Pinterest

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!

Pinterest Projects: Butterfly Canvas

Posted by Nat on Mar 19, 2012 | Comments Off on Pinterest Projects: Butterfly Canvas

Ever since I saw this post on Whatever, I have wanted to do this project with my sweet little Anna.  The moment I saw it I added it to my “Things I’d Like to Make” board on Pinterest.  Anna loves butterflies, paint, and crafts.  I wanted something for our craft/office/guest room over the bed.  While I’m not totally pleased with the yellow I ended up with on the canvas, I do love the effect and the bright colors it brings to the room.

Here’s our paper pre-butterfly punching.  The act of painting the colors itself was therapeutic.  I’ll let you guess which one is Anna’s.

I bought three different butterfly punches (used a coupon for each one), and all of them were Martha Stewart brand.  They all worked so nicely.

I didn’t let Anna help with the hot glue- something about 4-year-olds and hot glue doesn’t go together for me.  But the end result is lovely.  I may move it to Anna’s room when I figure something else out for this wall- it doesn’t seem quite big enough, but we’ll let it sit for now.

I would advise a few things:

• Get yourself a nice set of watercolors with lots of color options.  I did a first round with just the Crayola watercolors and the effect wasn’t as nice.
• Use  nice watercolor paper.  It’s very thick and dries better.

Happy butterfly creating!

Do Yourself a Favor… {Make this soup!}

Posted by Nat on Feb 1, 2012 | Comments Off on Do Yourself a Favor… {Make this soup!}

Warning…  this post has a lot of bird-walking.

Sweet Potato Chowder, folks!  I’m tellin’ you.  Nom nom.

This chowder is so good that I started writing the post before I even tasted it.  Yeah, I know.  What I like most is when a soup you cook for just about 30 minutes tastes like it’s been cooking all day.  This one tastes just. Like. That.

Here is the one picture that turned out well.  Good thing it’s a closeup of bacon.  (If you’re vegetarian, don’t leave! I think this recipe would be delish sans bacon, too.)

This is like a “twofer” deal because you get the original recipe and my own adaptation.  Why my adaptation?  I don’t like chilies or peppers.  Isn’t it funny that my last name is Chiles but I don’t like chilies?  🙂  I always want to spell it chillies.  Or Chili’s like the restaurant.

Anyhoo, I pinned this recipe recently on my Food & Drink board.  Man, that board is getting crazy.  I need Pinterest to start allowing drag and drop editing with boards because mine are a bit cluttered.  I digress.

Here is the original recipe from Real Simple:

My problem is that chiles really don’t sit well with me, both in taste and digestion fun.  I just don’t put them in my food.  And the taste of any pepper- red, green, yellow… makes me want to gag. However, if you look at that recipe, you’ll see that it has quite a bit of chile and pepper action going on.   I knew that if I didn’t substitute anything else in for the chilies and peppers it would be pretty colorless and bland.  I also love a good, creamy chowder, so here’s my new, adapted version of this soup:

Nat’s Sweet Potato Chowder

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound thick-sliced bacon, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 1/2 large white onion, diced
• 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
• 3 13-ounce cans chicken broth
• 2 14-ounce cans corn
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 8-12 oz. frozen peas, to taste
• kosher salt
• Greek yogurt for serving

Directions

1. Cook the bacon in a large stockpot over medium heat until it begins to crisp, 6 to 8 minutes. Spoon off all but 1 tablespoon of the drippings. (I found that when I spooned off the grease it was exactly 1 tablespoon.  Just sayin’.)
2. Add the onion to the bacon and continue cooking, stirring frequently, until the onions are tender, 3 to 5 minutes.
3. Add the sweet potatoes and chicken broth and simmer, covered, 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.
4. Stir in the corn, peas, milk, and ½ teaspoon salt and cook until heated through.
5. If desired, plop on some Greek yogurt.  Enjoy!

A New Chapter: We Have a Piano

Posted by Nat on Jan 12, 2012 | 1 comment

We have a piano now.  Seems a bit full circle.  You may or may not know that I majored in music education in college.  I played piano as my main instrument, though I also play flute.  In high school my parents recognized my desire to make music a big part of my life, and we got a Steinway grand piano.  I got to pick it out.  Talk about amazing.  So if you told me back then that someday I’d be excited to have an electric, plug-in piano, I would have scoffed and said, “Never!”  Ah, how things change.

Once we got the piano, this whole room seemed to come together in terms of furniture arrangement.  Our poster of Louis seems so much more appropriate now with something musical underneath him.  Before he was just hangin’ out, smokin’ a cig.  Now he has some company.

My parents gave this piece of art to me years ago- I think they got it in New Orleans.  We finally got it framed and it now hangs next to Louis.  I love it because it combines my two instruments, flute and piano, into one piece.  Rad.

