Six things I have learned from Pinterest (Do-Vember #30--Last post)

Do-Vember

Five six things I learned this year from Pinterest:

Photo found here

1. Guinea pigs are very photogenic. Their humans dress them up in little Christmas hats and Hallowe'en costumes. Sometimes they even go shopping.

2. If you search for one thing on Pinterest, you will probably get at least twenty more suggested posts on the same subject. You might even end up starting your own board on that subject. It's like giving a mouse a cookie.

3. If you want to travel to a place, someone has probably posted a list of ten free or cheap things to do while you're there. (Eating spicy Thai noodles at the Taj Mahal not included.)

4. Some people pay an awful lot of attention to decorating their powder rooms.

5. About a thousand ways to tie a scarf. 

6. Homeschoolers, including Charlotte Mason homeschoolers, make good use of Pinterest boards. I don't have a homeschool or C.M. board at all (I'm retired, that's my excuse), but I appreciate the people who have gone to the trouble of creating them.

Read to your guinea pig (Do-Vember #27)

Do-Vember

I am not making this up...15 Things To Do With Your Guinea Pig.

Photo found here.

Quote for the day (Do-Vember #25)

Do-Vember

A typical, unattributable, but interesting thought that popped up on my Pinterest page.

Some thrift-store DIY (Do-Vember 11)

Do-Vember

Pinterest roundup posts often take you through a mess of active and broken links, posts on original websites, and re-posts in different languages. Sometimes the important thing is not so much tracking down the original set of instructions, as just catching inspiration.

Case in point: "21 Thrift Store DIY's That Make Frugal Fabulous."  This is a roundup of home ideas, with links which might or might not be helpful. I like the first one, "Stencil some old plates for a cool wall hanging," not because I want to have plates on my wall spelling out "E-A-T" (like a neon sign?), but because the plates used for the photo are unusually pretty, and because I can think of other three-letter words (or four-letter, if you have four plates) that would work. Maybe J-O-Y? You wouldn't want to use your heirloom dishes for a project like that, but if you found three or four plates you liked at a yard sale or thrift store, it might be fun to try. Or you could paint letters on other objects, like jars.

#4: Painting an upholstered couch? Apparently (I'm very ignorant on these things) you combine the paint with a "fabric medium," and that keeps it from turning into a hard, crunchy mess. And according to the comments on the original post, painting upholstery is a "thing." I had no idea. We actually went through two inherited French Provincial couches much like the one in the photo, but I'm not sure that painting them would have been worth it.

#7 and #8: Anything turned into wind chimes or a glittery vase is the stale end of the recycling loaf, in my opinion. 

I'm halfway through the article, still hoping for something I'd seriously Do. (It's Do-Vember, remember?) Here is #15: Decoupage part of an old purse with a funky fabric panel. That looks fun and somewhat useful, assuming you have the purse and the fabric. Would I actually do it? Yes, if I saw a piece of fabric that I liked. Put that one away for a rainy/snowy day.

Finally, #21: improve a wooden tray with paint and a new covering. That idea is as old as wind chimes and glittery vases, but trays, unlike wind chimes, are very useful and uncluttery. You can use them indoors and outdoors. You can use them as memory pieces if you decoupage photos on them, or collect signatures. You can serve food on them, you can arrange gifts on them. I'm in.

So, no couches or wind chimes, but I'm going to think about stenciling letters and upcycling purses.

Laughing is doing too (Do-Vember #5)

Do-Vember

This guide to Furby-speak popped up on Pinterest for me today. It was suggested for my '60's and '70's Kids nostalgia board.

Which is pretty weird, because Furby wasn't introduced until 1998. The closest thing to a Furby that I have on my board is the late-60's Rat Fink.

But the guide to Furby-speak was very entertaining. Apparently the Furby can communicate such concepts as:

"Boh-bay" = "Worry"

and

"Dah lee-koo wah!" = "Big sound!"

and

"Kah-toh-loo-may-tay" = "Me like kisses."

I told Lydia we need one of those guides for guinea-pig squeals and chirps.

Less sit, more do (Do-Vember #1)

Do-Vember

I thought it was appropriate to base the first Do-Vember post on a pin from my Frugal board: 107 Productive Things to do Instead of Spending Money, at Tay Talks Money.

Out of 107 suggestions, what am I actually going to do instead of just acting like a "serial pinner?" Tay divides her post into categories, beginning with one of the most obvious, doh-face-palm ideas: things to do with actual money. Working on a budget, rounding up spare change, improving your credit or finding out about investments. Then there are suggested ways to earn money (which veers off into emailing old friends), and some general good things to do that are way better than playing cards online or watching too many BBC dramas.

 After ruling out some impractical ideas (for me) like jumping jacks and swimming laps, and things I already do all the time like crossword puzzles, reading and laundry, I've narrowed it down to these things that I am going to try to do over the next week or two (after the fridge gets cleaned. I do clean the fridge too, it just happens to be needing attention right now):

 62. Sit and talk with your spouse, roommate, friend, or child.
 63. Count your blessings.
 70. Go to a free museum, art show, or art festival. (If I can find one.)
 71. Go to a book signing or book reading. (If I can find one.)
 75. Clean your fridge.
 82. Shop your own closet – pair new things together or hack it up to make something new entirely. (I was going to do that anyway.)
104. Listen to a TedTalk.
(One of my own). Pull out a board game and find someone to play it with.
(One of my own). Read one of the library books that I downloaded to OverDrive, before it disappears back into cyberspace.

But really, the whole point is that whether you decide to swim laps, write your life goals, or clean the fridge, you're making choices about how to use the time that you're given. If you're busy with a lot of other things and people, you might not have that much "discretionary" time, but then it's even more important to use what you do have carefully. The point, as I see Tay making it, is that T.V.-type entertainment is, most often, a non-choice: we turn it on, it's there. It's not that we're not allowed to rest, not allowed to just be; but that we have the choice to learn new things, to do what we've been putting off, to create something or make a memory with somebody else, that will have more lasting significance than just the plot of a T.V. episode. I think Charlotte Mason would agree with that.

Do-Vember in the Treehouse (Pulling out my Pins)

Do-Vember

It's a new month. It's that new month that, in my corner of the blog world, usually means the  Christmas sewing and crafts start to appear.  Sew Mama Sew is starting their annual crafting-plus-giveaway. 

There isn't any Wednesday Hodgepodge this week (since our indefatigable Hodgepodge Hostess and family are finally getting to move into the house they've been building. I was browsing through the archives there, looking for an old Hodgepodge that I could borrow for inspiration, and I found this 2011 Pintervention post instead. Short version: some people just like to Pin things. Other people actually make and do the things they pin about. The challenge in that post was to take photos of things you had actually made that were inspired by something you saw on Pinterest.

I started a Pinterest account about a year ago, actually when I was looking for Christmas gift ideas. So yes, I can say that I am not just a "serial pinner," I do make use of a lot of what pops up. Some of my boards are just dreams (things to do in Edinburgh), and I admit that I am not too likely to make Hallowe'en mummy cookies. Others are just nostalgia: I don't really want a stack of the books I read when I was little, but I like seeing their Tip Top Elf covers all arranged in a row.

But other Pinterest boards I created--those are the do-it ones, the equivalent of the Mom-I'm-bored box for grownups.

So November is going to be Do-Vember at the Treehouse. I'm going to Use it or Lose it on a number of the things I've pinned over the past year.  Successes and fails: I promise to be honest.  Watch for the first Pin Post later today.