How to Organize on Pinterest.

I have a true love hate relationship with Pinterest. I use it all the time (probably even too much).  I'm obsessed with the outfit ideas I find, its an amazing way to keep up on trends, and find inspiration in the wardrobe department. I also am obsessed with crafting and cooking, so the DIY's and recipies are so so so useful. I drool over the wedding/party planning ideas. And don't get me wrong, I love myself a good cheesy tumblr-esque quote. The uses are really endless, and overall it's an amazing way to keep track of inspiration and ideas. Long story short, it rocks...most of the time.

That being said, I find that it really is hard to keep track of all the goodness. I went to find a tutorial on a volumized pony tail that I wanted to do, and I was left scrolling for a solid twenty or so. No good. Good news is, I finally found it, but I realized that I had some organizing to do.

Problem number one, I pretty much kept the pre-set Pinterest categories (which in retrospect was a bad move). I've added a few, but most of my pins are lumped under a few very broad headings.
I decided that by breaking my categories down into more specific areas, it will become easier to find what I need when I need it. For some pinners, this may not even be necessary; some people just love the pretty pictures. But for me, the links are just as important. I got the ambitious idea that I would organize all of my pins in one fell swoop.

Here's my Original Pinterest:

And that's where my hate part of the love/ hate relationship comes in. To edit a board, you have to edit each pin one by one. Death. So instead of trying to tackle my entire Pinterest (which I will do slowly but surely), I decided to work on my largest category: My Style. This contained all of my clothing, jewelry, hat/headband, makeup, hair, nails and style ideas. Alllll 800 or so of them. Luckily I'm at work, so I don't really have anything better to do. Hopefully this is a feature that Pinterest will fix soon... I've seen a ton of complaints about it so I know I'm not the only one. But until that day comes, here is the best way that I found to reorganize.


1. Select the board you'd like to work on. For me, like I said, it was My Style.

(p.s I took this screen shot when I was about 2 hours into working on it...there were more than 171 pins, I swear!!)
2. Decide how you want to break it down.  

I ended up with 9 new categories; My Style in the Winter, My Style in the Summer, My Style formal/ couture, My Style at Work and House Meeting, Misc. Art, Kicks, Interesting Ink, Hair and Makeup and Accessorize. These even could be further broken down (i.e Hair and makeup into 3: Hair, Makeup and Nails. Accessorize into 2 Hats and headbands, Jewelry ect.). In case you don't know how to create a new board, simply click the "add" icon in the top right, and select "create a board". Label it how you'd like.

Then comes the tricky part: Moving the pins.
I used firefox to do this. I also did it on a Dell (work computer), but I have a Macbook at home. This strategy is totally archaic but it's the best I could come up with. Yes, it's time consuming as well. But for me the rewards are great enough. So here we go:
3. Click the "Pinterest" icon in the top middle of the screen to get to your home screen. Then hover over your name in the right corner, and select "boards". This will bring you to all of your Pinterest boards. Click on the title of the board you'd like to edit.
 4. Hover over the first pin, and select "edit"

5. Which will bring you to the "edit pin" screen. Select the board you'd like to move the pin to and you're all set.

 The fastest way to do this, is to open about 10 or so tabs at a time (or as many as you can without getting dizzy), copying the URL of the board that you're editing and then clicking "paste and go". This works better than having to click the back button a bunch of times. Huge pain but what can you do.

Hope this inspires some organization!
Happy pinning!

Post- Christmas DIY

Good morning! Hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas ( I know I did!). I've been slaving away on creating a new layout for this lovely blog of mine. After a full day of pulling my hair out at my desk I'm pretty happy with it! Dare I say I think I may be getting used to the whole blogging thing.  I even edited my first HTML code! Self taught! Aah, the little things in life. My next project is to make a menu bar #nerdprobz.   Anyway, I know this is a little to late to be of use, but I made super cute DIY Christmas presents this year for my boyfriend's sisters. They're easy to make, and totally useful. Plus homemade presents are the best presents if you ask me! Here are my snowy day jars:

Cute right?!! Like I already said, I know these can't be used this year, but even as a thank-you gift or a quick New Year's party favor, these totally work. Here's what I did: 

• I made the hot chocolate using Lauren Conrad's recipie. The instructions are included in the link. (note, I tripled the recipie, and I had a ton left over. Depending on if you'll use it, I would stick to one batch). I filled the mason jars about 5/6 of the way with the mix, then topped it with plain ol' chocolate chips and marshmallows. So simple but it makes it look so delish.



Center



Front

• I was going to use the decorating ideas LC used in her tutorial....but then I decided that they were totally blah. So instead I made my own gift tags/mason jar swag. I bought a stack of Christmas paper at A.C Moore, (On sale!). Then I cut out a 5 by 1.5 inch rectangle out of one of the papers. Then I scalloped one of the edges just using regular scissors (you could trace it first if you wanted but I just went ahead. Then I trimmed the non-scalloped edge down about two centimeters. This made it so the edges didn't perfectly line up, so the pretty scalloped detail became visible:

Outside label

Inside label

Then, I added a 1 by 4 square of brown paper to the inside (using a glue stick), so that I could write the directions and sign it. I actually used brown paper purchased at A.C Moore as well, but even brown lunch bags or grocery bags would look fantastic. I also added a small rectangle to the front with scalloped edges to say who it was for (handwriting adds a great touch in my opinion) But you could always labels in a cute font.
Then I punched a hole in the upper left hand corner to string these bad boys to the mason jars.

If any of you are craft lovers like myself, you probably know that mason jar lids come in two pieces. The rim, which has the grooves so you can screw it on, and a separate top that fits in with the "rim" part. To make this even PRETTIER, I took the "top" part and traced it onto one of the papers, I cut it out, and then attached it by placing it onto the "top" and screwing on the "rim" part as usual.

The next step was to make labels for the essie nail polishes that I attached. This was super quick, just layered a rectangle of the brown over one of the papers and added my witty caption ;) MistleTOES...get it TOES!!

 I used Limitless Blue, Russian Roulette  and Scarlett O'Hara (all amazing winter shades).

Then, after a little experimenting, I found that the trick to attaching the polishes, is to unscrew it slightly, wrap the ribbon around UNDER the brush and then screw it on tight again. I used very thin ribbon, so this worked like a charm. Then I tied the ribbon, with the nail polish and gift tag to the mason jar. The shape of the bottle makes the ribbon fall away from the jar, which I thought looked sloppy, so I added a Candy cane under the ribbon, and twisted it a few times so that the ribbon became nice and snug to the jar. And voila! Snowy day jars.