5 Ways to Channel Your Inner Martha Stewart – Guest Post

One of my favorite bloggers is Booyah’s Mommy over at The Adventures of Chip and Bobo.  Her posts always feel like they could have been written about my life and they never fail to make me laugh.

I first met her when she tried to hook up my cat Harry with her sweet (yet slightly neglected) kitty, Booyah.  I’d love for you to meet her too, so I asked her to do a guest post for me.  Happily, she agreed and now we can all learn how to channel our inner Martha Stewart!

So, read her post below and then go check her out at The Adventures of Chip and Bobo.  You’ll be happy you did!

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My house does not look like Martha Stewart's. I would like it to be.  Instead, I have a personal to-do list honey-do list a mile long of projects we will get to... someday. But until someday comes, I have five rules I live by that have helped me achieve near-domestic perfection.  In short, five surefire ways to be more Martha-like.

1.  Keep an immaculate abode.

Like this:

Oops, wrong picture.  This is actually the way my house always looks:

At least when guests come over.  Just don't peek behind the couch. I am also a stickler for making sure my floors are clean enough to eat off.  Well, sort of.  We apply the 5 second rule to any food dropped on the floor.  Does that count?

2.  Celebrate the holidays.

I love holidays.  Like Martha, I am obsessed with making sure our house is properly decked out for every celebration.  Putting the decorations away, however, is not my strong suit.  (Note that in the above picture, the July 4th decorations are still up).  This is intentional. The truth is, I only like to make one trip to the attic to simultaneously put away the old decorations and haul out the new ones.  Some may call this laziness; I call it efficiency. It is for this reason that if you visit my house in June, you'll still see bunnies, chickens and eggs galore.  And why you'll probably see stars and flags until late September, when the Halloween decorations come out.  Clearly, we need to throw some more holidays into the mix.  I'm thinking we might need to start decorating for more obscure celebrations, like National S'mores Day.

3.  Bake like there's no tomorrow.

I bake a mean instant cookie.  You know, the kind you take out of the package, break apart, and slap onto a cookie sheet.  My kids love 'em.  As do my guests.  I just make sure to hide the wrapper before they come over.

4. Dine in style.

Now that it's summer, dining alfresco is a regular occurrence for us.  This usually entails breaking out the fine china paper plates for every meal. And, because Rule #1 also applies outdoors, I am always diligent about cleaning up afterward.  Spraying down the deck with the garden hose is the easiest way to clean up our outdoor dining room.

5. Accept that the little things can make all the difference.

If you're a Martha aficionado like I am, you know that it's the details that make all the difference.  The little things can turn an event into a party, a meal into a feast, or house into a home. I used to obsess about the details.  My house used to be dust free.  You used to really be able to eat off the floors.  I cooked elaborate meals, and baked... from scratch. Then I had kids.  And I slowly realized that the little things... are just that.  Little details that, in the grand scheme of things, don't make a lick of difference. And so, I'm gradually learning to let go of the details, and just accept... That I'll be constantly sidestepping My Little Ponies and Matchbox cars all over the house.  That my kids are going to grow up thinking Easter is celebrated in June.  That we will kill some perfectly good trees because I just don't want to do the dishes that night. And that the two little things most important to me are named Chip and Bobo.   In the grand scheme of things, they make all of the difference.  As Martha would say, that's a good thing.