Pinterest, Where Have You Been All My Life?

It's a good thing I don't blog for a living, or I'd be broke right about now! What have I been up to for the past couple of weeks? Well, let's see...

1) Please forgive me for bragging about what millions of other moms/women/teachers do every single week of the year, but I taught for a full week for the first time in 6 years...and guess what? Not so bad! I caught a cold and had laryngitis for most of the week, including a couple of days with almost no voice at all, and my students were awesome. (Perhaps they pitied me. I'll take it.) Bear was a rock star, picking up my slack at home and taking an extra day off work to be home with the girls so we didn't wear out my poor grandma. I'm sure working full-time plus running a household is no piece of cake when it's your way of life, but my one-week stint was at least enough to convince me that I won't completely lose my mind in a couple of years when my jobsharing phase comes to an end!

2) We've been cramming in as much holiday fun as we can with our Activity Advent Christmas Countdown calendar. (Apparently it's not technically an advent calendar, because we're counting down the days in December, rather than the four weeks, leading up to Christmas. Tomato, to-mah-to? Whatever--I'll err on the side of correctness.) (Also, I should probably research whether "correctness" is technically a word.) So far the girls have...

-watched Christmas movies in bed

-made paper snowflakes

-looked at Christmas lights in the neighborhood

-seen Happy Feet 2 in the theater

-busted out the Christmas music in the car

-had a picnic lunch under the Christmas tree

-roasted marshmallows on the stove to make s'mores

-gone to Keira's preschool's Christmas play (poor Kiwi came down with a fever and sore throat that night and clearly wasn't feeling good--love this fake smile):


-gone to our friends' annual Christmas party, where I received this wonderfully-creepy statue in the white elephant gift exchange...sadly, I "forgot" it at our friends' house. In their bed, specifically. I have a feeling he'll be back.


(Our poor friends also received a Justin Bieber calendar from us in the same exchange. The best part? Bear had gone out and bought the calendar himself. Like, in public. When I asked if he was sure he was willing to do that, he said, "I'll get it at Wal-Mart. There's no shame there, anyway." I wonder how long we'll still be able to call them "our friends" at this rate!)

At the same party, there was a book exchange for the kids, where Ells got a cute reindeer book that plays "Up on the Housetop"...


...and Keira got a childrens' version of Little Women, which she is very excited about despite this "This book has hard words" look she's sporting:


And, finally...

3) I jumped on the Pinterest bandwagon, and MAN, is that thing totally awesome and completely evil at the same time!

If you don't know what Pinterest is, it's a brilliant combination of bookmarking your favorite websites online plus the simplest aspects of Facebook (adding comments or "liking" other people's pins). It's way better than bookmarking, though, because you create your own categorized bulletin boards and "pin" ideas you find onto the boards, so you have a visual display of your favorite ideas in whatever categories you choose (crafts, teaching ideas, hairstyles, books to read, home decor ideas...the possibilities are endless)--just the photos. When you click on the photos, it takes you directly to the website where that idea was featured so you can read more details or instructions if you want.

For example, my "Fun Kid Ideas" board looks like this:


And, you can search the site for other people's pins and re-pin them to your own boards, and follow people whose taste is similar to yours...so, basically, it's The Best of the Internet. Since I love me a good tip AND am a fiend for stealing other people's great ideas, this site and I were destined to become acquainted!

The bad news, of course, is that it's possible to spend about a zillion hours browsing people's boards and searching for ideas. It's the biggest Internet time-waster since Facebook, but at least it has the potential to be productive, IF you actually put the ideas you find there to use! And, shockingly, I have.

Here are a few of the Pinterest projects I've done in the past couple of weeks:

Tea wreath (DIY gift):


DIY ornament wreath for over our mantle (I had the "JOY" letters in our holiday decorations box for ages and finally was about to put them under the wreath, but realized the wreath as the "O" looks cuter! I don't love the cubes around it, but those are there year-round and I can't figure out what else to put up there, anyway, so I at least stuck some festive stuff in them for the time being):


North Pole cookies for the Christmas party we went to:


Book hospital for my classroom, so kids aren't constantly interrupting me to show me torn pages or loose covers (this one isn't mine, by the way--it's the source photo):


Pinterest is also great for Random Great Ideas, like this one to keep your apple from getting all brown in your lunchbag before lunch (it does work--I tried it):


Like the apple thing, almost everything I find on there goes in the general category of Why Didn't I Think of That??

Anyway, that's what we've been up to lately. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go waste more time looking for time-saving ideas on Pinterest!