Okay. I will just admit it. I have a problem.
Hello. My name is Amanda. *(Hi, Amanda.) And I am addicted to Pinterest. Or I could go with......
Father, forgive me.....for I have pinned. It has been 30 seconds since my last pinning.
Yes - I am totally addicted to Pinterest. It started out innocently enough one afternoon at work when a friend said, "Hey! There is this really cool website I think you'd enjoy where you can put things you like on bulletin boards and save them!" It was the beginning of the obsession.
It started innocently enough with one or two boards....ideas for my craft room and recipes. It has grown from there to over 70 boards with over a million pins. I have immersed myself HEAVILY in pinterest.
I browse faithfully week after week, night after night....making my menus and planning my grocery list. I find craft projects and inspiration for home decor. I have a board for my dream-house, my garden, party ideas; I even decided that I had to break down my recipes into categories, for I could never find the ones I wanted because I had pinned too many!
It wasn't enough to just have boring boards named "chicken" or "fish" or "beef"........much to pedestrian. I had to come up with clever titles (some of which make no sense to anyone but me!) My current recipe boards include: "Pork- The Other White Meat!" "I feel like Chicken tonight!" and "Where's the Beef?" and "Something Fishy!" and "Saucy - like ME!" and "Fudge, Fudge, Call the Judge!" and "Patty Cakes and Pretty Pies" and "That's the way the COOKIE crumbles" and "There's an AP for that!" (Appetizers), and "Bread and Butter" and "Beautiful Beverages" and "Very Veggie" and "Tutti-Fruity" "Bread and Butter" and "Side Dishes" and "Puddins, Parfaits and Such" and "Breakfast Foods: Scones, Donuts, Muffins and such" and "Cupcakes!" and "Frutta Divine!" (wine) and "!Cinco de Mayo!" (all my Mexican food fixes!) and "Soups and Stews" and "Pasta" and "Crockpot Cookery!" and "Popcorn!" (yes - a whole board, dedicated to popcorn. Please don't judge.) and "Candyland!" and "IceScream 4 IceCream!" and "Sammies" and "Can-Can, I think I can!" (canning and preserving) and one whole board dedicated to coffee: "Ode to the Most Magical of all the Beverages!"
And those are just the ones dealing with food.
I have "Craft Room Ideas" and "Nerdy Stuff I Love" and "Downton Abbey" and "Big Bang Theory" and "Things I want to make" and "Picnics" and "Gardens" and "Travel" and "Things for my Kitchen" (Mostly dishes and kitchen gadgets that I covet), Porches, Odd houses "Home is where the Art is", "Inspiration" (mostly Bible verses and pithy, sage one-liners chock full of wisdom), I have one board that's nothing but pictures of Bento boxes!! Hundreds of artfully packed Bento boxes. I have one board for Japan (which, in conjunction with the Bento board - are nods to my daughter's favorite things); I have a board for pinning Marketing Ideas, a board for things on my bucket list, a board for aprons (because I love them) and books (because I really love them).
I have several holiday and seasonal boards: Spring, Summer, and Autumn (and I just realized that I'm evidently prejudiced against winter!!); I have boards for Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Valentine's Day, and even April Fool's Day.
I have a board for pinning the styles of clothing/jewelry and shoes I like (simply titled "My Style") and a board for all the places I've called home "The Green, Green Grass of Home" and one to celebrate my heritage "Southern as Sweet Tea!" I have one called poignantly "If I ever have Grand-babies some day...." and one called "Nursing" with tons of stuff about my profession. "How to Know How" on DIY things and "Homestyle" with ideas for home decor. "Is it Really Healthy" shows off pins of wacky diets and detox plans that probably don't work.....but it makes me happy to read them and wish they would. I have one whole board that is nothing but pictures of porches. Because porches are cool.
This brings me down to my 2 favorite boards......probably the two with the most pins, as well. I have one board called, "Just for Funnsies" where I pin jokes, e-cards, cartoons, and basically, anything that cracks me up. And I do loooooooove to laugh!!
The other board is named "Joie de Vivre!" (The Joy of Life!) and onto this board, I pin ANYTHING that makes me happy. There are no rules.....it can be completely random, but if it makes me feel happy inside, I pin it! These are my 2 "GO-TO" boards when real life gets to be too much for me. On bad days when I am grumpy, irritable, out of sorts and whiny......I can scroll through all of these insanely sunny and happy images and it will literally turn my day around!! Talk about some powerful voodoo, huh?
Some of the things on my Joie board would make you scratch your head and wonder WHY on earth would this woman pin this picture on a Joy board? The answer is simple: It makes me happy. I don't know why. I don't care why...it just DOES. There are very random and diverse images on my Joie board - including (oddly enough) lots of pictures of chickens. I have NO idea why seeing pictures of chickens brightens my day, it just does....and that is enough. I'm afraid to analyze it too much. I don't want to spook away the magic of it! I don't know the deep psychological root of the cause, but I cannot look at pictures of chickens and silly old roosters without cracking a grin.
Kitties, Puppies and Baby Elephants all find a place in my Joie! Pictures of little kids AND puppies or kittens = Happy, Hapy Kryptonite! Little kids dancing, old ladies laughing, sunlight shining through trees, snow-covered fields, riots of wild-flowers, baby feet, old men's hands, church windows, fireplaces aglow, fuzzy socks, rustic old barns, a kid splashing in a puddle, dew drops, a foggy morning, a good book and a mug of tea, clothes hanging on a clothes line, a little girl praying, a full moon over a mountain, birds in a nest, a swing hanging from an oak tree, horses in the snow, a monkey smoking a cigarette, a pig wearing leg-warmers, fresh baked bread, a squirrel drinking lemonade from a straw, a canoe on a peaceful lake, daddies and daughters, a llama riding in a taxi-cab, little boys in cowboy boots, a manual typewriter, a bale of hay........I could keep going for a gazillion more items (and it would continue to sound like "A Few of My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music!) ......but essentially.......just about anything that makes me happy! When I scroll through these pictures, my heart lifts a little......and it carries the corners of my frown upwards for the ride! Even on my saddest days, even when my heart is breaking........there is a reminder of all the good and perfect gifts in life. The simplest joys. The little things. Daily Blessings that we take for granted.
They say that time you enjoy wasting is not time wasted.......I prefer to think of my pinning as constructively saving up recipes and smiles and sunshine......and storing them electronically for those rainy, sad days that are bound to come along. So yes.....I do spend an inordinate amount of time "pinning stuff" and scrolling down page after page of images and some of it is ridiculous and silly.....some of it is raunchy and not very nice.....some of it is useful, some of it is downright hilarious and some of it is just fluffy entertainment. Some of it is informative and some of it instructive. Some of it is inspiring!
In the words of Rizzo (one of my favorite characters from Grease.....an unlikely heroine, I know...but I can't help but love her moxie.) "There are worse things I could do....."
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