Pinterest Perfect

It's a bit after 9am, and I've had 2 rather large mugs of coffee, started a load of laundry, taken a shower, and made a pan full of mushrooms and eggs that the kids refused to eat.  This is a productive morning, for me, usually I'm lucky if I've finished my coffee and managed to pour the kids a bowl of Cheerios by 9am.  


I guess I'm not exactly what you'd call Pinterest Perfect Mom/Wife.  As far as I can tell, these are the qualifications:


1. You have to be able to make a healthy gourmet meal using fresh, local ingredients.  Bonus points if you make all your month's meals all in one day and freeze them.  Extra bonus points if you can make cute little  landscapes and bunny scenes on the plates for your kids to enjoy.


2.  You have to have a perfectly decorated and clean house.  The furniture and decor should be mostly refurbished thrift store/garage sale/dumpster diving finds, accentuated by clever copies of etsy prints/crafts.  You should not use commercial cleaning products, unless you find Method or Mrs. Meyers double coupons you can stack and add to a sale for a overage.  Otherwise, if it can't be cleaned with white vinegar, borax, baking soda, and essencial oils, it's probably not worth cleaning.


3.  Speaking of coupons, your groceries shouldn't cost more than $75/week for a family of 6.


4.  Your family's clothes have to come second hand, or should be homemade.  This includes, but is not limited to, making little girls dresses out of men's dress shirts and baby creepers out of old tees.  Clothes can be worn as long as they can be patched or hemmed.


5.  You have to have rock hard abs.  No excuses.  If those children with peg legs can run 12 miles a day, so can you.


6.  You have to cultivate your relationship with your husband, including clever weekly dates that cost very little money.  To do this, if you have children, you'll either need to trade for babysitting or have your "date" at home after the kids go to bed, paying for babysitting is a big no-no.


7.  Speaking of finances, if you are spending $100 on something, it should be Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University.  You shouldn't have any debt, and you'd better be paying cash for that car and home.


8.  Your kids have to be homeschooled, or, at least, you should be supplementing their education with (free) printable worksheets and summer trips to the museum and zoo and Colonial Williamsburg during family free day.


I'm sure there's more, but I'm bored and forgot the point I was trying to make.  Oh yeah, I was just trying to say, that's not me.  Not a single one.  Especially #5.


I also have a little secret to share.  I can't sew.  Not even a tiny bit, not even a stitch.  That's a sewing word, right?  As far as I can tell, this exempts me from being both a Proverbs 31 wife and a Pinterest Perfect Mother.  You wanna know another secret?  I probably won't ever learn.  First, because I don't want to, second, because it seems boring, third, because I'm bored easily.  Thus, I will NEVER be a Pinterest Perfect Mother.  And that doesn't bother me.


At first I was kind of upset about it, because I really wanted to make these pillows I found online:

But then I found this pillow at World Market.  Sure, it probably cost 6 times as much as the material would've for the other (if I was being super frugal), but it took me a fraction of the time.  In fact, I just walked into the store, loved it, bought it.

Pinterest Perfect?  No.


Generally happy?  Yupper-doodle.