Wednesday, October 24, 2012

On Why I Blog



As we all know, I looooove working on my house.  I love DIY.  I love organization.  But I’m pretty sure none of my Facebook friends care about the fact that I organized the cabinet under my bathroom sink.  They also probably don’t care that I’m planning to organize my laundry room Friday when we’re out of school.  But it’s really interesting to me. 

I know my blog is nowhere near the coolest DIY blog.  It’s definitely not even close.  I don’t know all the tricks of creating a fantastic website.  I have some vague knowledge I picked up in college from the guy I was dating at the time.  I’m slowly learning a couple little things on my own.  But it is definitely nothing fancy.  And why is my header so dang big?  Um, I made it in Publisher and I made it too big.  Fail.  But, I tried, right?  And at least it’s not the plain old blogger template. 

I don’t have a fancy camera with all those snazzy settings to make my pictures look like they come out of a magazine.  For quite a while, I was taking all my pictures with my cell phone.  My new camera is better, but it’s not professional quality.  And I don’t really have the ability to edit photos.  So, what I take is what you get.  I’m learning a little though.  There are some things though, that I just can’t figure out how to get a good shot of.  Though it might help if I didn’t always wait until night time to take pictures.  Or if I would not sit in the middle of the floor and take pictures on our stained carpet.  But, we work with what we’ve got.

My house is never going to look like it belongs in a magazine.  I just have to come to terms with that.  Yes, I am absolutely 100% proud of the improvements we have made.  But, when your house is made of paneling, you can only do so much.  And I love our house.  It has quirks (i.e. lots of paneling and a tiny master bedroom).  But it’s our house.  I may be horribly embarrassed by our kitchen floor.  I mean it’s super bad guys.  The linoleum is peeling up.  It is insanely stained in places.  No matter how many times I mop, it looks dirty.  But, I know it will be better someday.  And until then, I try not to look down.  I have dreams of replacing the linoleum with some nice wood laminate and then carrying that same laminate into the living room and down the hallway.  It will be gorgeous.  But, I try not to live in the future.  Right now there are parts of our house that are ugly but it’s still a thousand times better than when we moved in. Like this....
And when I remember how it used to look, I feel so much better about things.  I read so many of these blogs where people are making over an "ugly house"  Oh boy.  Sometimes I just want to laugh.  There were so many truly ugly things about our house.  I am so proud of our before and afters.  No, it's not magazine perfect, but it barely even looks like the same house anymore.

I still have tons of plans for our house.  Do I feel like I have to an amazing project to blog about every day?  Yes, I really do.  But, that’s really just not realistic for me.  I work full time.  And my commute is an hour each way.  And my husband likes to eat dinner.  And I like to watch Gilmore Girls.  So, am I really ever going to have a huge project to show off every day?  No way.  But, I can show you little pieces of things I’m working on.  Or occasionally talk about other random things.  Like my nail polish adventures (still totally in love with my turquoise ombre nails, they’re totally distracting me today BTW).  And my extreme love of Gilmore Girls and country music.

So, basically I blog because I like to.  It will never be perfect and it doesn’t have to be.  And I’m okay with that.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Mary! I found your blog via thriftydecorchick's blog and read this post on my way home from work on Thursday--and it really spoke to me. I too work full time and have a long commute, so understand where you're coming from! I also don't have much time or a fancy camera or anything like that, but I love to blog and share what I can. Glad to find another non-professional blogger who also blogs...because she likes to! Keep up the great work. You house looks great!
    Cheers,
    Gillian

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