An Honest Discussion on Styling Bookshelves & Being Real

A couple of weeks ago, this article about styling bookshelves stumbled into my Bloglovin’ newsfeed. This weekend, I saw this from A Beautiful Mess about Candy Vanilla Milkshakes. Really? Vanilla milkshakes aren’t good enough? A bookshelf stuffed to the gills with family photos and good books just doesn’t cut the mustard?

Nope, not when you’ve been a blogger for that long.

I guess I get it. They’ve already talked about the basics and need to find new and different ways to wow the crowd, but are they really doing anything more than making us feel bad about the ways we decorate or treat our family? What if I like vanilla milkshakes?!? (Note: I do not like vanilla milkshakes and will be trying this candy version ASAP, but only while shaking my fist to the sky…)

I’m coming up fast to my first anniversary of blogging at this address and am trying to figure out exactly what my message is here. While I really hope this blog inspires people to be the best version of themselves, I hope they never leave beating themselves up because they can’t imagine why anyone would need a printable weekly cleaning schedule. (On the other hand, if you are the type of person that would lovingly display this calendar in a homemade modge-podged frame, perhaps we’re not meant to be friends… My home would drive you batty. Though you are welcome to come over and clean up my bathroom any time.)

What is your opinion on what’s floating around Pinterest? Does it inspire you to do projects or make you feel bad because you just don’t care?

In the spirit of being real, I’m about to share some pictures that you would never find on Style Me Pretty or Emma Magazine. Though I would love for everything to be as well-lit and delicious as they make life out to be, the pictures below are what my life looks like 95% of the time, particularly before it goes through a Photoshop gauntlet.

Sometimes you square off a beautiful picture and then something gets in the way…

Photobombing An Idealic Scene

Which is even more fun when I’m trying to take professional shots.

Wedding Hairpiece and An Inspector DogI may finally think I’m pretty while pregnant, but there’s nothing pretty about The Broken Turtle trying to get up from any flat surface…
Too Big to Get UpFact: This is what our living room looked like for much of the summer. If it hadn’t been for C’s baby shower, we might still be dealing with some of this.

Fact 2: We will never not deal with the Corgi hair dust bunnies until we’re not dealing with the Corgi.
What Our House Looks Like Sometimes food looks delicious. Other times it looks like this.Peaches Aren't Always Pretty!

Let me promise you now that I will always try to share ideas or projects on this blog that I think are obtainable. I like cooking so there may be some fancy-pants recipes coming our way. If you’d rather stick with the bottled sauce and boxed noodles while saving your free time for sewing, chip-carving, or simply catching up on past seasons of The Walking Dead, have at it, Tiger. If it makes you happy, that’s all that matters.

You get the idea, right?

P.S. Yes, I do remember that I asked y’all to vote on how to decorate my own bookshelves long before the offending article from DesignSponge crossed my path. Yes, I do appreciate the irony. Yes, I did organize my books by spine cover and/or series. And yes, I am sharing a picture now in hopes that you all run out and give it a try (but not before sharing with all of your social networks first! 🙂 )

Striped_Bookshelves

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