Pinterest ... sigh

This is not one of my Pinterest boards. I just Googled.

For awhile Ravelry took over my life. I drooled over expensive and exotic yarns I would never buy, oohed and aahed over elaborately cabled and intricately lacey projects. I queued up a bunch of stuff I will likely never make. I found a bunch of fantastic patterns I've enjoyed knitting up into all sorts of cozy amazingness.

Then the obsession faded. There was clearly no point in continuing to tag and queue and link to soooo many things so that I would need a sorting and filing system to differentiate between the stuff I loved but would probably never knit and the patterns I want to knit now, today.

Don't get me wrong. Ravelry is still my number one first stop when I want to browse anything knitty or yarny. The comments and adaptations made by others on the patterns are particularly helpful. And, just yesterday I spent a hundred and *mumble, mumble* dollars on yarn and linked said yarn to a variety of projects in my Ravelry queue. Here we go, 2012!

But, Pinterest pwns me now.

What a neat site! Folks (seemingly folks of a crafty/cooky/creative bent) "pin" online items to virtual bulletin boards in order to remember them and find them again later. For example, I have created boards for Christmas, DIY Gifts, Foods to Try, DIY Home, Knitting & Sewing, etc.

Thanks to these ideas, I already have the stir things up in my house bug (Granted, I was bit by this bug when we had a our minor kitchen fire back a few months ago. The fire resulted in replacing the stove, counter and floor, but I also painted all the kitchen cabinets, and Joe and my dad installed a new (vented to the outside for the first time) range hood and put in pendant lighting.). And thanks to Pinterest, I've already bought the vinyl stickers to add this nifty organization system to a cupboard door near the stove.

But now I want to spread the new decor around.

We're going to use leftover vinyl from the kitchen and refloor the foyer. But now, thanks to Pinterest, I also want to redecorate the entryway and coat closet (maybe with a hidden door, like this one).

The family room is getting a do-over as well. While I still have the paint to match the wall, I'm going to remove the 97 family pictures from the wall. They're going to go in coordinating black frames and line our stairwell (like this, but diagonal). I'm finally going to add an official ledge to the top of the simply-painted freezewall, like this one, but painted white to match our trim. (For that matter, I'm going to finish painting the trim in the house, so that it's all white and not a mix of white and ugly 70s dark brown stain.) Then I'm going to store our scrapbooks someplace else or in some other manner, so I can use my wall table to create lovely seasonal vignettes out of stuff we already have but never have a spot for. And with the pictures down, I can free up the wall for something more modern, more "us."

Maybe I'll get these hip subway art Doctor Who prints for a start. It is the TV room, why try to disguise that with country kitsch? Why not embrace the media-center-ness of it? (I'm hoping that once we do our taxes, a nice new flat-screen TV is coming our way.) Or maybe I'll frame some vintage movie posters ... I could even swap them out seasonally for new ones, like It's a Wonderful Life at Christmastime or The Birds for Halloween.

Finally ... our bedroom. Other then new carpeting and moving in our furniture, we haven't redecorated our bedroom in any way since we moved in 11+ years ago. The major reason why not is the horrendous wines and berries wallpaper. We've stripped wallpaper from many other areas of our house to sometimes disastrous effect. Apparently the walls were inadequately primed and/or painted before applying the wallpaper, so removing it rips big hunks of drywall right off the wall. Not. Good. I've become a rather adept spackler over the years, but some of our earliest attempts in the wallpaper-removal nightmare have resulted in the walls looking rather primitively plastered rather than the smoothly drywalled effect I'd prefer. Anyway, I don't think we're planning to recarpet, so that will remain a medium-blue color. And our bedroom furniture is custom-made, natural red oak (made by my dad: headboard, my dresser, Joe's armoire, plus a quilt hanger and two nightstands) ... and that's all staying. So, it really comes down to wall color and linens. Hello, Pottery Barn!

This seems like a lot. Heck, considering the wallpaper-removal, maybe it is a lot. But really it's a bunch of small projects that will update our home a lot, and hopefully amp up its cool-factor, usefulness and hominess. And, I don't have to keep track of any of it in little file folders stuffed with magazine clippings.

I have Pinterest,

Bring it on, 2012!

--End-

Update: just purchased 9 posters for the family room. Going to do an arrangement of 3 16x20-sized prints in frames, and change them out for Halloween and winter. They're combinations of movie posters and classic book cover illustrations. Me likey.

Update: priced ledge at Lowe's.com ... 1x8x8, cove moulding, and a gallon of semi-gloss trim paint = $82.