why ipincomplish

Why I Pincomplish

 

A few years ago I got introduced to something pretty amazing, something that has become a big part of my life. It all started when a few of my Facebook friends posted fun pictures of food, crafts, and quotations on their walls. Immediately I was intrigued. I like food, crafts, and quotations, and had spent a lot of time searching the internet for ideas. I've never been good at coming up with my own ideas, so over the years I've gotten in the habit of copying other peoples'. So, when I found out that these pictures were posted from a fairly new website called Pinterest, I knew I needed to check it out.

It actually took me a while to do it though. Even though I like to copy ideas, I don't like to copy people... and at that time in order to be on Pinterest you had to ask to be invited. I was hesitant to ask one of those Pinterest posting friends to invite me. Eventually my desire to see what this site was all about was greater than my pride, so I emailed one of those friends, she "invited" me, and pretty soon I was hooked!

Pinterest is basically a virtual bulletin board. When you see something on the internet that you like you can "pin" a picture of it to your "board", and when you click on the picture it will bring you back to the original site that you saw it on.

You can make multiple boards on your Pinterest profile. So, you can have a board just for recipes, or decorating ideas, or even one devoted just to hairstyles you want to try. Whatever suits your interest, you can create a board to pin it on.

This solved a huge problem of mine. For years I had been "bookmarking" sites with ideas I wanted to copy on my computer, thinking that I would remember what it was, and what I wanted to do with it just by looking at whatever short blurb I named it. Well, this didn't prove to be very effective. Looking at my list of bookmarks, and seeing "puzzle blocks" didn't end up reminding me that if I followed that link I would find instructions on how to make personalized puzzles out of pictures and wooden blocks, and I wouldn't have remembered that I was thinking that they would make a good birthday present for my nephew eight months later.

The other problem I had with my old method was that all of those "bookmarked" pages got lost when we got a new computer. I'm sure there are ways that I could have painstakingly gone back through them all and emailed the links to myself or something, but I didn't even think about that until it was too late. All that time and energy searching for ideas gone the way of cyber space just like that.

Pinterest solved these problems for me! Not only can I choose which picture from the site that I want to pin, I can also write a description of what I want to do with it, and pin it to an applicable board. Now when I see an idea for puzzle blocks that I think would be a great gift, I pin it to my "gift ideas" board, and label it something like "puzzle block - idea for nephew's birthday".

And, since everything is stored somewhere in internet land it won't get lost. This means that I can access my pins from any of my devices. When I'm at the grocery store I can use my smart phone to pull up my pins and see what ingredients I need to buy for a recipe that I have pinned, even though I originally pinned it while using my home computer. It's great!

Now, that all being said, I did run into a few problems over the years with Pinterest. One being that it's easy to spend all my time "pinning" and not actually doing. This problem was easy to solve, I made an effort to actually try and do or use many of the things and ideas that I pin. When I feel like crafting, I go to my craft board and see what jumps out at me that day. And when trying to decide what to make for dinner I check out my recipe boards.

I took this a little further and recently added a "to do soon" board to my profile. I often pin things that I might want to do someday, but when I find something that I want to do in the next couple of weeks, or find an article that looks interesting that I want to read soon, but not right then, I pin it to both its applicable board, and also to the to do soon board. That way I can quickly access the ideas and instructions .

My other problem is a little more complicated. With nearly 6000 pins now, it sometimes gets hard to remember what things I've done, what changes I made when I did it, and how it turned out.

A while back I made Chicken Noodle Soup from a recipe I had pinned, and my whole family LOVED it! With a family my size it's hard to find a recipe that everyone is happy with, so I was thrilled to find this one. But when I went to make it again sometime later I couldn't remember which of the several chicken noodle soup recipes I had pinned to my recipe board was the one that I had made. Several attempts at chicken noodle soup recipes later, I still haven't found which one it was that everyone liked. And, it's possible that I made a change or two to the recipe I used that made all the difference, but how would I ever remember now what I did?

And just last night my son wanted to make a treat. We looked through my "sweet treats" board for pin-spiration and came across a recipe for some scrumptious looking pretzel bark. As I helped him make the treat things started seeming familiar, and by the time we sat as a family to enjoy them, we realized that we had actually made them before. They were yummy, but what I didn't remember was that they are pretty hard on the teeth. It would have been nice to have remembered that before making the treat. For most of the family it's not a big problem, but for my husband and I who want our crowns to stay in place, that treat wouldn't be the best if we wanted something that we could sneak back into once the kids were in bed.

I did come up with a somewhat helpful solution. I created a board called "Pin-complished!", where I pin things that I have actually tried. Then in the comments section I can add things like "hard on the teeth", "not our favorite", or "delicious - make again".

This has helped, but I still find that it's hard to really describe what things I altered, or give a very detailed description of how it turned out, or what I would do differently in just the comments area.

My solution to that? This blog!

My goal is to report to my blog about the pins I've accomplished so that I have the things and recipes that I copy documented enough to recreate my pin-complishments, or avoid repeating pin-tastrophes in the future!

My other purpose for starting this blog is quite simple. I live pretty far away from my family so they can't just pop over and see the things that I've been working on. They (especially my mom) sometimes want to see what I've been up to, and to be honest, it's fun for me to get their opinions... so, with this blog they can do that! They'll be able to check out my projects without me emailing out pictures to them all. And, if anyone else stumbles across this blog and finds some of my pin-tempts helpful, then all the better!

So, now after that lengthy explanation... let's get pinning and pin-complishing!!