Pinterest

I've had a couple people ask me about Pinterest; what is it, how does it work, what's so great about it, etc. So I thought today I'd give a little tutorial and share what I like about it.

{Advance warning: I'm not the best at tutorials or explaining things so hopefully I won't lose you!}


What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a Virtual Pinboard. {huh, say what?!} =)

Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.

Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests. To get started, request an invite.

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OK, first things first, you have to either be invited to the party, or request an invite ... why? I have no idea. It's a public site after all ... but hey, whatever. So if you haven't been invited and want to be, let me know and I'll invite you {I need your email address}. But otherwise you can go on there and request an invite ... though I have heard that doing it that way can sometimes take longer - again, no idea why.

So, what is a pinboard? Well, I like to think of it as a large online bulletin board that is separated into all kinds of categories. When you get on there, you'll see what I mean. On your 'page' with your boards they look like blocks on a large bulletin board.

Once you've been invited the first thing you'll want to do is to install the 'pin it' button on your computer. Pinterest gives very easy instructions on how to do this so don't panic! Also, if you can add it to the top of your toolbar it makes things so much easier when you're browsing the web and want to quickly 'pin' things.

Next, set up your pinboards. They start you off with a few already, but you're not bound to them at all. The ones they start you with might be 'My style', 'For the Home', 'Favorite Recipes', etc ... but you can change the titles of those if you want or you can create new boards.

So far I have 26 boards and I have seen people with as many as 37 - so I'm not sure if there is any limit but so far I've not run into one. You will probably find that as you get into it you will find yourself adding new boards all the time. Example: at Christmastime I wanted ideas for our Elf on the Shelf and I was running into so many good ideas so I decided to just create a pin board dedicated just to Elf on the Shelf ideas. It's all up to you - you choose the boards, you choose what you add to them.

Now the fun part! Start pinning stuff! There are two main ways to do this.

First: Find friends. In fact, if I remember correctly, when I first got started Pinterest sort of found friends for me - they linked with my Facebook account and found other friends {that I already know} and showed me which of my friends were already using Pinterest. Once you've found your friends, you can 'follow' them. I guess it's sort of like your friend list on FB. Pinterest also gave me a few 'friends' that were just random people I didn't know ... I ended up removing them because I wasn't interested in following people I didn't know. But that's something you can do later.

Next: Find pins {ideas} ON Pinterest. Once you are linked with some friends, you will start seeing all the stuff that THEY pin. If you click on the red 'Pinterest' at the top of the page you will see all the recent pins that your friends have pinned. You will see across the top of the page 'Pinners you Follow', 'Everything', 'Popular' and 'Gifts'. So if you want to see the pins of your friends, click the first option, if you want to see everything that people are pinning, click that, if you want to see just the popular items, click that, or of course you could click on gifts.

{I'll talk about another way to find things and pin things in a bit, but for now I need to explain how to pin, what to pin, etc}

So, now you see the things your friends are pinning - what do you do now? Let's say you see that your friend Kim pinned a breakfast casserole and you think that it looks like something you might like to try. If you hover over the picture of the item, near the top you will see a couple options: REPIN, LIKE or COMMENT. If you'd like to 'repin' it to one of YOUR pinboards, click on repin, when you do, a little box will pop up - you'll need to choose which pinboard you want to add it to {this is where you can also add new pinboards, go to the list of pinboards and there is an option to 'create new board' at the bottom of the list}, then leave some kind of comment about it {you could leave the other person's comment, or make your own - something to help you remember what the thing is and/or why you pinned it}, then click the red 'pin' button at the bottom.

There you go, you have successfully pinned an item to your pinboard!

You can also use those 'comment' and 'like' buttons to leave comments to other pinners or show that you like items {much like Facebook}. I'll be honest, I don't do a a whole lot of commenting or liking items, I do mostly pinning.

How else can you pin things? Well basically anything you find on the web can be pinned. So let's say you are reading a blog one day and they have this great inspirational quote that you love and just want to remember - here's what you do. While you are ON that web page, click your 'pin it' button {that you have already installed to your toolbar, remember?} Pinterest needs a photo in order to work, so when you click pin it you will see a bunch of pictures from that web page show up - you need to choose which picture you want to use to help you remember why you wanted to save that web link. Sometimes there is just no good photo on the page and you can use the Pinterest logo in place of a picture. Click on the picture you want, and follow the same process as you did above with choosing which board to add it to, and giving it a description {if the picture isn't real obvious than make sure how you describe it will help you remember why you pinned it.}

OK, have I lost you yet?? Are you bored to tears with all my words? Just hang in there, we're almost done! And I PROMISE that even though this seems long and wordy, once you see it and DO it, it's SO simple and easy to catch on to.

What do I love about it?

* IDEAS, IDEAS, IDEAS!! As you all know, I'm a crafty girl. But even if you aren't you can have pinboards in ANY kind of category you want! I have boards with books I love, ideas for Christmas, ideas of how I'd like to decorate my home, crafty things, inspiration for health and fitness, etc ...

* I have found Pinterest to be so inspirational! I have found and tried several new to me recipes, more than I've ever tried with all my cookbooks at home! I have found inspirational quotes and encouragement. I have found some great fitness and nutrition websites with loads of great exercises and tips. I have found homemade cleaners. I have found crafty ideas and tutorials. There is just SO much to see and PIN that it's awesome!

* I love that I keep everything in ONE place! It's like an organizing junkie's dream! I used to use my favorites list to save EVERY website I wanted to come back to - the problem was, I would save a web page to my favorites list and then forget why I saved it. Or the list was so long and I could never really find stuff when I was looking for it. There was no organization to it! Pinterest takes care of all that - everything is categorized and stays right there on my boards until I need it. So I'm looking for that recipe I saw a few weeks ago - I simply go back to my 'recipes to try' board and find it again. Easy peasy! Love that!

Now, even though Pinterest is somewhat of a 'dream board' in many ways, I've tried for the most part to only pin reasonable things. For example: I've seen some absolutely stunningly gorgeous photos of homes and kitchens and such like that on there - but I have to think to myself 'am I really ever going to have a house like that? Am I ever really going to build that amazing in-ground pool with the rocks and waterfalls around it and waterslides flowing into the pool?' Probably not. Would it be nice? SURE! But pinning too much of those types of things simply leads my heart to a place of DISCONTENTMENT - which is something I've struggled with and been working through for years.

So for me personally, I try not to allow discontentment to creep in through Pinterest. I pin things I like, clothes that I would actually see myself wearing, things for my home that I could reasonably pull off, recipes I know I would actually try, crafts that are possible to make, and on and on.

OK, I think that's all I've got for you right now! I'm sure I'm forgetting some things! If you're on Pinterest and want to share something I've failed to mention, please say so in the comments and I'll come back and add it here. I do have one question though ... how do I add the 'follow me on Pinterest' button to my blog? Anyone know?

Happy Pinteresting! =)