Keeping Up Appearances

Normally when I do a post for a finished furniture piece, I stage it with lots of pretty things, take it outside, snap pretty pictures, and edit them so everything looks pretty and perfect. Everything in our little apartment is perfect and pretty, and the hubs and I are perfect, and life is unicorns and rainbows.

Ahem...

As we all know, life is not perfect.

People are not perfect.

And I am no exception.

I've been struggling lately with trying to keep up appearances. Doing my hair and makeup every morning gets so exhausting sometimes, and picking out just the right outfit so you feel pretty and confident can make me late for work. I try to control my temper and stay level-headed but all it takes is someone taking away my right-of-way outside our complex and my Jesus fish is burning a hole through my trunk. I will cook healthy and nutritious meals for me and my husband every night and we'll stick to a gym schedule and be super in shape and fabulously fit. We just got married and our entire apartment needs to be decorated, furnished, clean, and organized...less than three months later. Right?

Who can keep up with all of that?!?!

I try to, but sooner than later, everything catches up to me and I can only keep so many balls up in the air as I'm juggling. Eventually, some drop and I can't hide them anymore.

That's where I'm at right now with life, so it's only fitting that this furniture post has the same tone. While the glamor shots of finished furniture pieces on professional blogs and magazine websites are super cute, I just couldn't keep up this time with my own piece. Our home office room was overrun with boxes, bins, and crates. We desperately needed storage and we needed it yesterday.

Let's face it folks, this is real life:

Fake Christmas trees, cat carriers, drying racks, paper shredders...they all have to go somewhere.

So to recap, SC#2 started out at a TV cabinet.

I had two coats of Annie Sloan's "Duck Egg" all sanded down and waxed. My finish got streaky, which I wasn't too happy about. I thought I had done everything right (sanding with 400 grit sandpaper in between coats, wiping up all the dust, waxing with a brush and buffing afterwards) but the finish wasn't the perfectly smooth glassy surface I was trying to create. Maybe that's the point though...life isn't a smooth glassy surface. It's textured, rough, and bumpy.

I ordered some adorable knobs from Chelsea at the Salt Box Trading Co. through Etsy and they arrived today. She wrote a sweet little note on my invoice that perked me up and put a smile on my face.

It was time to screw those puppies on and put the cabinet to immediate use.

The hubs and I spent most of the day today organizing everything in the office. We shredded old documents and made piles of things to sell and give away. We threw out trash. We made multiple trips to the dumpster. We stored, filed, and sorted our way to an office that we can now use without navigating an obstacle course of stuff.

Sometimes, you just have to clean house like that.

Now, sitting quietly in the corner, is SC#2 bearing up under the weight of our Christmas tree, wreaths from our wedding, and my old TV.

Behind closed doors, we're secretly hiding our junk.

The chalk paint distressed nicely where I wanted it to and the knobs pop out just right against the color.

Can you see the streaky finish? It's a good reminder that I don't have to be perfect all the time, and things aren't always going to turn out how I thought they would.

So friends, don't feel like you always need to have it all together, because no one does. Life is messy and people have junk. It could be out in the open and all over the floor, or secretly concealed behind closed doors in the hopes that no one notices.

Just rest easy, take a breath, and give yourself a break.

There's grace for that.