Pinterest Tutorial

There was a time when I regularly posted things to my blog. Lately, I've been kind of a slacker. Yet, in most of my recent posts, I've managed to work in the cause of said slacking... PINTEREST!

I used to think Facebook would be the biggest digital time suck ever created. I was wrong. Pinterest takes the cake. Plus, it has far fewer ultrasound pictures, so that's a plus. (Oh, Facebook... you know I still love you!) Anyway, it's been described as fantasy football for girls. I want to argue, but it's true.
If you haven't jumped on the bandwagon yet, it's hard to explain Pinterest. It's kind of like Google image searching "Awesome" and then finding a plethora of design ideas, DIY projects, funny quotes and sayings, adorable animals, tasty recipes, and on and on and on. You pin the things you like... basically bookmark them so you can either show them off to your friends or, ideally, come back to them later and actually use the idea. But, by now, most of you probably already have that part figured out.

What comes next is that you get one of your friends to invite you (seriously, just ask a friend - me, for example - to send you an invite rather than waiting weeks for Pinterest to send you one) and then you have that "Okay, now what?" moment.

That's where my nerdiness kicked in. In my rarely-discussed day job, I am a corporate trainer. Part of that means I make training materials, instructional guides, etc. So when a few people started asking me what to do on Pinterest, I made a guide. Only, unlike the ones I have to make for work, this one was actually fun. For me, anyway. It's probably lame. But I'm lame. So lame = fun.

After sharing it with some friends and them claiming it was relatively helpful, I've decided to share it with you. Keep in mind it's a far cry from the technical mumbo-jumbo I'm used to writing and actually knowledgeable about... but hopefully this will get you on your way to the pinning fun! (This guide begins with the assumption you've already figured out how to sign up and log in. If you can't get to that step I can't help you, um, email me.)

And one last thing before we get to the guide...

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Step 1: Exploring

When you initially log in, under the Pinterest banner, you'll see Pinners You Follow in bold. That is your current view. Of course, this means you need to be following things.

Pinterest can search your Facebook / Twitter contacts to help you find people you already know. Or, if you come across someone with interesting pins, you can click on their name / photo at the bottom of their pin. You'll be taken to their page and see all their boards. Determine if you want to follow everything they post, or just specific boards.

Once you've followed several boards, you will have that initial "News feed" feel like Facebook when you first log in. I always take a few minutes to scroll through, see what my friends are up to, and repin, comment, or like their items. From there, however, I spend most of my time on more broad searches.

Use the navigation links under the header.

The Everything category can be a little overwhelming or it can be awesome. It's unfiltered, so it's a complete mashup of everything Pinterest has to offer. Depending on my mood, sometimes I really enjoy the randomness. Other times, I have something specific in mind and I use categories to get more filtered results. (If you have a really, really specific item in mind, you can use the search bar to just look for pins / boards containing that word.) 

When you first start playing with Pinterest, spend a little time just exploring. Until you have an idea of what's out there, I think it's kind of hard to envision what boards and pins you want to create for yourself.

Step Two: Your Boards

When you sign up, Pinterest provides you with 5 boards: Products I Love, Favorite Places & Spaces, Books Worth Reading, My Style, and For The Home. You'll see that most people have renamed these boards and added others. I renamed all of mine to be more "me". Below is my recipe / food board. No clue what it was called before. (Probably My Style, he he he ) To rename a board, just click Edit. You'll get options for the board's title, description, and category. Fill in what you want, then save the settings.

Boards are a work in progress. I set up a few initially and I've added several more as I've gone along. Like anything else, some people are going to have one or two boards where they pin everything. (Those people clearly don't have OCD like me.) Other people go to the opposite end of the spectrum and have tons of highly-specific boards. I aim for middle ground… specific enough that people who want to follow only some of my boards have a good idea of what the content will be, but not so many that anyone who follows all my boards will be like "Dude. Chill out with the boards, already."

Step Three: Pinning

Yes, pinning is the whole point and I'm just now getting to it. But, I'm a firm believer that setting things up correctly on the front end (ahem, Facebook privacy settings) and only needing occasional maintenance is a lot easier than just jumping in all willy-nilly and realizing later that you have no idea what you're doing or that you've made a big mess and it's not fun.

