adventure is out there!

We are huge Pixar fans and I have to say that the Pixar film "Up" just might be my all time favorite movie they have produced.

The movie opens up showing how a boy named Carl (the main character) and Ellie (his soon to be future wife) meet as children and fall in love. Both Carl and Ellie have a love for adventure and after being unsuccessful in starting a family, Carl decides to take Ellie to South America to fulfill her lifetime dream of going to Paradise Falls. Though as often is the case, "life happens" and they quickly need to dip into their "Paradise Falls" savings to pay for house and car repairs and so forth...Finally, when an elderly Carl is actually able to buy tickets, Ellie passes away and they never make it to Paradise Falls together.

In the opening sequence as they tell Carl and Ellie's love story we see Ellie placing a painting she did of her and Carl's home resting by Paradise Falls on the mantel of their fireplace.

When we decided to have Billy paint something for the studio, replicating this painting jumped into both of our minds.

Not only is the movie sentimental to us, the painting represents one of the underlying themes of Up and that is that "Adventure is out there!".

As we begin our adventure of being self employed, and honestly, the only studio of our kind in Yuba City, California, the painting serves as a great reminder to enjoy every bit of this journey.

Instead of painting Carl and Ellie's home by the falls, we decided to paint what represents our "dream" and that was to open a design studio, and we did it! Yay! (with the grace of God and support of our family, friends, and clients, of course!). So, resting next to the falls in our depiction is the building that houses our design studio.

Billy spent hours working away on this and it turned out absolutely beautiful. Though it was finished in time for the opening, we didn't have it hanging up at that time, so I snapped the top photo shortly after the opening.

I love having Billy's artwork up in the studio...his illustration and fine art skills largely separate him from other designers and I think that most people have a misconception that designers simply move around clipart and text and they don't realize that designers worth their time and money are actually true artists; the computer doesn't create designs (in our case), the designer does! The computer is simply another tool...like a paintbrush :)

Every time I look up in the studio and see this, I can't help but smile and wonder what our journey holds!