What mess?

We live in a very small house with one big room that is the kitchen, dining and living room all in one. I am always amazed at how much goes on in this one room each day. This is the table that I set for dinner each night. This is the table that sees a lot of play dough time. This table is also where our painting and other arts and crafts happen. It is also the place where Sophie struggles through her daily math exercise. I couldn't even tell you how many times a day I wipe it off or sweep under it. Here is what our table looked like Monday afternoon as I was about to clear it off before starting dinner.

I took this picture because I had an unexpected visitor that afternoon. She had come in to pick up something. She was standing looking at the table with all its pencils, papers and such and made the comment "It sure looks like there was some fun school going on here". It wasn't just the table that showed signs of what we had been up to that day. There were also a number of books scattered about the room and lots of folded paper attempts at different origami animals and figures.
We are reading books this week about Japan and Korea. Sophie loved the book Little Oh which is about an origami doll that comes to life.
We, of course had to do some origami today and had all sorts of different cranes, men, butterflies, fish and a few made up animals that Sophie folded hanging about the room.
I am glad this visitor didn't just look around and see a mess, which is what I was thinking when I opened the door and asked her to come inside. I shouldn't be embarrassed at the state of this main room. It is where a lot of learning and living happen. If it didn't look messy then you would think we hadn't done much that day.