Pinterest In Real Life

Hello…my name is Angie…and I’m a pack rat.  I try not to be, I really do, but sometimes I just can’t help it.  There are just some things worth holding onto.  One of my oldest and dearest pack rat-isms is magazine and catalog clippings.  I love ’em!  You see, I have this little magazine system.  The magazine comes in the mail and I immediately tear through it, cover to cover, reading just about every article and oooh-ing and ah-ing over all the pretty pictures (especially all those gorgeous, cottage homes in Better Homes & Gardens).  Then I tuck the magazine in either my nightstand for nighttime reading or in a basket in the living room.  Once either area is overflowing with old magazines, it’s time for a purge.  I go through the magazines once again, rediscovering some of my favorite homes, gardens and recipes, and tear pictures out of the publication feverishly.  Then I tuck the files in this folder, never to be seen again.

My folder runneth over.  In fact, it barely fit in my desk drawer anymore since it was stuffed so full.  I needed a new system.  Mostly because I wanted something that I could easily flip through, look for ideas or inspiration, and enjoy all those files I’ve collected over the years.  So I took a pair of notebooks that I already had on hand and decided to turn them into idea books.  The game plan…cut out the pictures, glue them onto computer paper, hole punch the pages, and insert them into the notebook.  So I bunkered down in the dining room with my supplies for an afternoon of idea book creating.

I started off by organizing the pages into several different categories: home decorating/renovating (the largest category), gardening, recipes, wedding stuff, Halloween decorating, Christmas decorating, and crafts.  The wedding pages got filed away in my wedding planner and the recipes were given their own organizational system (more on that on another day).

The original game plan was to have separate sections in the notebook for each of these categories and then also break down the huge pile of home decorating/renovation pics by room, kind of mirroring my Pinterest boards.  But then I realized that sometimes a bathroom pic inspired me to do a project in another room.  There was alot of category crossover but unlike Pinterest, I couldn’t rearrange my pics at will since I was gluing them to the paper pages.  So I opted to put everything together except for the holiday decorating pics…those are in a separate section in the back.  So the cutting and the gluing began.

And in the end, I condensed down the overstuffed file folder into one, neat notebook.

I enjoy flipping through the pages, perusing all the pictures.

There are so many amazing spaces out there to use for inspiration.  And I didn’t realize until I started clipping all the pictures at how long I have been collecting magazine tearouts.  That pic below of the driving range off a back deck came from my parents’ old deck magazine circa 1999.  Have I mentioned that I’m a pack rat?!

I also made sure to leave some white space on each of the pages.  I took a cue from Pinterest, and wanted to leave myself little notes about what I loved in each of the pics or ideas on how to recreate the inspiration or give it my own spin.  It’s like Pinterest…a tangible Pinterest.  Come meet the tangible side of Pinterest.

Before creating this idea book I don’t think I ever looked through all those magazine clippings.  They just sat there collecting dust in my desk.  In the last week since creating the notebook, I’ve dug it out on several occasions to search for inspiration or ideas.  I’m currently cruising its contents to see if I can FINALLY come to a decision on a bathroom vanity style/design so we can FINALLY build/find one!  Two years is too long to go without a vanity!

Pssst…Speaking of Pinterest, you can follow me here.