"The joy of Pinning" or "In praise of big knickers!"

Its nearly Spring!

Ok, maybe not, but It's not freezing every morning any more, and when the sun shines, its actually WARM!.
So, in the hopes of sparking off a proper pre-spring cleaning frenzy, over the past week I have been looking through my bookmarks to try and get them into some kind of order.

I don't know about yours - you may be one of those strange and mysterious beings who tag, file and collate your bookmarks with library precision, able to find any reference with a few precise clicks.
If so, I bow to your magnificence and suggest you skip the next bit rather rapidly. You will be appalled at my haphazard methods.

Me?
Well, I just click 'bookmark this page' in the handy section at the top of my browser, add the link to whatever section seems most relevant at the time, and leave it there until I need it again.
At which time I realise that:

1.  I haven't titled it.
2.  For reasons which are lost in the mists of post menopausal memory, I have not put it in the section that now obviously relates to it.
3. It's not actually about what I thought it was about in the first place.

And I promptly resort to Google.

Yet again.
*Le sigh*

Now, while I've found somethings that have made me smile*, or wonder why I bookmarked them in the first place, mostly its been a slog to open them, rename them

However, since I discovered the joys of Pinterest my bookmarks have become much more manageable.
Post-pinterest, things are rather different.

• I find something interesting as I pick my way through the spider-silk  of the Interweb.

• I realise, as I'm Ooohing and Aaahing, that I want to follow the link to some other tantalising site.

• But I don't want to lose the link to the page that I'm on, so.....I look for something visual that will tell me as soon as I see it, what the original site was about, and I click the 'pin it' button, kindly supplied by those sensible people at Pinterest. ( I bet they collate their bookmarks!)

• It  brings up a pretty list of all the possible images, and choose the one I decided on earlier, click it, add a note about it, put it in the relevant file, and Hey Presto! its done.

Of course, there are pitfalls.

• Time works differently when you are in the Pinterest dimension - before you know it the ten minutes that you think you have spent flicking through a couple of sites has warped into ten hours. And, NO, I'm not joking.
• Some swanky websites don't let you pin their images. Not in an 'You do not have permission to do so' way, but a ' No image or video found on this page" way. And while I recognise that the image belongs to someone ( I always try to make sure I've attributed it to the correct source, and don't pin an image if there is a request on the page not to,), and Pinterest will ALWAYS remove it if someone objects, When I'm on a page that is selling stuff, PLEASE make your image Pin-able! . I mean, when even a computer illiterate like me can screen grab, save , copy and then add a link back to the original page then what difference would it make?

So, after that mini Pinning 101, it's back to the old fashioned version.

And 'click'

Enjoy your weekend!

* This was this story that made me smile - It was in The Guardian on Wednesday 2 Jan 2008 and was called "Fire,fire, put pants on fryer"

:D
Oh yes, I can empathise with that last comment!

Organisation- the first tiny step towards world domination!

I'm feeling rather satisfied with myself today.

I've taken my first small step in the direction I pointed myself towards in my New Years Hopes.

Not the old style resolution one of reducing my waistline, which as expected, is already in difficulties.

Mix together 1 teenager with a penchant for baking, an excess of time and a handful of goodies, and you have a recipe for waistline expansion that's quick and easy. In this case it's consisted of a banana loaf that was just the right mix of lightness and fudgy banana ( they were going brown and squidgy and we couldn't waste them, could we?!?), a golden syrup loaf (just because the banana loaf had been so good), plus a variety of buns, muffins and puff pastry savoury tarts.
The resolution hasn't had a hope of staying on track with the magnet of baked goodness pulling me towards it.
I'm not giving up on that score though. I just won't buy any more flour!
:D

But back to the NYH that is the subject of this post.

I'm a bit of a hoarder. Not TV series level, but when added to my middling organisational skills, you have the reason why I found 7 pairs of secateurs when I reorganised the shed this summer. AND KEPT THEM ALL!
Well.... I was obviously going to lose them again, so it was pointless getting rid of them. On a positive note though, now, when I can't find a set, I look again and DON'T just buy some more!

I also have wonderfully inspired ideas about repurposing/refreshing things that other people might look at and just see a load of tat and the reason I can spend hours poking about on Pinterest.

Add those together and you get the reason for both my NYS's for 2013.
Get rid of the stuff that's been hanging around AND find the stuff that I want more easily.
Simple!

(Damn you car insurance advert! I can't say that word without adding an 's' and n Eastern European accent!)

So today, I took my first step on the road to ORGANISATION!
Oooooh, I hear you say. Wow and golly!
Well, maybe not, but I'm pleased with myself, and am giving myself a virtual pat on the back.

A few years ago I bought a pin board for the aforementioned baking daughter, then a second ( with boxes and hooks and stuff ) that she liked better, and which made it up onto the wall of her room. The plain pin board languished, sad and lonely, in a cupboard. A year or so later it was joined by a slightly worse for wear ( loose joints and a missing spine ) combination white /cork board that I'd thought 'might come in useful'.
Today they were very nearly joined by a third.
I saw this really neat cork board in Wilkinsons - just what I'd been looking for to go above my desk - and was just picking it up to put in my basket when the ever practical daughter reminded me that I already had one. In fact that I had two, and that it would be silly not to use one of the ones I already had rather than buy a new one. Even if it was only £2.00.
I couldn't argue with that could I?

So off we trekked home, having somehow also acquired a number of baking and educational essentials on the way.....

The short of it though is that she was right.
When I looked at the cork board it just needed a small repair to the corner, a hanger attached to the back and a little metal bar of hooks embellished with mushrooms added ( the hooks had been lying around looking for a suitable home since I bought it, um, possibly 6 years ago ....) and TahDah!
It's up on the wall, with my work rotas, Shifty the screen cleaning cat, and the printout for a felt bunny that was about to get lost.

*takes a bow*

*does a happy dance*

Go me!