Katrina Van Valkenburgh has lived in Chicago for 25 years and her husband Mike Newman for 26 years. They live in a house in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood. Mike, an architect, runs an office out of the first floor.  Mike and Katrina’s house is completely covered in ivy in the summer, which is magical in it’s own way. They say that the house is alive in the spring and summer and that it changes through the seasons. I thought it was interesting that Mike described the house as alive and that you really feel the “green” living in their house. I really struck when Katrina mentioned that they used to cut the Ivy back at the windows, but that they now like to let it grow across the windows and that it feels like living in a tree or a tree house. It made me want to paint one of the windows in their second floor living space to try to capture a bit of that treehouse feeling.