Tag: pinterest

The Big Reveal

Yes, although I would have preferred to post this at a normal blogging hour, (like 10-ish which is my goal,) I figured slipping this one in during the evening would be better than waiting till tomorrow. Oh wait. Tomorrow I have another reveal.

Anyway, you remember the Pinterest Challenge, yes? Well, as you can see from that old post, I decided to do a double whammy and do I guess the “Big” part in this title is misleading. This was possibly the easiest DIY ever DIYed.

It involved buying a new, pretty shiny, faux stainless steel picture frame from Target (approx $7) and some dry erase markers. I have a stash of maps–you may have seen some of them in the office in my recent home tour. Well, I love maps with lots of water and decided British Columbia would fit the bill nicely. I cut a piece to size, inserted it, and planned a week’s worth of meals.

Our kitchen walls are plaster so I’m not going to attempt to hang this up (nails are a disaster in here) so for now it takes up valuable real estate on our tiny counter. I was considering using magnets to put it on the refrigerator but it’s surprisingly heavy. I will come up with a solution someday.

Side note: meal planning is excellent. It makes grocery shopping and takes the guesswork out of “what should we have for dinner?” Yes,  you can cheat and swap meals. We had stuffed zucchini tonight (more on that tomorrow) and BBQ meatballs yesterday. Oh well! I just erase the “completed” meal and have the others to choose from. :)

Did you participate? You inspired by me to make a dry-erase note board? Please comment! I love comments!

Pinterest Challenge!

If you follow @younghouselove, @em_henderson, or @makeahouseahome or #bowerpower (I follow the first two, and my twitter  name is up there in the graphic) you will have heard about yesterday’s launch of the PINTEREST CHALLENGE.

I love to accept a challenge. Also, any excuse to do a little blog CPR.

(My new job is going great, by the way, but haven’t had the chance to do anything blogworthy–at home or at work–yet.)

The crowds are dying to know: What am I going to tackle? Well, I don’t think we’re supposed to keep it a secret so I’m gonna hit you with my (slightly underwhelming) goal:

I’m going to do the picture frame as a white board no brainer! When I say no brainer, I don’t mean to detract from it’s awesomeness and usefulness. I mean it as in, it’s so obvious when you see it you cry, “why didn’t I think of that!” Also, no-brainer because it’s as easy as buying a frame of desirable size, putting something pretty in it, and writing on it with a dry-erase marker. Voila! Yeah, I’ll have this done in 20 minutes. Okay, an hour and twenty if you take into account the nearest Hobby Lobby is a 30 minute drive away. Baby steps. If this challenge really helps motivate me, then next time I’ll try something more involved. And then more and more involved. Get it?

Well, I’m putting my spin on this by combining it with something else I have pinned:

The famous map photo matte. I do intend to to map photo mattes someday but for now I want to use a map for the background of my dry erase boards because I absolutely love map color schemes because they’re pastel–but since most maps are pastel, they totally get away with it because it’s not girly, it’s expected!!

One of my pinterest pet peeves is how so many of the captions are “MUST DO THIS.” How much time to we spend pinning and how little time to we spend making? It’s time to make our pin-dreams reality.
Any local friends want to tag along with me to Hobby Lobby? I’m going tomorrow (Thursday) evening after dinner! Hit me up!

Lastly, I’ve dropped to page 3 in the Picket Fence top blogs. Blow to the ego. Who wants to vote for me and move me back to page 2? I’m just asking for like 5 votes. Thanks!

Finding your Sense of Design

Today it hit me right in the face. Pinterest is great for collecting cute pictures, funny sayings, etc. but I was revisiting some older pins on my boards and I noticed a few things. By looking at things I pinned a few months ago up through today, it’s fun and easy to get a grasp on an over-arching personal style.

For example, a theme I see running through my “personal environment” board is yellow, yellow, yellow. Even though I am tempted to jump on the shades-of-gray interior (paint) bandwagon, I seem to keep coming back to yellow, especially tones like my current living room. I don’t know how else to describe it other than that it’s calming and exciting at the same time. I’m also crazy about the pops of blue like you can glimpse in some pins below.

Below you can see some of my newer pins, in which yellow is clearly a recurring theme–my goal is for the next place we live in to have a cohesive color plan to be carried throughout the whole house/apartment. These two boards working together should give me a jumping-off place, and allow me to organize my thoughts on the subject before diving in, roller in hand.

Clearly, whenever we move I’m not going to buy all new stuff. But I feel like curating my style in this way helps me identify what I like so I don’t set out shopping without a plan, new possibilities to try out with my existing stuff, inspirations to DIY, and some statement-makers to save my pennies for (who knew curtains were so expensive?!).

  • Do you decorate with a plan or allow your room to evolve over time? I think I fell into the latter, but I’m trying to plan more these days. 
  • Requesting an invite from pinterest takes time, but if you want an account, comment here with your e-mail and I will send you one!!