Radiate: Darrah Week: Capturing beauty in the Mess

This week Darrah Parker from Lens Mama was the guest teacher.  The assignment was to find beauty in the mess.

I would not describe myself as a total clean freak but I do like my house to be tidy.  But when you work full time and are a Mom...you learn quickly that you have to let some things go...ie. the clean, spotless house. 

When we were showing our old house to sell, I decided that there was only so much effort I was going to put into making my house presentable.  My Mantra was "You are buying the house not our Mess (stuff)".  So yes I did make sure that the toys were all neatly organized but one look at our living room and it was clear that a child did indeed live there.

I believe that getting messy is part and parcel to having fun with my daughter.  So yes I have painted my hands and feet and have had glue on my hands etc. 

The best part of our new house is having room to contain the Mess...a playroom.  This doesn't mean that you won't find the stroller in the upstairs living room, Dora figurines in the kitchen or stickers in every room. 

This past weekend it was Thanksgiving and my very good friends came into town to visit and to spend it with us.  It was a wonderful weekend but like all of our visits, it was way to short.    On Sunday all of us pitched in to cook Thanksgiving supper.  What in the past always seemed like a lot of work, was completely effortless and a lot of fun. 

Of course this week's assignment was on my mind.  Everyone was told that there would be no cleaning up until after I took some pictures.

I was grateful for the mess because it meant that I was fortunate enough to have friends and family and food on my table.

 

 On Thanksgiving Day Rachael and I took out her chalk and drew on our driveway.  I played around with getting viewpoints and at some points I was laying on the driveway.  Of course the end result was chalk on our clothing.

 

Balls have always been some of Rachael's favorite things.  Over a year ago I bought her a used Princess inflatable ball castle but unfortunately a lot of balls were missing.  So I ordered her some balls...100 to be exact.  Trust me picking up 100 balls is not fun.   But now that Rachael has a Playroom I can choose whether or not I will pick them up.  Anyway I asked Rachael is she wanted to play with her balls, and basically had my camera ready,  I laid on my stomach to get the picture on the right as I wanted to see the balls at ground level and to see where all of he balls ended up once the bag was opened.