happy tuesday!!!

happy tuesday my friends... wow what a busy weekend, it went by fast!! i sure hope all of you had a wonderful weekend!! well... school is back in full swing (ready or not) and we spent most of our weekend getting ready for school and celebrating my son's birthday!! so now that the house is quiet once again, it is time for me to roll up my sleeves, get the house back in order and find my 'school year' routine again. over the weekend i had a few minutes to visit some of my favorite blogs and i came across this article at Log Your Memory and just LOVED it!! i think it is very true... so many of us never want to scrap the 'real life' that we lead... we just want to scrap those perfect photos of those perfect moments. i love how she says that there are 'varying degrees to which each of us are willing to “air our dirty laundry” through our scrapbooking'. i find this to be so true!! while i feel that my scrapbooking is very honest... i do find myself picking and choosing those perfect pictures rather than the less flattering ones, you could say. i have a few friends that i so admire their style... they have such 'raw honesty' in their layouts and are such poignant writers, you just want to read more and more about the moments they have scrapbooked. and after reading this article... i have now vowed to try and be more open to using those 'raw moments' in life... cause after all... none of us are perfect. hope you enjoy this article... have a great day and big hugs!!!

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I was part of an interesting conversation the other day that got me thinking a little bit about “real life” scrapbooking.

A gal mentioned that she wasn’t able to get a particular scrapbook layout done because it would have first required her to spend hours cleaning her office. You see, she wanted that perfect photo to go with the scrapbook page … the one that showed her home the way she wanted others to see it.

The rest of us chuckled a bit and the discussion evolved into the varying degrees to which each of us was willing to “air our dirty laundry” through our scrapbooking. We all agreed that real life scrapbooking entails sharing both the good and the bad … we just have differing degrees to which we are willing to reveal the less flattering parts of ourselves through our layouts, blogs and other avenues of sharing.

The conversation was interesting, but I had more or less forgotten about it until this afternoon when I came upon this scene in my living room …



My first thought, of course, was “Ugh. Great time to be without a functioning vacuum cleaner.” And then like many faithful everyday scrappers, my next step was to grab the camera & snap this photo. After all, this is a pretty realistic documentation of my daughter’s recent fascination with scissors.

I wouldn’t think twice about scrapping – and sharing – this photo. To me, that’s what documenting the “real” life of my family is all about.

But then it hit me.

If I had company coming to visit, there is no way I’d want them to see this room in this state. Rather than snapping a photo, I’d be frantically figuring out a way to get this room spic-and-span in order to present a more acceptable home environment before my guests arrived.

I’m willing to bet … in fact, I’m absolutely positive … that I’m not the only one out there that wants others to see their home looking its best, even if “best” isn’t a very accurate depiction of “normal.” Yet I and others like me claim to place a priority on being authentic.

There’s something wrong with this picture.

It’s human nature to want to make a good impression on others. But I think many of us also have a deep yearning to reveal and be accepted as our true selves, without putting on that somewhat false front. I could reason that I make the effort to clean for company because I want my guests to feel comfortable and that my house is clean as often as it is messy, so it isn’t like going to this effort is entirely out of character. But it made me wonder why it’s so easy to share that less than “perfect” part of ourselves in some cases, but not in others.

Think about it … how many times have you had a professional portrait taken without first taking time to primp?

So what do YOU think? How much “real” is TOO much when it comes to sharing with others? Does what you reveal through your scrapbooking or your photos align with what you share in “real life”? Which is the “real” you … the one captured in an everyday candid shot or the one cleaned up for the portrait?