Welcome to P.A. (Pinners Anonymous)

Hi, I'm Katelyn and I'm a Pinterest user. My last pin was...about 6 minutes ago.
(Hi, Katelyn)

True story. I love Pinterest, it's absolutely fantastic. I'm a cork board junkie, I have 7 of them hanging in my apartment. I'm an extremely visual person, so I like having everything organized within eyesight. So naturally when I heard about Pinterest, I was ALL OVER IT. No. Literally. Pretty sure I went through all their pages in the first day.

I'm sure by now all of you have heard about Pinterest and how it's breaking all these social media records and how women are the main user, yada yada yada. For those of you who have A: been living under a rock for the past couple of months, or B: still somehow don't know what Pinterest is, I've attached an infographic at the bottom of this post that originally published in a Tech Crunch article. Enjoy.

Kaytucky Chicken . SO GOOD. Chicken stuffed with cream cheese,
parsley, bacon, garlic salt, chili powder, and  shredded cheese,
all wrapped up in a pastry sheet. I've made this so many times.

One thing I have noticed about Pinterest though is its ability to allow online collaboration and socialization that translates into our daily life--and actually improves it. With Twitter and Facebook you are able to socialize, post cat videos and catch up on everything going on around the world. But honestly, besides flipping through your high school friend's photo albums, what are you really gaining from spending those hours (upon hours, upon hours) on Facebook?

Social networking is great, but at what cost? I don't mean for this to sound overly dramatic, but honestly think about it. If we are going to be spending this much time on a website, shouldn't we be getting something out of it? Or at least making our offline life a little better?

  This is how all snowflakes should look. #starwarsnerd 

Since I've started using Pinterest I have learned to make countless recipes. My boyfriend loves it. The other day he walked in his apartment and commented on the fact that it smelled like bacon. He's living the dream. But besides food, I've also been able to learn how to make a lot of decorations and things to liven up my apartment. For example, I have a pin that shows how to use scrapbooking paper to decorate a blank wall. Or use brightly colored pictured, remove the picture, and hang them on the wall.

Pinterest has allowed me to challenge myself, which is something none of the social networking sites have allowed me to do. I'm teaching myself how to do new things, cook new foods and reorganize everything from spices to binders. Pinterest acts almost just like a facilitator to our offline lives. It helps us learn new things. It guides us and helps us transition our newly attained online knowledge to offline magic (aka Stormtrooper Snowflakes).

Simple. Easy. Interesting.

Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter focuses
on the past and the present exclusively. Answering questions  like, what just happened or what is he doing right now? While on the other hand Pinterest allows us to look toward the future. I could cook this for our family dinner. I will decorate my apartment with this. For these reasons, I believe that Pinterest is a prime example of what social networking should be. Being able to connect with our friends and family shouldn't be restricted to a random "poke" accompanied by an LOL or some other lazy text speak. Online social networking sites shouldn't take over our offline social lives, they should find a way to enhance them and make us act.


If you are a fellow Pinterest(-er?), follow my boards! Here's the link to all my boards, poke around a bit. http://pinterest.com/keabbott/.

And just as I promised, here is a rather interesting Infographic from Tech Crunch that shows the power of Pinterest. Definitely worth taking a look at, even if you are an avid user!