Why the electric?  We have kids.  Who sleep.  The only time I can possibly play for my own enjoyment is when they are asleep.  With an electric piano I can plug in the headphones and play to my heart’s content.

I am also loving our lamp.  I recovered it after being inspired by this pin.  As much as I would love to buy one as I saw it, I couldn’t justify it when I had all the materials to make one myself.  Music paper, hot glue annnnnd…. done!

Now if I can just get my confidence and my super-speedy fingers back….

Pinterest Projects: Laundry Detergent!

Posted by Nat on Jan 11, 2012 | 3 comments

I want to share the things I try from Pinterest that work, so I shall begin another series here on CC:  Pinterest Projects.  Sometimes I’ll devote an entire post to them, other times I’ll just mention them within a post.   I think it’s important to do more than just pin things- you must try them, too!

I was immediately intrigued by this pin.   The thought of making a boat-load of my own detergent and then not having to buy it for a long time…. awesome.  So I did it.  I made my own laundry detergent.  Here’s the original post in case you’d like to make your own.

I put mine in a giant glass cookie jar from IKEA.  I love it.  It’s so nice to have this instead of a big ol’ plastic bottle of detergent.  Does it work?  Yup.  Does it smell good?  It does.  It doesn’t necessarily make your clothes smell amazing, so if you need spring-fresh clothes you’ll want to add a fabric softener or something along those lines, but our clothes are clean.

Other tips I would add:

Order everything you need from Amazon.  It’s so much easier than driving all over kingdom-come for the ingredients, as they are not necessarily all in the same place.  What I really love is that everything the ingredients come in, for the most part, is recyclable.  RAD!

Mix it up outside, and wear a mask.  There will be soap dust everywhere, but it will smell amazing.  Love it!

If you grate the soap by hand, it’s quite a nice workout for your arms. 🙂

 I’m pondering trying the dishwasher detergent next.  Woo hoo!

Christmas Week: Our DIY Christmas Card

Posted by Nat on Dec 14, 2011 | 1 comment

I had this rosy picture in my head of how our Christmas card photos were going to look this year.  I would put my plan into action, the kids would perform for us, we’d get some stellar pics, and hooray!  Cute Christmas pics!  Ahem.  Well, even if things weren’t in our favor, it still turned out pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.

We decided not to get professional photos done in order to save some money.  So I went and found some cute Christmas pjs (something I would have done anyway), some white sheets at Wal-Mart (I have a love-hate relationship with that place), and also a few props.  Remember my glitter letters I shared with you a few weeks ago?  I tried to use them.  Didn’t work out.  Turns out 4- and 2-year-olds do not work well with props (for the most part).

Timing was difficult.  My husband, who dutifully knew he was needed to help, was sick.  Thanksgiving came and went and I was getting desperate to get it done.  The weather was also a factor- it was either raining or super cloudy, and I wanted outside light.  Finally the stars aligned…  Not really- I just saw the sunshine and started setting up even though my husband was still sick.  Sorry, honey.

My big take-away from this:  I have SO MUCH to learn about photography, and I REALLY REALLY REALLY want a *real* camera.

I used two sheets to set up a sort of outdoor staging area.  I hung one from a tree branch, and another I laid on the ground.  I covered our Bumbo with white for Miss Em.  I got the props, set the ISO on my camera to “high,” and started clicking.  Here’s an outtake so you can see what the set up was kind of like.

My wedding photographer said to me at some point, “All you want is one great shot.  If you get one great shot, you have accomplished your mission.”  It was slim pickins, but we got some good ones.  I started editing in Photoshop and created our card.  Many thanks to Rita at the Coffeeshop Blog– her green freebie is my background.  I found it here.

Here’s what it looked like as a digital file.

The little props we used I found here via Pinterest.  Where else, right?  Coincidentally, the best shots of the kids were when I had them lay down on the sheet rather than sit or stand.  Go figure.

The next part I wanted was an insert.  I saw this on Pinterest and wanted something similar, but knew I could never find something online that would put it together, so I started looking at fonts.  I decided on Budmo and Honey Script.  I made a list of our top 10 for the year, and this is what I came up with.  I. Love. It.

The last phase was printing.  I didn’t want a flimsy photo this year.  I wanted a nice thick print.  My friend Amy over at 10:02 told me that I should try Mixbook. They turned out so nicely and are exactly what I wanted.  The best part?  Mixbook sends you EXTRA ENVELOPES.  And not just 2 or 3- there were at least 10 extra.  Awesome!

For the “Top 10” insert, I went to Office Depot and had them cut down a bunch of cardstock.  I think I had 125 cards made.  Guess how much it cost to have them cut for me?  Including the cardstock, it was less than $8.  Super cheap.  I am so, so happy with this.  It will probably be a new thing for us.  It was honestly easier than a letter and so much more fun to do.