I just read this article over on BlogHer and it has resonated although for slightly different reasons than the author of that article. You see, my problem isn’t the expectation that I should be building a brand (although if Cadbury want to send me some chocolate then go for it!) but that I never anticipated being a “Mummy blogger”. I don’t feel that I have particularly new or interesting viewpoints on parenting – actually if I’m honest, I still have that flicker of doubt in my own parenting ability and thus I feel that blogging my day-to-day life would be of minimal value to readers – but this blog is stagnating while my crafting and baking is somewhat on hiatus.

It’s not that I don’t want to be creative – Lord knows I do – but I am just so busy right now. I genuinely don’t know how certain other blogging, homeschooling mothers-of-many manage without liberal applications of prozac, coffee and w(h)ine. So I’ve decided that since the important thing is to write, I shall do so even if it isn’t much to do with crafting or parenting. So today’s topic du choix is “Keeping up appearances“.

I found this photo in one of the many flickr groups I’m a member of:

and I was instantly drawn in to the clean, calm and serene aura given off. This is what I aspire to! A bit of nosying around helped me find that the photographer also writes a blog. I think it’s testament to her fabulous eye for photographs and beautiful subject matter that I’ve spent the last hour gazing at this blog despite it being written in Swedish. I could whinge and whine about my lack of photography talent, but I shan’t because if I put the effort in to learn how to use our fancy camera then I’d improve my own pictures greatly. Time, alas, is not my friend. So instead I shall whinge and whine about my messy house.

The reason I even found that photograph is because my bedroom is tidy and I was inspired to go rooting through flickr to look at other people’s home space. The tidy bedroom may not seem like a big deal to you Amanda Soule/Nigella Lawson types with the perfect houses (Manda McGrory I’m looking at you) but we have lived here for 3y8m and my house is the tidiest it has ever been. If I can just get the quail out of my hall and encourage my children to stop drawing on any wall they choose, I might be able to post similar pictures of my beautiful home.
Admission time:
1) It took two days of almost non-stop tidying supplemented with Season 5 of The West Wing, many cups of tea and cake to gain access to my desk.
2) The kids have watched a lot of TV this week.
3) After we kept buying socks because we had no clean pairs, I bullied Bob into sorting out our long-neglected sock mountain. About 80 pairs, we estimate.
4) We finally unpacked some boxes that we had abandoned since we moved here. Oops?
5) I convinced our supermarket delivery driver to leave the crates so that I could unpack them at my leisure. Whether it was sympathy (we had 12 crates of shopping!!) or fear (I think the kids were all naked when he arrived) he acquiesced and honestly these crates are the best storage ever. I have six in my bedroom now neatly organised with my craft supplies.
6) I’m seriously considering making slipcovers for the aforementioned half-inched delivery crates, partly because green doesn’t go with my room and partly because it’ll hide my guilt

I honestly want to know how other parents manage it. I turned my back for two minutes yesterday and Nairn & Erica had the floor covered in bits from their “Decorate your own Easter bonnet” kits including various brightly coloured feathers, sequins and other toddler-oriented craft crap. We were 100% sure we’d hidden all the pens away from Erica only for her to have actually deliberately stashed some and used them to draw on the sofa AGAIN. Should I post a photograph of our reality? I think not, that is how to lose friends methinks. Tell me, friends: How do you do it?!

Please note, due to slow questionnaire returns the Little and Large swap sign-up has been extended and swap partners will be allocated ASAP!

Posted under me, swaps