But, finally, you've seen what's out there, you've gotten some ideas of what you want to pin… now, let's pin!

Is this little dog the cutest thing you've ever seen and you can't live without being able to find him quickly at a future date? If so, pin him!

Clicking Repin will give you the option to put this on one of your boards. Clicking Like will "tag" the item so you can find it later, but it won't appear on your boards and your followers won't see it on their Pinners I Follow screen.

Note: You can click on your name in the top right corner at any time to go to your home page. You'll have a link there to click to see anything you have liked.

But you want to pin this pup… so click Repin.

Choose the board you want. (At the bottom of your list of boards will be an option for Create New Board if you need that.)

Edit the description. On one hand, Pinterest is a place for me to tag things I want to reference later. If it's something I need for later, I want to make sure I remember what it is when I come back to it. "Yum" probably won't remind me that it was a recipe for Nutella banana bread. Then there's also a social aspect where I want to show my friends what I'm interested in and why.  If it's a pin I'm "showing off" or just really like, I want to convey why. The only time I leave the last person's description is if the pin has a "story" to go with it or if they previous pinner already came up with the perfect caption.

Once you've got the info how you want it… PIN IT!!

YAY!

UPDATE: As mentioned in the comments to this post, it's a good idea to open a pin before you repin it. There should be a link to the source. That should take you to the original site where the item was posted. This is where you'll find the full article and, ideally, proper credit for the ideas, pictures, etc. Source links are important and courteous. But they are sometimes wrong. Follow the link; make sure it goes where it's supposed to. If you find that you had to hunt around a blog or other site to find the material, consider creating a new pin (see below for the Pin It button) that goes directly to the source so others won't have to go through same headache.

Step Four: Repeat

Keep exploring. Keep pinning. Look up and realize you've been sitting at the computer for 4 hours. Repeat.

Decide you can't only pin things while you're at the computer. What about when you're waiting in the doctor's office or at a red light? So, install the smartphone app.

Conclude that the stuff on Pinterest is awesome, but there's still awesome stuff other places and why, oh, why can't it be on Pinterest, too? So, install the Pin It button.

Under the About drop down, there's an option for this button. It will add the button to your toolbar. If you're on another site and see something you want to pin, well, pin it. I'm not going to into details about exactly how to install and work the button. It's pretty straightforward. It's also available on the phone app, but I haven't quite gotten that sorted out yet on my iPhone.

When you're ready to get fancier and more interactive, Pinterest uses the concept of hashtags and @ mentions like Twitter. If you want to categorize something, you could add a # to the description. #dog will turn into a link. If clicked, other doggy pins will show up.  If you want to mention a friend in the description of a pin, type the @ then begin typing their user name. A drop down will give you the option to pick the name you want. When finished, that person will be notified that you mentioned them in a pin. (If you come across something that you don't want to pin but you want to make sure a friend sees, just comment on the pin and @ mention your friend. "Hey, @Jane Doe, did you see this?")

Finally, the Help section is actually helpful. I am sure I've just scratched the surface and even gotten details wrong. The Help section will be glad to straighten it out for you.

And, voila, that's the basics of Pinterest. If you've come across any other cool tricks or info to pass on to fellow Pinterest junkies, please share them below.

Laundry is for the dogs!

Last week, several of our household appliances staged a revolt. First, the big chest freezer turned itself off. Well, the ground fault plug in thingy (yes, that's the technical term) got tripped somehow, shutting off freezer. Of course, why would I notice this until who knows how long later? So, everything in the freezer - gone. Then, the next day, the satellite receiver stopped working. On a Saturday. During college football season. I was out of town, but got routine texts from my husband. "The satellite shut off."  "Never mind, it's back on." "It shut off again! There's a game on!" "It's back on. Arkansas scored!" "It's off again! $(%&@!" And, before long, it was just completely kaput! Then, a day or two after that, the dryer quit drying. Not surprising, since we bought it 8 years ago and it was a cheap off-brand. Or since we've already had to fix a few things on it.

The freezer was obviously the least problematic. Push in the little reset button... good to go. The satellite receiver wasn't too bad either. We lease the equipment, so Dish put a new one in the mail to us at no charge. Whew! Three days without TV and losing everything saved on the DVR... annoying but not catastrophic. But the dryer...

