{un-pinterestly perfect}

If you walked into our house today {or pretty much any day lately} you would be pleasantly {or unpleasantly} surprised.

There is nothing perfect or put together about our home or life right now.

We have a dishwasher that seems to be constantly filled with clean dishes awaiting a long, angry line of hard-crusted on food smeared dishes and utensils on the counter. The kitchen floor is {thankfully} dark colored stone, so you will never be shocked by how truly dirty it is. And please, if you don't mind, don't peek in the oven, ok? The poor thing smokes up every time we fire it up for another frozen pizza.

When you make your way through the dining room/pile everything here room your eyes will be overwhelmed by the broken pieces of crayons, unfinished art projects and random piles of my eBay sales that cover at least half the table.

And if you make it past all of that, the living room and toy room will swallow you whole :) The Christmas tree is currently the pinnacle of both of these rooms, bent limbs, broken ornaments and goofy tilt- it really is a sight to behold. Definetly not something I would pin on pinterest for your inspiration ;) But, it is perfect for our ragamuffin family.

For a long time I have used the imperfections of our home as reasons to not have a friend over or as an excuse to stay home and "pick up." But, if I keep using that one it will make for a very lonely next few years ;)

And it's not just the imperfections of my home, but those insecurities of how that defines me. If my home is not always clean, decorations not perfect and updated, furniture free of stains....what does that say about the kind of mom or person I am? Well, truthfully not much.

And I forget that. I forget that none of that matters and that looking beyond the imperfections and the messes in life is how you connect. It's real. It's in the mess and the hard stuff that life blooms. Life happens in our house, non-stop.

And all that description above is proof. It says raising kids is tough, it is all consuming and comes before everything else. It says, hey look, my life is just like yours. I can not keep up with the laundry, the cleaning, the looking fashionable and give my all to my kids. I can not keep my life and lay it down for another, it just doesn't work like that. Where there is a give, there is a take. Where there is imperfection, there is beauty.

My life will never be Pinterest perfect, and I'm okay with that. I'll take the real life mess over the false cover of perfection any day.

So, come on over, but watch where you step ;)

Invite someone over today, be spontaneous and forget about what "needs" to get done first- I promise you the gift of sharing your life "as is" will always outweigh any momentary "oohs and ahhs" over how clean or beautiful your home is.