Keeping It Real: The Christmas Edition

First, I need to give credit where credit is due - Young House Love. I'm a big fan of YHL, but I especially love when they do one of their "Keeping It Real" posts, showing us what their home looks like when they are in the midst of a project, or just the day to day hum drum. They remind me that they are human, and they do not live in a bubble of photoshopped perfection.

In this Facebook age, we tend to get altered pictures of what people's lives are like. We are usually shown a filtered version of our FB "friends" lives, the best is shown, and the undesirable is not. I am guilty of this, I mean who doesn't love a good Instagram filter? Seriously, I wish I could walk around with an Instagram filter on - a soft focus that hides my wrinkles and breakouts!

*in the event of my death, this is the pre-approved official picture to be used in any cases where a picture is needed

This is not to be confused with AMC's Dead Yourself filter....

#filtersgonewrong

Now I'm not calling for a movement to show the good, bad and the ugly on FB, I personally prefer to keep FB light and positive. I've even been know to hide people from my news feed that tend to be Eeyores - in the words of Sweet Brown "ain't nobody got time for that".

Ok, ok, I swear there was a point to this whole post - and this people, is why my posts are so few and far between - I am the queen of the tangents! I actually compose blog posts all of the time in my head, they just rarely make it to the Internet...

So without further ado I give you Keeping It Real: The Christmas Edition

Now please don't judge me based solely on this post, although who could blame you?!

Welcome to the week before Christmas in our house: The Christmas cookies are half gone because someone ate most of them herself (I refuse to name names. ok, it was me)... the house is a disaster (we're talking barely fit for humans)... I can't remember the last real meal that I cooked... I'm pretty sure that the last time the bathrooms were cleaned we were eating turkey... my husband is wearing his last pair of clean underwear... the bins of ornaments are still sitting in the family room (pretty sure they've been around since the time of the turkey too)... out of the last 7-9 days, I've only managed to shower 3 times... I cried yesterday when I looked at a picture of the boys from 2011 and it hit me that they will never be that little again, and that those days of Christmas magic for all three of them are over (why???)

'Twas the Night Before Christmas that this mom's heart exploded

Martha Stewart, I am not, but I have been known to Martha it up sometimes. I will also let you in on a few secrets - my house may look spotless when company arrives, but it was a mad dash to get it that way, and there probably is a closet somewhere about to burst... the whipped cream may be freshly made, but the gingerbread is a box mix... the Christmas card may look picture perfect, but it wasn't easy getting that shot with a stubborn 4-year old that thought holding his breath was the way to go...

So why am I telling you all of this? Because I think we all need to cut ourselves some slack. As women, and mothers, we have a tendency to put a lot of pressures on ourselves to create magic and make everything perfect.
The other day I admitted to my husband that I can really only do one thing at a time. I was on a roll with keeping the house tidy, the laundry in check, and getting the kids off to school, but then Christmas came along, and a week + of being sick hit me, and things spiraled out of control. The handmade gifts that I had planned didn't get made, cookie trays to our new neighbors never got delivered, and I never got around to decorating my pretty white tree.
My husband put it best when he said "the difference between us is that you set out to climb Everest, and I set out to walk over the hill."
He couldn't have been more right - I always give myself these unattainable goals, goals that I could never possibly accomplish. Being a master procrastinator does not help my self-imposed situation either...

I think I took a step in the right direction last night when I called my mother and asked if she would mind hosting Christmas Eve at her house. She was happy to host, and I was happy to take 1 of my 3 hosting days away. So now I can host a big family gathering on Sunday, have a couple of days to recover, and then be refreshed to host a lovely Christmas dinner - topped off with some box mix gingerbread!

*on the LEFT - what you will see on Facebook and Instagram              *on the RIGHT - what things look like in reality      

*LEFT - this fell down yesterday, and looks exactly the same today       *RIGHT - someone really needs to clean this up    

*somehow the holding of the breath wasn't captured on film...

Wishing you all a Merry Messy Christmas!