competition can offer some great motivation.

Just because you don’t have anyone to dangle carrots in front of you doesn’t mean you can’t do it for yourself. Take the time to write out some goals and choose some appropriate rewards for each one. Once you have achieved the goal, you can have the reward. This can be as simple as giving yourself a night off from cooking and ordering in pizza once you have written and submitted your first press release.

If you choose, you can get creative and write out your goals on poster board and paste pictures of the rewards next to them. This will be a constant visual reminder of what you need to achieve, and seeing the rewards attached to them will be a great motivator. Plus, anyone else who sees this will be able to keep track of your progress. They will know if you are accomplishing your goals and that can also serve as a source of motivation.

Whether or not you choose to put them on a poster board, you should have a way to keep track of your progress. Whenever you feel stressed or unmotivated, take a look back at all the things you have accomplished. You will remember the struggles you went through and the feeling of joy as you finished what you set out to accomplish. This is a great confidence booster, and will leave you feeling ready to tackle your next goal.

Here are some photos I took from our time at the studio. Click the thumbnails to see a much larger version of each photo. At the bottom of each (large) photo, there is a description of who/what/where. For more photos of the Designs by Irene Lentz in particular, see my post at the Irene site.

For more info about Irene, please visit my irene-lentz.com website.
http://www.irene-lentz.com/ (Also on Facebook)

For more info about author and designer Greg LaVoi, visit TNT’s The Closer which includes a Bio and Greg’s Blogs. http://www.tnt.tv/series/closer/

1) Choose you collage design
2) Add your photos
3) Re-arrange items by dragging, resizing & cropping
4) Save the final image for download in one of the available resolutions.

Photovisi offers an assorted choice among a set of pre-defined collage designs, with new ones added every week. The service also features an option to add photos directly from an attached webcam or photo camera by using the tool’s auto-shutter function. This allows you to fill a collage with 30 pictures in under 60 seconds, by using live photographs! Want to try it out yourself? Visit http://www.photovisi.com to start!

I was reviewing my Amazon purchases going back almost 10 years. The collection is quite eclectic. No surprise there! I reviewed my purchases of assorted CD’s, DVD’s and Books, reminisced and attempted to conjure up the “Ah Ha!” moment I had when finding each special item. Over the years; some purchases were gifts, but the majority of the purchases were made for moi. I haven’t purchased too much though. My “collection” currently consists of 46 items, since January 2001. That’s not too much. I am on a budget after all. That’s one of the reasons why I look to Amazon when I need something. I can usually find it cheap. =)

Probably the item that’s seen the most use since it’s purchase is my David gray music purchase. A few of my purchases I’ve completely forgot about and ended up lost somehow, somewhere. A few items have found there way to the $1 section of past garage sales too. Oh well, that’s the typical life cycle of Books,CD’s,and DVD’s.The strongest remain. Take a look at my almost ten year collection if you’d like… and have a great day!

I gave up meat in 2009 and though I consider myself a pescetarian (or pesco-vegetarian); my days of eating fish have become fewer and farther between. Still, I really even wasn’t sure if oysters were considered a “fish”, so I needed to learn that too. Between my husband’s knowledge and the Internet, I got my answers. Oysters are molluscs, usually called “shellfish” and come from the invertebrate family.. basically, animals without a backbone.

With that knowledge behind me, and because the idea of a high protein, low calorie food is something I need more of in my diet; I decided to go for it and try smoked oysters. I knew, from reading, to expect some funny looking, oddly textured food. I can get over that if they taste okay (I told myself..). Upon pulling off the lid of the little can, I smelled a familiar and a not-unappealing smokey scent and popped one in my mouth. The texture reminded me of mushrooms (which I have no problems with) and the taste was not bad at all.. even, actually, kind of good.

So, They don’t look real good, but they taste just fine. Though I gave them the thumbs-up (I did eat the whole can) because the experience was a positive one; I don’t think I’ll indulge in them as often as Bonnie does. I was curious, I tried it and now I know.

Almonds and Greek yogurt make a good high-protein snack too and are a little easier on the eyes. =)