Official diagnosis? Death of the heating element. The cost to replace the heating element was almost a third of what we paid for the dryer. Not that that was a lot, but it just didn't seem wise to keep putting money into an appliance that wasn't worth much to begin with. My brother-in-law had a dryer sitting in storage that he said we could buy off of him. That seemed like a great plan. Except, of course, I Googled...

I have had a love / hate relationship with my washer and dryer from the get-go. Laundry is my least favorite chore anyway, but neither machine was particularly efficient, even in its prime. As they got older, the chore became more and more of a chore. So, I figured what could it hurt to just look at a few websites and see if any front-loaders happened to be on sale? Okay, fine, this is something I do several times a year. I already had a good idea of what I wanted.

As it turned out, one of the models I'd had my eye on was on sale... $400 off the pair! (Thanks, Veterans!) And 18 months interest-free financing. And IN STOCK! But, like I could even convince David to go for this.

Except, I did! Well, it didn't take much convincing. He actually agreed that it make sense to replace them with more efficient models and, once I showed him what we would need to pay each month in order to have them paid off in 18 months, he was on board.

So, that's how Ben and Ellie joined our family. Yes, David named the washer and dryer. After Benelli... the shotgun he would have rather purchased with that money. But shotguns don't wash your underwear, so...

All that to say that nearly a week without easy access to laundry is very disruptive to a family. Luckily, we were able to wash some basics at my sister's house. And, sure, there's a laundromat in town had it come to that. But, when you've had laundry in your house for years and suddenly don't, it's a pain. We generate an obscene amount of laundry for 2 people. Add 3 dogs and their blankets and the towels required as 1 of the dogs isn't quite getting the hang of house training.... and you've got a mountain of laundry. I spent all day Saturday washing load after load.

While I was in front-loader heaven, the fur children were less enthused.

Bruiser freaked the freak out the first time I started up the washer.

He stood there and whined and barked until I finally had to kick him out of the room.

As I worked my way through the backlog of clothes, Bruiser wore himself out whining at the laundry room door. Finally, he had to take a break.

Why, yes! He is perched on a pile of clean clothes. Awesome.

I shooed him away and went back to the laundry room.

So he decided to hide IN the pile of clothes. Super!

And, just as I thought we'd gotten the pile of laundry and the puppy hoopla under control, Maize decided to join in the fun.

That's right. The highly trained police K9 perched herself on an ottoman full of clean clothes. Now I know why I'm covered in dog fur all the time.

Luckily, the puppy can't jump up on the furniture yet. But, don't worry, he managed to "help" with the chores, too...

So, there you have it. Mass appliance suicide and dogs determined to undo any chore we manage to get done... this is why I'm crazy!!

Oh, and thank you for not pointing out that, in every case, we took a picture of the pets before removing them from whatever they were destroying. Because, come on, how are you not going to take a picture of a dog in a dishwasher!?

And the winners are...

Congratulations to Lou Anne, Sarah, and Mandy for winning my Shutterfly holiday card giveaway!!

Ladies, I'll email you the codes this afternoon. Everyone else, thanks for signing up. Maybe I'll have more cool stuff to give away in the future.

(And in case you're like me and just have to know how I arrived at the number of entries... I subtracted one of the comments, which was actually a reply from me. So, that left 14. Then I had two people show me proof they posted about the giveaway, but they didn't leave a comment. I went ahead and counted that. So, 14 + 2 = 16 eligible entries. Whew. I really do have a compulsive need to explain myself, don't I?) 

I Don't Care {Guest Post}

Today I'm doing something I don't recall having done before. I mean, it's entirely possible I've done it, like, 12 times and just don't remember. Like the number of times I put the clothes in the dryer and then return an hour later to find they are still sopping wet because I forgot to actually turn on the dryer, but I digress...

Today I'm posting something someone else wrote. I don't think I've had a "guest poster" here before. Mostly I'm afraid you'll like them better and abandon me. But a friend of mine posted a note on Facebook today and I immediately asked her if I could repost it.

