{This is REAL Life}

We all know those people.  Those perfect people.  The people with spotless photos, the ones that look like scenes from magazines, with their perfect children, and spotless homes, and flawless smiles.  The ones we always stumble on while we're hiding from the kids who are yelling at each other again, while the puppy is running off with your favorite shoes, the phone is ringing, dinner is burnt... Those people.

I don't want to be those people.  I like pretty pictures, and I like sharing pretty pictures.  But I want to be real.  Really real.  Not the real those kind of people say they're going to be when they fake a hair out of place... Nope, I want to be REAL.  Because my life is crazy.  Madness is our middle name here, and if I edited away the background of our days, we'd loose what makes us who we are.  And while I'll beg that you call before you ever visit, so I can at least spray the air with windex to make things at least smell clean... I'm gonna show and tell you all about real life here... 

Like when one day your wallpaper from the previous home owners literally starts driving you mad.  It was yellowed, and yellow, and had weird aged lines, and a gross texture, and had to be at least 40 years old, and not a cool vintage, but just OLD... And then I started to feel like this...The-Yellow-Wall-Paper.pdf   So in a fit of madness, I began to rip it all done, and over a year later we're still finishing that room.  Why?  Floods happened, and layoffs happened, and life happened, and job changes happened, and puppies, and children, and LIFE.  We literally just finished it enough this weekend so I could hand my curtains up that have been sitting here since the spring, and so I could put up my ADULT Christmas Tree.  Because the husband and myself sharing a tree is like boxing a lion.  It ain't happening.  He likes flash, and I like Martha Stewart, the puritan/shaker/backwoods/french/country/chic.  And then the kids start to beg to help decorate the adult tree, and so you let them, while a cat hides in the branches and attacks all of us, and really it's a mess, and looks nothing like Better Homes and Gardens, and is way not internet ready... but you know what?  It's ours.  It's there.  And we laughed.  We don't do that nearly enough.

And the kids didn't fight the whole time, if you can even believe that.  Christmas Miracle?  Close enough.  So the trim is all over there floor, the walls aren't finished, and my collection of china is still waiting for a home... but this is REAL life.  And it's better than not living because things aren't perfect.

Go on now, share something real, somewhere, enjoy it, savor it, have a laugh.  Time is always running out after all.

~Emily