The Art of Staging Photos: Fantasy versus Reality

Look at my awesome desk! I got the top organized and cleared out most of the drawers. It makes such a nice place to work when I need a computer to sit down to.

It's so nice to look at this picture. I hope my mom sees it and makes a comment about what a good job I did. Yes, I'm 36 years old and still looking for affirmations from my mom! By the way, mom, if you're reading, you can stop now. Just give me a call on the phone and tell me you love my desk!

Is she gone?? Good, cause after I took that picture up there, I backed up a bit and took another one.

I really did work hard to get the desk cleaned up. Then I rooted through my sewing materials a few times over Christmas. And there on the left you can see my storage bins for the kids' school work. I really do use them! I even have a basket on top so we can put stuff there if we can't file it right away. Well, we used to have a basket there...Henry was trying to put something in the basket and he knocked it over completely. Of course, he didn't clean up any of that mess.

My book shelf is in serious need of an intervention and I am totally ready to do that...as soon as I can get to the shelf!

To the right of the desk is where I had put my bar stool from my teaching days. Ken decided he wanted it in the kitchen, so he took the stuff off of it, added it to the mess already there and then moved the stool.

When I picked my word of the year this is the exact thing I had in mind. And I promise, I will get to it! I've been getting rid of little pockets of stuff all over the house this month. I'm trying to take pictures so I can prove it in a post later. For the sake of full disclosure, they'll probably be very closely cropped pictures. I'm not embarrassed to post either of these pictures, but I'd rather post the clean looking ones. They motivate me better even if they aren't showing the whole picture.

What do you think of the practice of posting closely cropped pictures? Is it lying or just selective truth-telling?

I'm linking up today with Lisa's 1-Word Challenge (I used two of them this time).

I'm also linking up with Jen for the Mommy Reality Challenge: The Gritty Reboot.