Pinterest Projects

Knitting Project Complete

Posted by Nat on May 14, 2012 | 1 comment

…

I’m so glad that I finished this cowl… just in time for June.  (Read that with as much sarcasm as you can stand.)

I don’t know what the deal is with me and knitting projects lately, but it takes me f.o.r.e.v.e.r to complete them.  This one will have to get tucked away into my closet and come out in the fall because I know I won’t need it this summer.  But I still LOVE how it turned out.  I first saw this on Pinterest, and sourced it to Jen Geigley’s blog, Hey! Jen Renee.  Jen so nicely posted here about seeing this cowl at The Gap and she just made her own version (without a seam, to boot).  I used the exact same yarn, just a different color.  I’m really into gray.  Grey.  However you spell it.

I did run out of steam at the end, so mine is not the full width it should be, but it’s still plenty thick.   And I LOVE the seed stitch- I’ve never done it before.  I do worry that with my next project my brain is going to get confused with when to purl and when to knit, but I’m sure I’ll get back on track.

So that you can see it in action, I even made you a video so you can see how it looks on….with my summer tanktop and all.

Thanks for such a great pattern, Jen!

Are You Ready for CUYPB2012?

Posted by Nat on Apr 25, 2012 | Comments Off on Are You Ready for CUYPB2012?

“What’s CUYPB2012?” you ask?  It’s Clean Up Your Pinterest Boards Day:  TOMORROW!  I am very ready to do a virtual house cleaning of my Pinterest boards.  I’d love for you to join us!

We’ll be tweeting throughout the day using the hashtag #CUYPB2012.

We will also be:

Cleaning up descriptions.

Correcting incorrect sources.

Deleting “bad” pins or ones we have changed our minds about.

In essence:  we’ll be getting our collective Pinterest sh** together.

Who is the “we” I speak of?  I’m hoping lots of people.  For shizzle, it will be Wendy of Wendy Will Blog (did you know she’s got a great fitness challenge going on, too?), and Ashley of It’s Fitting (Ashley is hosting a giveaway for business cards so get on over there!).  These two ladies signed up right away and I will forever love them for it.

It’s going to be the best organizational moment of my life.  Or not.  But I’m sure I will walk away inspired to do more with my Pinterest stuff because it will all ROCK.

Join us!  You can grab the button in my sidebar over there —————————->.

Hope to “see” you tomorrow cleaning up your boards!

Mother’s Day Project & San Diego MNO!

Posted by Nat on Apr 24, 2012 | 15 comments

Are you ready to clean up your Pinterest Boards?  Thursday is Clean Up Your Pinterest Boards Day!  Join us and make sure your pins are legit!  Can’t wait!

Are you ready for Mother’s Day?  I am!  I love having a day to celebrate the fact that I’m a MOM!  I can’t believe I’m 36 and have three beautiful kids.  Before I get into the details of my post, I want to share an event I’ll be attending and am SO EXCITED about!    I’m also on the committee promoting it because I am so thrilled that this group exists for the sole purpose of giving MOMS a NIGHT OFF!  Woot!

If you are a San Diego mom, you should come to San Diego Mom’s Night Out Mother’s Day Event!  Don’t worry, it’s not on the “real” Mother’s Day- it’s Thursday, May 10th.   National Mom’s Nite Out is the first nationally organized celebration of motherhood intended to bring together today’s moms, physically and virtually.  National Mom’s Nite Out unites hundreds of social media groups, companies, local playgroups, mommy bloggers and mother social networks in giving moms a well deserved night off. National Mom’s Night Out consists of local events held across the country including ours!

San Diego Mom’s Night Out Mother’s Day Event is going to be at Bliss 101 in Encinitas.  I live in El Cajon, and let me tell you- the drive will be worth it!  Just a few of the fun things planned: wine, food, skinny shots, massages, and swag bags!  Need I say more?  Go get your ticket, gals!   For reals- it’s going to be so nice!

Now, onto my tutorial- I am so pleased with how these turned out!

First things first:  CREDIT.  I first saw this project on Pinterest, which sent me to Mandy Douglass’ blog, It Will Change Your Life. At the bottom of this post I saw the cutest thing I’ve ever seen for Mother’s Day, and thought to myself, “I HAVE to make this!”  I emailed Mandy, and she so graciously agreed to let me post this tutorial.  Thank you, Mandy!

Clean Up Your Pinterest Boards!

Posted by Nat on Apr 16, 2012 | 14 comments

The time has come.  Someone needs to say it.

As a Pinterest Population, we are getting sloppy, friends.  We’re pinning and repinning and we’re not doing right by each other.

You know what I’m talking about- I’m sure it’s happened to you:  You see something you like on Pinterest, and when you go to repin, the source is not direct.  Maybe it’s a Google image of a project you would be interested in, and there’s no link provided; just a lovely picture.  Maybe it’s an awesome top you’d love to buy, but you have no idea where to find it.  Regardless of the type of pin, the source is all out of whack.

Let’s talk about your boards, too.  Are they organized?  My boards have an organized facade, especially since Pinterest started letting us choose covers for our boards.  But underneath…. there’s a whole bunch of chaos going on.

