I have a confession to make. I love Pinterest. When I first was told about this magical place called Pinterest I quickly said that I didn't need any more social media (I mean a few years ago before I got into Instagram and Twitter, I though Facebook was enough. Silly me.) I said I was perfectly fine thank you with googling for recipes or baby shower ideas and I could just send myself an email with the links, thus saving them forever, you know, old school. Well I suppose old school is the box full of folders where I have magazines clippings of ideas from decorating ideas to recipes. Either way, you get my drift. I love Pinterest.
I want to throw a "Little Blue Truck" birthday part for my son. I just type the words "Little Blue Truck birthday" and I'm connected to all the other crazy mamas who have done the same thing. That party was a Pinterest win but I've had plenty of Pinterest fails. I'll admit that I've made homemade play dough (a snow day meant no driving) and I've used Pinterest to find Valentine's for my kids. Some of these have been big fails but some of them have be absurdly cute. As I write this I'm resting my feet on a coffee table that I made toddler friendly by covering in foam and fabric. Does it look as good as the one on Pinterest? Absolutely not. Does it look good enough, did it save me money, and most importantly does it make my marble top coffee table much more child friendly? Yes, yes and yes.
Just recently I decided to make a new autumn wreath. I went to Facebook and asked my friends and got some good ideas but who really helped me? Pinterest. Of course, I haven't actually made the wreath so we'll see how much I like it after I try to make it. (Wish me luck!)
My point, and I do have one, is that Pinterest, if used for the purposes of good, can be amazing. I use it for what I imagine the creators had in mind. First, I use it a place to pin all of my recipes, decorating ideas, etc. Instead of emailing myself recipes they are all there. Since by last count I have pinned about 1400 ideas, I would say I'm doing a good job at this. Second, I use it to steal other peoples great ideas. Why reinvent the wheel? I'm traveling across country with 2 kids under 3. Do I really need to make up my own time wasters? Not if someone else on Pinterest has already done it.
Now the purpose of this post is not to start some sort of discussion about how Pinterest puts all this extra pressure on women to be some sort of unattainable super mom. I sort of figure if you let Pinterest bully you into feeling bad, well, you are just looking for an excuse to feel bad.
Me? I'm going to go back to making my banana flavored food for my niece's birthday party. I mean who doesn't love a place that allows you to simply type "Curious George Party" and you get hundreds of ideas. I have banana rice crispy treats and banana chex mix in the works. And when I'm finished there I might enjoy some time pinning about cleaning...I mean who actually wants to clean or organize I would rather pin! Either way...
I love Pinterest!
