Can I be honest? This week has been a blur. I’m basically living for Sunday because it means the neighborhood home tour will be OVER. It’s been a great motivator to get some stuff done around the house, but it’s been nonstop stress for, oh, MONTHS. On Tuesday (ahem – the day after I got back from High Point = EXHAUSTED ZOMBIE) the newspaper sent a photographer over at 3 in the afternoon to shoot and do a video on the home tour. It meant that we were in panic mode all day long. Our amazing housekeeper dropped everything to run over and do a quick surface clean and we shoved stuff into closets and into the garage.

This also means that I’m not allowing the kids to touch a thing. And if you look under any one of our beds or in our closets, crap might spill out and cover you, avalanche-style. Yesterday? The dog vomited on one of my chairs ( OF COURSE HE DID) and then? The baby spilled an entire bottle of milk all over the living room rug. NO NO NO NO NO.

So what I’m getting at basically is this: what you see in photos? It’s not real life. Ever. Real life is the dog gagging on the sofa, the baby dumping out an entire bag of cereal on the floor, and probably a clogged toilet somewhere in the house. It’s toys and books and baseball cards, and a mountain of laundry, and maybe one corner of the house that looks presentable. But I don’t really care. I love pretty and I love design — but our home is our nest. And nests are messy, with feathers and twigs and cracked egg shells. Someday my baby birds will fly the nest and that’s when I’ll miss all the chaos that this season entails.

I hope I see you at the home tour on Saturday if you’re in the OKC area (buy tickets here). Just don’t open any closets doors, ‘k? Or my fridge, for that matter.

No 5 things this weekend as I haven’t had enough time to FIND 5 things to write about! HA!