The Dirty Little Secrets (no one talks about) On Pinterest

How about we start this post off with a little introduction. Hi my name is Jen and I am addicted to Pinterest.

Feel free to join my sharing circle if you are also a Pinterest junkie.

Pinterest is like a smorgasbord of the best and brightest ideas the internet has to offer. Within Pinterest one can find inspiration for almost any party, any theme, any holiday and even inspiration for things you didn’t know you needed before you saw it on Pinterest! Remember those pot holders you tried to make out of socks last month…..

Seriously, they are a thing. Check it:

But there are a few dirty little secrets about Pinterest that you may not be aware of and really should keep in mind as you peruse those pin-worthy pics.

What You See May Not Be What You Get

As a blogger who has worked very hard to create those elusive pin-worthy pics, I know first hand that those fabulous pictures you see are usually staged, edited and doctored. No one wants to see the 10 cookies I burned trying to get a good one. So bloggers in general will take the best of the batch, take a picture of that and completely omit any mention of the previous ten failures. Except this is bad for you, when you get 10 burnt cookies while following the recipe exactly which leaves you feeling like a failure, because the recipe looked so easy on Pinterest……

Most recently, this happened to me with some dinosaur Rice Krispie treats I tried to re-create from a pinned recipe that I had pinned over 3 years ago and has been re-pinned now hundreds and hundreds of times. The recipe looked so easy, but what was omitted was the fact you had to press the cookie cutters so hard you almost left the palms of your hands scarred for life with little dinosaur shapes. Because I posses the hand strength equal to two gym sock-manufactured pot holders and a rubber band, my treats turned out looking more like other various animals than dinosaurs!

There Is A Science Behind The Images You See

There are entire courses available to bloggers that teach how to create images that draw people in like a junkie looking for their next fix. Images that are vertical rather than horizontal do better, taller images do better than short ones, and images with colors like yellow, brown or tan draw people in. There are even reasons for why specific font sizes and placements will lure and draw the eye. Feeling like a part of science experiment now?

It is rumored that once you master Pinterest, you can transition into a lucrative career as a tattoo artist.

A Blogger’s Child(ren) Hate Pin-worthy Picture Taking

Nowadays, whenever I cook something my children ALWAYS ask, “Can we eat it or do you have to take a picture of it”? If you are a Pinterest picture phenomenon I am 99.9 percent sure that there are children complaining somewhere about how long it is taking you to take pictures of the food so that they can just go ahead and eat it! So think about this the next time you are about to pin that fabulous banana bread recipe you just saw, off to the side and not seen, are children drooling and ready to pounce on that loaf the second Mom says she is done taking pictures for her blog and thinking that they will NEVER get to eat it!

Get Ready To Fork The Big Bucks Out

I recently read an article about a bride to be who used Pinterest to help her formulate some ideas for her wedding. The bride said,”All of the do-it-yourself wedding projects she attempted added almost 30 percent to her wedding budget and an additional 300 hours of work”.

“I would recommend any bride to not go on there,” Klingebiel said, laughing. “You’re looking at all these beautiful images, they look like dream, a perfect dream wedding … [but] you have to remove yourself from the site and say, ‘This is what in my budget is, this is what I can do and it is going to be OK if it doesn’t look like these pictures.”

The same could be said for all of those ideas you just gleaned from Pinterest for little Suzie’s upcoming 4th birthday. Because by the end of the party you may realize that you have spent so much time and money, you could have instead taken Suzie and all of the kids to Disneyland and back for far cheaper. Or if you were me to the local McDonald’s and call it good!

Now I am not advocating a boycott of Pinterest, because truthfully, Pinterest is a happy place to be.

Just make sure you realize that what you see on Pinterest is not always what you get. Kind of like the time I thought I had found the world’s best DIY foot soak and instead turned my feet blue.