As you can see, I didn’t complete my redesign of the site yet. My weekend took a bit of an unexpected turn and I need to finish some research before I just start changing things haphazardly! One this that I did decide to do though, is to satisfy the requests I’ve had to let a little more personal info onto the site. I don’t want to turn this into a ‘diary site’ so I’m not going to start posing everything going on in my life, but I will let out a little more info that affects how I approach my arts.

For today, I’ll give you a brief tour of my apartment, as it’s also my only working space and so certainly affects what I do! I’ll also confess that these pics are from the rare day that my apartment is actually fully cleaned and uncluttered. This is not it’s usual state! (Warning: lots of pictures to follow!)

Let’s start off with the Master Bedroom:

That is a waterfall on the table between the pictures of the girls. It’s very relaxing and helps me to fall asleep at night.

See that closet door on the right side, above? Seems pretty straightforward, eh? Well, this is what happens when you open it:

You end up with a very large walk-in closet! Even better, when you walk into the closet, there is a full-sized bath to the left that is private to the master bedroom!

Now, let’s take a look down the hallway:

This is the view from the master bedroom looking down the hallway. To the left is the girls bedroom (which we won’t see on this tour for their privacy), to the right is the main bathroom, and just past that is the closet with the washer/dryer before heading into the main space.

Now we enter the main space!

It’s important to note that all of the clutter you see around the bottom of the desk to the right isn’t normally there. It’s stuff I have been piling up to put into a garage sale at some point and just need to move it to storage but haven’t had time yet.

Now, let’s look at my crafting space. Ordinarily, this would have been the dining room, but I feel it works better for all of my crafting stuff:

And now, for what I am using for my dining space. With the leaf in the table, it can comfortably accommodate six, so I have two folding chairs in the closet:

Then on to the living room!

FYI - I have stopped apologizing for the ‘Always Messy Work Area.’ The reality is that I spend so much time there when I’m not sleeping, working on various computer projects, that it’s not worth it trying to put everything away every time I leave for a bit!

When I’m painting, I put down a drop cloth in front of the TV and set my easel up right in front of it. That’s where I get my best natural light during the day and early evening. Unfortunately, because I have no dedicated space for my painting, I have to set up and tear down every time I’m done with a working session. So I try to keep my actual painting time to focused blocks that I know I can complete a painting during. That’s becoming more difficult as I refine my technique so I’m going to have to address the space concern soon!

And finally, on to the kitchen, our last stop on the tour!

Note that neither the ice cream maker nor the Foreman grill are usually out, but I just happened to be using them the day I took this photo.

Well, that’s it! That’s the tour. I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into my little space!