Our family recently moved from a small townhouse in Madison to our new house in Sun Prairie. Leaving our home of five years – where we brought Oliver home from after he was born, where he took his first steps, where we became a family – has been bittersweet, but we have been ready for a change for a long time. What better time than when we are spending so much time at home?

Until now, my paints have largely been isolated to a corner of our bedroom; but since Jason, Oliver, and I love to create together, weekends often meant dragging everyone’s art supplies to our tiny living room and setting up as many card tables as we could fit. We knew when we were house hunting that we wanted a home with a large space with lots of light that we could transform into a family studio. After unloading the moving truck, setting up the studio was my number one priority – I couldn’t wait for us to be able to spread out and create in our new home!

I built Oliver a studio palette with hot glue and half pans of my student grade watercolors on a cookie sheet and his creativity has been soaring! Instead of constantly asking me if he can watch an episode of Dino Dana, he is asking to borrow salt and iridescent medium to add texture and sparkle to his paintings.

As a role playing game aficionado, Jason channels a lot of his creativity into cartography. Last night, we spent a long while discussing a map collaboration that we are finally working on, in which he is inking and I will be painting.

It has only been a couple weeks, but with my weavings on the walls, Jason’s books lining the shelves, and Oliver’s Legos on the floor, it already feels like home.