The pinning party is over.

It’s time to get real.

On April 26th myself, Wendy at Wendy Will Blog, and Ashley at It’s Fitting, are dedicating the whole day to cleaning up our Pinterest boards.  We’re going to take a day to reorganize, refresh, and yes (gasp!) we may even delete a few pins.  We’re calling it Clean Up Your Pinterest Boards Day.

Want to join us?  Here are the details:

On April 26th, devote as much time as you can (within reason) to not pinning, but doing a digital clean up of your own Pinterest boards.  If you plan to participate you can grab the button in my sidebar and post it in your own sidebar to help spread the word.  You could even write a post about it!  We will also be using the hashtag #CUYPB2012 if you are a Twitter geek rockstar.  You could also pin the button onto a Pinterest board to spread the word on Pinterest itself!

“But what does it mean?”  This will be different for everyone.  Everyone uses Pinterest for their own greater good, so do what feels right.  Hopefully, in the end, we’ll help future pinners because they will repin legit pins, and we’ll save ourselves some headaches, too.

Some things to help you out if you’re not sure where to start:

{Check Sources}

Do your pins lead you to the correct place?  Do they lead you ANYwhere?  If you click on a pin and it takes you to Google or some other search engine, right back to Pinterest, or if you get an error message…  it’s not pinned correctly.  From here you have to decide if it’s worth your time- either find the original source and update your pin, or delete it.

{insert record scratching here} “Wait, you mean I have to go through all my pins and check them all?”

That’s up to you.  But think about how many times you’ve seen something on Pinterest and just pinned it instantly without checking the source. Not only is that not fair to other pinners, it’s horribly unfair to the person who created the content you are pinning.

If editing all of your boards is overwhelming, consider just working on your biggest board.  Then you could go back and work on smaller boards as time allows.

{Update Descriptions; Make Pins More Searchable}

Do you have any bad pinning habits?  Pins are not very searchable (and therefore not very useful) if you just write “Love this.”  Or “OMG!  So cute!”  Go back to those pins and write “Love this headboard for my bedroom” or “OMG this leather Coach purse is so cute!”  Also, if your pin comes from a blogger of any kind, consider adding the name of their blog to the description.  They worked hard on that post and are proud that you pinned or repinned it.  It would be nice to give them credit.  For example, when I write a description for a pin from a crafting blog, I will type, “I love this teacher appreciation gift @ Skip To My Lou.”

{Update Your Board Covers}

It’s easy to do, and it makes it easy to visually distinguish them from other boards.  If you haven’t done it yet, read this.

{Update Your Followers}

Take a few minutes and look through people who are following you.  You can see all of them by going to your main board page and clicking on your number of followers.  You’ll see everyone who is following you.  Is your aunt on there?  Maybe you should follow her back.  Your best friend from college?  I bet she’d like you to show her some love, too.   Take another few minutes and follow some new people.

When you’re done you will feel like you’ve completed a digital spring cleaning of your Pinterest boards.  You can pat yourself on the back, and then pin with more knowledge.  Be sure to keep up your good pinning habits so that we can keep Pinterest a great place to be!

If you’re going to participate and are a blogger, please copy the code for the button in my right side bar (towards the top).  You can add the button to your sidebar or post and help spread the word however you like- Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest itself, or any other venue you choose.  Not a blogger?  You’re still rad!  You could share this post on Facebook to let others know.

Remember, our Twitter hashtag is #CUYPB2012.  

Hope to hear from you on April 26th!  I’m looking into having a linky party and lots of tweeting!

Jack’s Party: Decorations

Posted by Nat on Mar 28, 2012 | 10 comments

Jack doesn’t really like any one particular character enough for me to be able to say, “Oh, we’ll have a _______ party.”  He is just now getting into Toy Story, he loves helicopters and motorcycles, but he’s not totally obsessed with any one thing just yet.  Well, except one thing. Balloons.

About six months ago Jack got a balloon.  We went to the dentist.  He screamed the whole time because of a chipped tooth trauma from a while back.  He hates the dentist.  But when he got that balloon his whole demeanor changed.  And when we got home, all he wanted to do was play. with. his. balloooooon.  And so, the love affair began.

The balloon obsession, combined with the fact that about 90% of the time Jack is one happy boy, I decided to just throw a party with some fun balloon decorations and keep it happy.  That is, after all, my theme this year.

Just a reminder that I’m saying thank you to my friend, Tonya, for all of the pictures she took.  You’ll be able to pick her work out because I thank her in all of the pictures that she took. 🙂

First, I made this balloon wreath.  If you search “balloon wreath” on Pinterest you will see lots of examples, but I was particularly drawn to this one at Landee See, Landee Do (say that three times fast).  I decided that I want this wreath to be a family tradition.  We are going to hang it on our door for each child’s birthday, and I’ll make a new center circle for it for each child on each birthday.  Now that the main work of making it is over, I think it will be easy to keep up with.

