This is my first weekly update since the holidays. I took Christmas and New Years off to celebrate with family. I hope you’re all staying healthy! It seems like everyone is sick right now.

So what’s new in my world? Well, before Christmas, I had a holiday painting night with my sister, where I painted this piece:

I haven’t gotten it up on Etsy yet, due to the holiday chaos, but I think it will be a great Christmas art print for next year.

Etsy orders have slowed down a bit since Christmas. I’m back to shipping three days a week (M/W/F), instead of every day. This shift has allowed me to make time for my #30homeobjects series. I’m on day 7, and fortunately I haven’t run out of inspiration yet. For those of you who are just hearing about this now, I’m sharing my daily paintings on Instagram.

I’m so humbled by how many artists have joined the challenge. It’s not too late to paint along with us, if you’re thinking of joining. You can do the last 20, 15, 10, or 5 days with us. That’s the beauty - it’s a choose your own adventure kind of thing. My list of prompts to help you get started is here.

My next big work project is my newsletter. I promised myself I would send them regularly this year. I’m just trying to figure out what kind of content to include. Do I just share updates on my work (like these posts), or do I provide content to help artists make their best work? Maybe both. And how often do I send? Weekly, bi-weekly, monthly? Any thoughts you could offer in the comments below would be awesome! I’m really feeling lost on this subject.

The weather in Chicago has been worse than ever. It’s been so darn cold, I’ve had to rely on Ryan a lot to walk the dogs. He’s super tough, and I just can’t do it. I’ve been doing a lot of reading by the fire, which has been nice. I just finished reading The Practice: Shipping Creative Work by Seth Godin, and I started Effortless by Greg McKeown. It’s all about how to make time for the important things in life. It’s the perfect companion to his first bestselling book, Essentialism, which has been a guiding light for me in how to do business and life. As far as fiction books go, I just finished up Beach Read by Emily Henry, which was super juicy. I LOVED it. After that, I started Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I’ve read a lot of her books lately, so I’m excited to dive into this one.

Well that’s about all there is to tell you for now. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. For those of you who live in warmer parts of the country, I’m extremely jealous :)