So, I'm taking a break from my usual snark and chaos to share Mandy's words, which I found to be poignant and definitely something I needed to hear. They are from a perspective different from my own. She's a mother and a nurse. Her specific struggles aren't the same as mine. But the overwhelming pressure and self-doubt are something I think most of us can relate to. And her decision to push past those things and say "I don't care" is significant. Not "I don't care" in an angry, bitter sense, but in an empowered "I'm just trying to be the best I can be and if that's not good enough for you, too bad" sense. We all need that moment. Or, at least in my case, probably need it 20 times a day.

I don't care. This statement can mean a number of things, either positive or negative. Most people might think it means someone has given up hope, or that a person is indecisive. But in my case, it is the opposite. For the first time in my life, I don't care, and here is why:

**1.  I have never been "popular" and I probably never will be, and I DON'T CARE. I have a small circle of people in my life that I love and love me, and they are real, genuine people who love me even with all my imperfections. I've spent a good portion of my life wishing I was popular, so I could be part of the "inner circle". But I have realized you create your own inner circle, with people you love for who they are, not what they are, and they love you for the same reasons.

**2. I am not perfect, nor will I ever be, and I DON'T CARE.  My whole life I have beat myself up because I thought I wasn't pretty enough or thin enough, or good enough in anything I have ever done. I am real, with real feelings. I am overweight, I always have been. But I have been focused on how I look, sometimes overlooking the fact that I have been blessed with good health. Should I exercise more? Of course. I want to set a good example to my kids about exercising to be healthy, not just to attain that elusive 6 pack. The cliche "Nobody is perfect" is a cliche, but oh how true it is. I do believe we should strive to be perfect in whatever we do, but let's face it, it is impossible to achieve perfection and expect to remain there. I don't want to beat myself up anymore because I'm not a "hot" mom, or my house isn't perfect (aka a mess), or that my kids didn't make honor roll. My house is a mess, my roots are showing, and my kids are not gifted, they are average and you know what? I don't care... (I love my kids no matter what, my house is lived in, and gray happens...)
**3. I am not always politically correct, and I DON'T CARE.  I would never intentionally hurt someone's feeling, though I am sure I have, and that I am sorry for. I don't believe in being rude, but I am no longer going to apologize for who I am. I have opinions, and I have a right those opinions. There have been times I had an opinion, but kept my mouth shut for fear of offending someone. If I offend you, it is not intentional. But I have a right to my own opinion just as much as the next person. The older I get, the harder it is to offend me. Some topics may get me fired up, and I am entitled to voice my opinions on those topics, just as the people are who have ideas different than mine. And you know what? I love to laugh and joke about stuff, and some of the stuff that I find funny might offend some. But like I said, I would never intentionally hurt someone, and I have just a word of advice to those people. Lighten up and have a good laugh, even if it's at yourself.  If you can't laugh at yourself, learn to, immediately.
**4. I get paid by the hour, I don't get to travel around the world on business, and my work wardrobe consists of whatever happens to be clean when I get up at 10:20pm... and I DON'T CARE.  I am a nurse, and I am extremely proud of that. I've had probably every bodily fluid imaginable  splattered on me, and as long as I have access to gloves and a shower, I'm okay with that. I love the nurses I work with- they all work their tails off and can still crack a joke at the end of the day (or night), and most of the time, I love the work I do. There are crappy shifts at times. And nurses get dumped on by difficult patients and difficult doctors, usually undeservingly. So when I hear someone complaining about how the nurses were awful or how a nurse did this or that I always stand up for those nurses. Are there bad nurses out there in the world? Of course. But I firmly believe the majority have their patient's best interests in mind. And until you have worked a shift in a hospital short staffed, with 5 labors, a level 2 baby, and a patient on the verge of coding who refuses to be transferred, stressed out has a whole new meaning. I am EXTREMELY proud to be a nurse.
** I will stop here. ... I wrote it for myself, so those times when I start feeling sorry for myself because I wasn't included in something, or I start to feel inadequate for having mountains of laundry, I will go back and read it, and hopefully remember how I was feeling the day I wrote it. 

See?! I told you it was good. Fear not, I'm already working on her to start her own blog. Oh, and don't let her kid you too much... she's totally the hot mom!

Giveaway extended

I've extended the deadline for my giveaway until Wednesday night at 10PM. Because I'm crazy generous like that.

Seriously, it's not hard. None of that "Stand on your head, tweet this 4 times, then sacrifice a chicken to be entered" kind of stuff.

ENTER HERE