Do you ever get a wild hair?  I seem to have a new one every day--they're now growing right above my ears.  The better to hear them, I suppose.  A few weeks ago, led by Soulemama to Squam... and realizing it may be a very long time before I ever get to be there in person, I found the perfect 'continuing education' workshop for this homeschooling mama.  It was a wild hair sort of a night.  I was attracted right away by the fact that Sarah Ahearn Bellemare is a mama and she is starting out this course with the basics of painting, something I have longed to do.... well, forever I suppose.  I think having such fun with Inside Out really helped me jump in to this course.  This week we are setting up our work spaces.  I just dug out a box of stuff labeled "Japan."  Oooweeee there are some treasures in there.  The idea of having a 'studio space' is sort of foreign to me.  The kids have a room, the man has a room, and mama.... well, she lives in the kitchen.  Here on Shadypeak Lane, I do have a desk.  It's in the kitchen. At first when I thought of setting up my 'studio space' I thought, "Surely not," about having it in the kitchen.  Right here... among the goo and stew of life?  Where toddler hands can grab my stuff.  But really, why not.  My Mac has been here in the middle of everything for nearly a year and nothing horrible has happened to it (knocking wood--F. did nearly pull it off my desk just today).  So, the task has been set, and I have been gathering bits of inspiration to surround myself.  It's fun to look around for what I find beautiful--and freeing really to just tape (with fun little masking tapes) little bits of lovely and sweet where I will see then often.  Gosh, this whole creativity thing could become a way of life.  Yikes.

{{before}}

and, without further ado, welcome to my 

{{studio space}}

There's some fun, closer up:

 a basket full of inspiring books and magazines

 part of my inspiration 'wall' which is really a window frame:

 

more inspiration

and if i could figure out how to mount this, this dress would be on the wall.  i picked it up at a second hand store a month or so ago--a little girl in my life will get it one day, but not before i'm finished gazing at it's lovelieness.  

 

 So, that's something, making a space for myself.  Now the real fun begins... but that was really fun!

 

our nature corner:

This space is kind of an extension of the work area that we already have in the kitchen, namely the dining room table.  We have had for the past 8 years or so a lovely, if institutional, storage shelf.  Our previous home had almost no storage, and I quickly figured out that I would have to have some way of storing the bits and pieces of our lives--thus, 'the bin shelf' became a part of our world.  As a part of gathering materials for Pages & Paint, I cleaned out a few of the bins, and reorganized them somewhat.  The slots are still pretty howling, those are the kids' alone, so I didn't mess with them---er try to straighten them.  I did put all the glue in one bin, all of the paint in one bin, and all of the stencily kind of stuff in another so as I'm going about this class I can just grab a bin and not have to dig through a few to find what I need.  This shelf has been a life-saver.  It's most recent addition is the canvas 'cover' that I affixed to it when I realized a crawling baby would never be able to keep out of those bins.  I still find myself smiling over the ingenuity of it.  I have a bolt of cleverness every once in a while that really works!   It's starting to sag in the front from the baby who turned toddler pulling on it to try to get things out ("my puzzles!") but it still works!