Pinning

Recently I have found myself "pinning". Before you start wondering if I have gone a bit crazy sticking pins, let me explain. There is this website called Pinterest. It is literally one giant virtual wall where people can hang their pinboards and "pin" their interests. Users are allowed as many boards as they desire and as many pins as they can make. The great thing about this is that boards are customizable. You can have a board for anything you can think of. I have 15 Boards, ranging from "Offers" I've found online to "Cooking and Drinking" to "That's one of the coolest things I've ever seen!"

One of the things I love about this is that rather than a traditional bookmark filed through your browser, a pin capture an image of the website and stores it away in a way that you can easily "see" what caught your eye on a certain website. This is accomplished in a manner that is similar to sharing something on Facebook. On my favorites toolbar I have a "Pin It" link which when clicked toggles a Pinterest overlay which grabs all the big images or videos on the page. You click on the image you wish to share, then you write a note and choose a Board to pin it on.


For someone with some strange organization quirks, like myself, this site is an amazing tool. The process is so effortless you can't stop. In the past I have found myself saving pictures from websites, cutting and pasting, creating word documents, even tinkering with Microsoft Office's OneNote, which compared to Pinterest is unbelievably tedious, in an effort to keep track of ideas and plans and things I like. At the same time, the anal tedium of OneNote is what drew me to use it in the first place. When planning for Thanksgiving a few weeks ago, I used Pinterest to share my ideas for recipes, but I used Word to organize those recipes in one document that was easy to read and follow. But I digress. Pinterest is all about image. You see it. You like it. You pin it. Other Pinners can see it and repin or comment or like and the creativity and inspiration flows....

That being said, since I started pinning, I have learned a lot of random things, I have discovered some great ideas for a future home and children, I have found enough recipes to keep me busy for a few weeks and of course, I have thoroughly enjoyed organizing all my finds! In particular I wanted to share "one of the coolest things I ever saw" with you and show you how I fared in my attempt to replicate: A Clementine Candle. This was not as easy as they made it look, but they warned that several attempts might be required. Frieder and I eat Oranges and Clementines like addicts here so really I had no problem coming up with a specimen to experiment with. I was not able to get a big enough "wick" so my flame was rather wimpy, but it burned for about an hour before I played with it and accidentally distinguished it. Want to try? You can find the directions here.

As if Pinterest was not already cool enough, I also found info about how to take great pictures of your Christmas Tree. I used the tips to get some great glowing shots of my "candle". I think it would have been nicer had my candle "glowed" a bit more....

Check it out for yourself here!