These are a few of my Pinteresting things...

I heart Pinterest. I find perusing the site to be completely relaxing. It can be a time-waster so I have learned to be careful and to only Pin when I'm ready for my me-time (as opposed to my family-time). Heh... 

Someone out there might be wondering, "What is Pinterest?" ...My best description for it is that it's a visual social medium. "To pin" is to peruse the site, finding things that inspire or interest you and then saving them in your own space so that you can go back to them later when you're ready to create or remember what you saw. Or, "to pin" is to save a picture of something on the www that you want to return to at another time..something that is inspiring or interesting to you that can be categorized in a way that will help you have easy access to it when you're ready to revisit it. For me, pinning helps organize my thoughts, inspirations, ideas so that I can return to the tutorials, ideas, recipes, etc. when I have a few free minutes to go at 'em. I often see something on the internet that makes me go, "ooooh! That's neat!" and then when I "red x out" I completely forget what it was that I saw or where I saw it. Pinterest is way better than having thousands/millions of "bookmarks" in your browser. 

 Anyway, I thought I'd share some of the things I've done lately that have been inspired by Pinterest.

The very first thing I ever did that was inspired by Pinterest was to recreate this artwork display. I don't have a picture to share because the board is still in the garage where it was painted months ago. I just haven't had the inspiration to finish it because it was intended for our "new living room" (used to be a playroom when I did daycare) and we just don't spend as much time down there as I wish we would (our big expensive fancy TV is in the "old living room, so that's where we dwell). Someday soon (next weekend??) I will finish it and hang it up and I will love it. :)

 I've also tried numerous recipes from Pinterest... a lot of which we will definitely do again as long as we remember to buy the ingredients. The latest recipe we put into action was pinned from this blog post. I had more fun making these thing the kids did, probably because I got to pipe the chocolate onto the pretzels while the kids just watched. Rebecca (4) loved putting the raisin in the middle of each pretzel stick starburst. :) Julia(7) just wanted to eat them... that's my girl.

Last week, it was Boss' Day, and while I don't typically enjoy "celebrating" such things, I do play along. It's been a very long time since I have ever had a BOSS... so I didn't mind going with it. I would have never thought to give a gift for this occasion if my co-worker hadn't texted me to let me know she was going to be buying flowers.. thank goodness for that sweet co-worker so I didn't look like a tool showing up empty handed. Anyway, I made a pop-top can of Oreo cookies (boss' favorite). It was fun. :) It was inspired by this post. Here's how mine turned out:

The picture is not very good - but the can itself was pretty cute. It was the easiest project I've ever done (except maybe for the next one I'll write about)... and it was a cheap gift that was meaningful.

 Ok so this morning, the girls and I were going over all three of our "invitations" for fun things to do today and trying to decide what we'd pick because we can't do them all. They definitely wanted to attend a friend's 6th birthday party, so we had to get to work on a gift for the friend. We decided to make her gift because it is more meaningful that way than rushing out at the last minute trying to find something cheap/silly to buy for someone that we don't know that well... husby and I aren't big fans of cheap plastic stuff - so we try to steer the kids away from it, too. A while back, I bought the supplies for these necklaces. I knew they'd come in handy! (I'm going to be making gifts for Christmas this year for teachers with these supplies!) I made my first necklace for my BFF (it was kind of crappy but she's the kind of BFF that said she loved it anyway :) She's sweet for letting me experiment and then give her the trials.) ... Anyway, we used the birthday invitation to make the necklace for our sweet six year old friend:

Well, there have been a few FAILs along the way too...

 I tried the dried bananas and they turned out pretty bad.

I put hot glue on the under side of our hallway runner and it's still slipping everywhere (but I think I just didn't use enough hot glue.. only dabbed the corners and a few spots in the middle.. I may re-try with strips all the way down the back side).

 I even made this fun wrap-scarf thing. The wrap/scarf turned out EXACTLY as it should have, the tutorial was perfect - but it just doesn't work for me/my style. I did use it as a scarf once at church, but I probably won't use it anymore. Maybe I can find something new to do with the fabric. :)

 I have more fabric just like it for this fun maxi skirt - I just need to muster up the courage to make the skirt...

Despite the fails and the sense of urgency I get when I see a really good idea that I love, I will use Pinterest as my search engine more than google now... because usually what I'm searching for can be found on Pinterest with pictures, tutorials, preschool lesson plans, coloring pages, craft ideas, etc...

 I have learned a lot from Pinterest. Like where to get free and awesome letters for finally framing the letters of our last name for display on our mantel and how to get the urine smell out of the carpet.

(We still need to hang our last name, but someone (me) forgot to make sure that the dollar-store frames we bought for the pictures were the kind that you can actually hang. oops...

 So those are a few of the things that have been keeping me busy lately... if you haven't been to the visual toybox that is Pinterest, and you have some time to kill, I highly recommend it!