I didn’t use ribbons the way Landee did and like the simplicity of it.  I may go back and throw in more purple- we’ll see. I ended up with very few purple in my bags for some reason.  I bought the balloons for this wreath at Dollar Tree; I think I bought 8 bags but only used about 7.  These balloons are cheap for a reason- if you blow them up they are super tiny.  Doesn’t matter for the wreath, though. 🙂

In her post Landee says her thumb was sore for days- I must have tough thumbs.  However, I did make this over a few nights, not all at once.

For the center circle I just made a graphic in Photoshop Elements and cut it out with a circle cutter.  The font, if you’re interested (I love it) is Ribbon from Lost Type.  I used the coordinating ribbon and attached it with more floral pins to the top.  I also hung the wreath with wire and covered it up with ribbon- it is rather heavy and I wasn’t sure if the ribbon could hold it alone.  Just looking at this wreath makes me smile, and Jack loved it.

The other decor that I just loved were the balloons themselves.  I’ve seen these big balloons so many places and just loved how different they looked.  They are HUGE.  I got them at Shop Sweet Lulu.  They ship very quickly- both orders I placed for this party were shipped the same day I ordered them, and each order came with a piece of taffy.  Yum!  I’m sold.

One thing I will say: these balloons took all the helium I had.  How much did I have?  I had two Balloon Time tanks*; one was used from a previous party and one was brand new.  By the time I filled up all three of these balloons, the helium was g-o-n-e GONE.  I think next time I will call Party City and see how much they’d charge to fill them up.

The balloon banner was made the night before and slept in our playroom.  I woke up before the kids and hung it outside on our newly-paved patio (my husband is awesome) and was elated with how bright and cheery it was.  I was inspired by Design Mom, and you can find her tutorial here.

While I didn’t get a raw thumb from the balloon wreath, I did get raw fingers from tying off all of these balloons!!!  My husband would have helped but he came home with back spasms the night before Jack’s party so I let him rest so he could be my work mule the day of the party.   It was really easy to make.

In Design Mom’s post she uses an upholstery needle.  My moment of desperation was laying out all of my balloons, getting my string (she used waxed twine but my plain ol’ string worked great, too), and realizing I wasn’t sure I had a needle that would work.  Then I went through my knitting supplies and found my plastic yarn needle and it worked perfectly.  What’s even better- I didn’t have to worry about popping the balloons because there was no sharp metal tip to wield.  Hooray!  Time-wise, start to finish, I think this took me about an hour and a half to make.   Totally worth it- when Jack saw it he said, “Mommy, my balloons! My balloons!”  He loved it.

Lastly, I made these streamers:

I saw these on Made, and Dana’s tutorial was great.  I could spend hours on her tutorials alone.  I wasn’t even planning on making them and then when I was at Walmart getting a few things I saw them and thought, “Oh, what the hey, I’ll give it a try.”  It was a bit cumbersome at first and then I found my magic tool:  a wooden spoon.  Dana had a dowel, I think, in her tutorial, and she used it to keep her streamers from getting tangled up.  I didn’t have a dowel, so I went with my longest wooden spoon and it was perfect.  You hit a rhythm after a while, and then just as you think, “Hey!  I’ve got a rhythm going here…. ”  …your bobbin runs out of thread.  I rolled these up and will use them for other parties.  They are so cheery and fun!

 In case you’re wondering how long the big balloons lasted in terms of float-i-ness…  the green one popped in the wind the next day, but orange and red lasted from Saturday to Monday night.  We brought them inside and the kids were in heaven playing with them.  This is them on my birthday on Sunday:

Up tomorrow: the scavenger hunt!

*I did NOT pay the price you see in that link to Walmart for my tank. If you get them in-store they are much cheaper!

Pinterest Projects: Butterfly Window

Posted by Nat on Mar 23, 2012 | Comments Off on Pinterest Projects: Butterfly Window

Maybe I should call this “Butterfly Week”?

{For my fellow Pinterest Pals:  Please do NOT pin this post!  Please go the the original post, linked below, and pin her original content. I want to blog and pin with integrity, and I am not the original person who thought of this- she deserves the credit.  Thanks!}

I saw this post, pinned it on my Pinterest board, and wanted to tackle it immediately.  As in, “We-must-drink-all-the-milk-so-I-can-prep-this-project” immediately.  Alas, I had to gather a few of the supplies, so it was not that quick.  It was most excellent to have a valid excuse to buy a huge pack of Sharpies in lots of colors.  Who doesn’t love Sharpies, right?

I was so happy that I did this with Anna.  Truth be told, she only did the coloring, and she wore out much sooner than I did, but still- she did a few and it was fun.  And she loves them. Every once in a while she will say, “Mommy!  Look!  There are real, live butterflies in our window!”  I’ll say, “No way, really?!”  And she’ll say, “No, silly, they’re just pretend.”  I’m going to miss four.  Four really is fun.

The only thing I will add to the excellent directions on the original post, is that putting these in the window has caused most of the colors to fade. The yellow faded within a few days.  The magenta color hardly budged, though- must be something in the pigment.  It was easy to take them down and touch them up, though.  I love them for this time of year.  So fun.  Make some.  Make them right  now- you can thank me later.

Happy Weekend- my son turns three today, so there will be party posts forthcoming!