We’re under two weeks until our departure for our photography, painting, and art appreciation trip to Europe. New suitcases were packed with clothes this week and immediately found to be overweight. Unpacking, sorting things, and repacking brought the weights under the limit.

Then came art supplies in each of our second bags. These are heavy items! It’s clear that I can’t take many canvas boards for painting. Of course I can buy those in Europe, but the problem then becomes weight on our internal European flights and our return home. After all I do want to bring my finished paintings home. That brought us to investigating shipping items to and from Europe. Yikes! It’s expensive.  I’d settle for a slow freighter and a long wait, but that doesn’t help the cost much. It looks like I will have to carefully manage my use of canvas boards and send a box home in the fall. That means more watercolor painting because those papers are more easily carried or shipped. Jean has somewhat less of a problem because pastels are done on paper.

We are shipping one box to Europe in advance. It mostly has vitamins and minerals. One thing we discovered recently was that the EU has made vitamins and minerals more difficult to sell. They require such a testing regimen that only major pharmaceutical companies can afford it. We were concerned about finding supplements that are similar to what our bodies are accustomed to. Therefore, we are taking/shipping a 5 month supply. Most will be shipped due to the weight allowance on checked baggage.

Now that we’re ready we have to wait 12 days before we actually leave. It’s time to finish projects on the house to get it ready for our friends who will be staying here. Yesterday the lawn mower died. That’s just one of the items that needs attention before we depart. Not much time to paint in the next two weeks.