Kat’s Arts Blog

In my last post I mentioned that Phil and I are planning to build a house soon. Naturally, as an inveterate blogger, I plan to write about the process, but aside from one entry on my techie blog that mainly discusses how I generated a presentation of our plan, I have not yet started to discuss it online. For one thing, I have had a hard time deciding which of my blogs would be a suitable venue for such content, or maybe should I start yet another one? That would be really excessive since I can’t keep up with the four active blogs I have now. And since architecture and decorating are after all arts, I decided to write about it here.

The things I plan to write about include the house, workshop and garage design, including the xeriscape landscaping we have in mind, the “green” building techniques and materials we are considering, and everything else that goes into planning a new home. In case you haven’t been following my comments on Twitter about it, I should mention that the home site is in the Texas Hill Country, near Canyon Lake. In light of the flash flood here last week, one of the design decisions to cover might well be how to plan to prevent damage from similar events in the future. And while floods and xeriscape design might seem contradictory, they really aren’t. Both semi-arid and disasterously wet conditions are possibilities here at various times, so they have to be taken into consideration.

I won’t be neglecting the other “arts” included in this website. For one thing, there are already photos of our building site in the gallery’s landscape section here, and as for jewelry design, that has to be done somewhere. Designing a really practical workshop with areas for various craft techniques is certainly one of the aspects of this whole enterprise that has me excited.

Along with expanding the scope of this blog, I’m adding another element to the website: ads. I’m working on a policy statement about them that will become a permanent page on the site, but don’t be too surprised to see ads for a lot of home decor products, and possibly more. They do not constitute paid endorsements — I should be so lucky! But it is possible that we may use some of the products advertised here and if we do, I may write about them. When that happens, I will be sure to follow the FTC’s recent directive to inform you, my reader, about whatever commercial relationship exists between me and my advertisers, so you can judge for yourself whether I can be objective or not. While I think it highly unlikely any vendor will be willing to pay me enough to actually affect my judgement or comments, if you know about what’s going on you can make up your own mind. At this point, I feel like I ought to use the phrase “fair and balanced” …. Sorry, this isn’t a political blog. I just got carried away.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the addition. Please feel free to leave comments and suggestions anytime.

Welcome to Kat’s Arts blog. This side of the site (the blog) is where I’ll write about what I’m doing that will eventually wind up in the other side (the gallery). I created this site to have a home specifically for things I make, to avoid cluttering up my other blogs, and to organize them (or try to).

Right now my creations in the gallery fall into two main categories: photography and jewelry. The photos are themselves subdivided into simple snapshots, and smaller versions of images I will be offering in my online shop as prints, notecards or other wares (coffee mugs? t-shirts?). The latter will be identifiable by the watermark intended to deter misappropriation by casual web-snatchers. I do understand that it’s not a perfect solution to piracy, but what is? Anyway, I will do my best to make sure the watermarks don’t interfere with your enjoyment of them while preserving my intellectual property rights. If you do want to use one for something, drop me a line, or just link back to this site from the lo-res copy you take.

A warm shout-out to my friends in various social networks who found this site through my shameless self-promotion! I’ll be adding links in the blogroll to those places as soon as I can.

Above all, enjoy!