#reallife house tour

Here's the thing.  I have yet to do a house tour of our new house.  Mainly because I don't feel like it's "done" but also because it's so dang hard to have the whole house spotless AND remember to take photos.  Oh wait- the whole house is never ever clean.  

Another thing- I want my house to be pretty and put together with gorgeous wall arrangements and accent piece from Pinterest.  But who has time for that in real life?  Because in real life I barely have a second to myself to read a book or watch tv at night after the kids go to bed- or God forbid, hang out with my husband.  Working full time and having two kids while keeping up with cooking, cleaning, laundry and attempting to not disappear for the social world = daily struggle.

To be honest, after Maddie was born and I had to unexpectedly go back to work when she was 8 weeks old because my boss quit...we hired a cleaning lady.  And I loved her.  I loved it.  It was simply amazing - no lie.  I made sure to plan anything that we were having on the weekend where people came over the weekend AFTER the Friday they came.  Yep, come to my house and I'll pretend like it's always this clean. Ha! Sad but true!!

And then we decided we wanted to redo our backyard.  Like expensive stuff- ripping out and replacing our current huge retaining wall, new concrete stairs, replace our current (small) patio, extend it by pushing back the retaining wall and then add another new patio.  Also- level the top of our yard out to get a playset.  And I cannot even tell you how excited o am that they are starting work on it today after much discussion, planning (financial and logistical) and excitement!

But since we decided to do it all at once, that's not cheap.  So out goes the cleaning lady monthly expense and in comes the expense for the patio.  Not a fun decision, but that's life right.  And I'm soooo excited for the new space we can enjoy as a family and with our friends- so many fun times to come. 

But in the meantime, inside our house, there are days/moments/weeks that either Jimmy and I are walking around our house and we are like Aahhhhh so messy and just go on a cleaning spree.  This morning was one of them - well I mean it was me walking around our house going AHHHHH I cannot believe what a mess this place freaking is. It really hadn't occurred to me at all when I was working out, getting ready and getting the kids ready - but I ran back upstairs to get something in Maddie's room before I headed out the door to work and I was just like WTF is wrong with our house. 

Seriously.  Like I'm embarrassed and so happy no one is coming inside of it today.

And then I thought - you know what.  The truth of social media is that we only post the nice, clean stuff in our life.  Isn't that the truth?  For sure because I even mentioned the reason I haven't posted a tour of our new house because it's not "done" (hello - never going to be done...needs time - don't have - and lots of money - don't have that either...all thanks to having kids...that I wouldn't trade for the world, but you get the point, right) and it's never clean.  That's because of kids and life.  But as moms in real life (and not who only live in the social media/blogging world), I'm going to show you what my real life looked like today.

And it was a MESS.

But maybe you can relate?  Somewhat?

Or not...then you can just look at pictures of my dirty house and judge me.   Go ahead, judge away.  I have been crazy busy at work for the last two weeks, worked out every morning for the last two weeks and kept my children alive and fed.  In my world - I'm going to call this winning. 

And tomorrow I will clean up this MESS.  But for now, I'm just living in it and thankful for all the space we have and all the stuff we have.  Because sometimes, you have to just relax and LIVE.  Right?  Can I get an amen?  Ok, I'm going overboard now.  Sorry.

Onto the #reallife house tour as I'm calling it.

Laundry room: there is SO much laundry.  These suckers get used and used and used.  I've thought about putting a rug in here and something fun on the walls to make me like it more.  But yep, haven't got around to it.  Probably because of all the laundry to do.fold.repeat.  #mess

OMG my closet.  Are you kidding me?  I know.  What's funny about this messy space is that I actually didn't take all of those things out and throw them on the floor.  Sweet Maddie did.  Yep - when she decides to wake up early and I'm still working out, I swoop her up, bring her into my closet and she finishes my work out with me.  And takes everything out of my bra drawer.  THANKS!  This was literally spotless 2 days ago.

I feel like I clean this constantly.  Never clean.

Wait - laundry outside of the laundry room?  This has been sitting here for two days now.  Jimmy and I somehow both just walk past it on our way to the kid's rooms.  Hmmmmm......

So I have fun stuff to talk about in my dining room.  I do.  New stencil (OMG Jimmy rocked that), new rug, new fabric on my chairs.  However, this room was used as a fort a week ago.  I just took the fort down and now it looks like this.

The number of toys on this floor really isn't TOO horrible.

STUFF.EVERYWHERE in the kitchen.  Always.  This is what our mornings look like.  Packing everyone's stuff, bags, lunches, breakfast, snacks, bottles.  Oh my.

But then there are these two.  I'm thankful for them.  Which makes me in turn thankful for my messy house.  Because I'll take a messy house and a few days where we freak out and clean everything for their hugs, smiles and kisses any day of the week.

How's that for #reallife house tour?  Oh my. Embarrassing.  But true.

And loving every minute of this life.

Happy hump day!