Why My Living Room Is My Studio (And Why I Wouldn’t Change It)

No separate studio. No quiet room. Just a living room, four kids, and a creative business running in the middle of it all. Why the imperfect environment turns out to be exactly right.

Let Me Describe My Workspace

I want to describe my workspace for you.

It’s a living room. There’s a couch. A TV that is usually occupied by cartoons. A rug that has seen better days. A coffee table that doubles as a snack station and an occasional toddler launch pad.

And right in the middle of all of it… my computer, my sketchbook, my color swatches, and my work.

There is no separate studio. There is no door that closes the world out. There is no silent, beautifully lit creative space waiting for me at the end of a hallway.

There is just this room. This life. And the work happening inside of it.

This Was Never the Plan

Is it just me… or did you also have a very specific vision of what your creative space would look like someday? Mine involved natural light. A dedicated desk. Quiet.

The reality is four kids, a husband, and a creative business that lives where the family lives.

I used to see this as a limitation. The thing I was working around. The obstacle between me and the ‘real’ version of the creative life I was trying to build.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped seeing it that way. Not because the chaos got quieter… if anything, Bodhi has made sure of that… but because I started to understand what this environment was actually doing for my work.

The Environment Is the Inspiration

Here’s what I’ve figured out: the patterns I design are inspired by everyday life. Real life. The specific, imperfect, warm, chaotic, beautiful texture of it.

And I create them in the middle of that life. Not at a remove from it. In it.

The colors I notice are the colors in this house. The warmth I try to build into every design is the warmth I feel in this room. The sense that art should feel like home? I make it in my home.

When I’m deep in a collection and Maylee twirls past me… mid-twirl, somehow managing to both inspire me and kick my chair… that’s the work. When Amari crashes into me with that full-body hug and I’m reminded that love can be loud… that’s the work. When Kaiori sits nearby doing her own thing and says something so unexpectedly funny that I have to stop entirely… that’s the work too.

The environment isn’t a distraction from my creative practice. It’s the source material.

The Hard Part Is Still Real

I want to be honest with you, because I think it matters.

This is not always easy.

Creating in the middle of your life… without separation, without a room with a door, without guaranteed quiet… takes a different kind of discipline than the studio version. It requires being able to pick up and put down work fluidly. It requires learning to protect certain hours (mine are 9 to 2, and they are non-negotiable when I can help it). It requires making peace with the fact that some days are fragmented and productive is a relative term.

And some days, honestly, Bodhi just wins. The chair is his. The schedule is his. We negotiate a snack, he sits triumphantly, and that time block is done.

(I truly get it, baby. That chair is incredible.)

But here’s what I know after doing this long enough: the imperfect environment builds the imperfect resilience you need to build an imperfect creative business. And imperfect, done consistently, gets somewhere worth going.

What This Has Taught Me About Design

Living and working in the same space… especially a space this alive… has shaped the way I think about the work I make.

I think about how patterns will feel in a home because I create them in a home. I think about whether a design can be lived with over time because I live with my work every day. I think about warmth and comfort and the visual feeling of a space because those things surround me constantly.

And I think that shows in the designs. At least, I hope it does.

For the One Without a Studio

If you’re building something creative without the ideal setup… I see you.

In the car during school pickup. On the couch after everyone is finally asleep. At the kitchen table with a kid nearby pretending not to need you while absolutely needing you. In the in-between, the margins, the small pockets of time that don’t look anything like what you imagined.

That counts. All of it counts. The imperfect environment doesn’t mean imperfect work.

Sometimes it means work that has more life in it than a quiet studio ever could.

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For the One Building in the Margins

If this is the kind of conversation you want more of, I want to show up in your inbox.

Candidly, Candi is where I send the letters that don’t fit in a caption… the real stories, the honest tools, the “okay I have to tell someone about this” moments from the in-between. And I’m just as interested in hearing what’s going on in your world as I am in showing up for you.

Put your name on the list. I’ll see you in there.