It’s NOT always Perfect – a bit of a view behind the scenes to prove it.

In this blogworld, this sea of ideas and decor and crafts and thoughts, you might start to feel like the persons behind the blogs have it all together and their lives and home are always beautiful and perfect.  And I get that because that’s what we show you in our photos and in the words we write.  We tell you all about the latest, greatest project and how easy it is to do and we show you the step-by-step process in crisp, bright photos or video and then we toss in a handful of ‘beauty shots’ of our craft all looking wonderful and lovely.  Or we are showing you how we restyled this room or that room or decked it out for the current season.  And after awhile a teeny bit of discouragement comes tapping on your shoulder and whispering that you can never measure up to all the “great bloggers” out there so why try.  Well, I’m here today to show you a bit of the behind the scenes, and prove to you that it’s not always perfect and lovely here.  And I know full well that every singe blog friend of mine would rise up beside me and whole-heartedly agree.  And I know each and every one of them could share some of their own behind-the-scenes photos to prove it.

You see, just outside many of the beauty shots you see in the blog world, are piles of ‘real life’.  Things that have been scooted over so you can get the pretty shot.  In this shot my dining room table was moved over so I could get a more full-on shot of the nook in my dining room.  I was shooting for my Christmas decor posts, and my living room was all beautiful and staged at this point.  I’d just swept it one final time before getting the camera and when I turned around this is what I saw.  I had to chuckle and snapped a quick pick just to prove that my house is not always lovely like my Christmas living room shows it 🙂

Speaking of the living room – this is currently sitting in the doorway and has been for a couple weeks.  The shop vac came in when my husband started working on the doorway between these two rooms.  He got so far and hasn’t had time to get back to it. So the wood for the trim and the sweeper sit here.  They’ve been joined by this old laundry cart I am creating a liner for.  And if you notice at the bottom right corner there is a girls boot peeking out.  My kids never think they need to put their footwear away!

Here’s a fun shot from before Christmas.  In my staged photos the couch is all plumped up, pillows arranged just so, and a plaid throw tossed perfectly for the photos.  I love the look but it doesn’t mesh real well with real life!  Real life demands the pillows get pushed to the ends or tossed on the floor so little (and big) people can sit on the couch and read a book, watch tv, or take a nap.  We live in this house and it rarely keeps it’s ‘staged’ look for more than a couple hours at most.

Take a look at my kitchen.  I usually crop out everything but the window.  And this is why.  Real life happens here!  And even when all the pots and pans are put away and the paper towels are in their proper place my kitchen isn’t all that photo worthy.  It’s hard to stage due to the awkward arrangement of a kitchen that is over 100 years old.  So you don’t see it too often.

My refrigerator always has ‘stuff’ on it too.  If it is shown in a beauty shot I pull all the stuff off.  But again, we live here, a refrigerator is just too easy a place to tack all the reminders up!

You’ve seen my kitchen porch – I love the remodel we did on this.  What I don’t show is the area tucked back in the corner.  It’s always full of ‘stuff’ that isn’t pretty.  So I crop it out of the frame.

There is plenty more I could show you – in fact I know I had some shots of my work room but I dug and dug and couldn’t find them.  Maybe I decided they were just too awful to share and deleted them!  I honestly don’t remember.  But you can rest assured that it is not pretty.  I wish it were.  But I’m very limited on space and this business has taken over and I just can’t keep it all pretty in the space I have.  Someday I hope to have a larger area and better storage so I can make it pretty and fun to share!  I am blessed to be able to work from home and I try not to complain about the lack of adequate space (most of the time) (don’t ask my hubby how much I *might* complain!)

So if you look at all the beautiful photos in the blogosphere just know it’s like a magazine – it’s been staged and fluffed to look good for the photo! 😀

Jill