very pinteresting.

Screen shot of my "things i want to cook" pinboard. Pinterest.com.

I've always been bookmark-happy; I keep a couple-dozen folders in my "Favorites" tab and am continually adding new things to read, do, and see to these folders. There's just one problem: I almost never actually return to those bookmarks. It's as if the fact that they have been filed away means I no longer have to remember them. I don't need to tell you how that completely defeats the purpose of bookmarking in the first place.
But thanks to an incredibly innovative new website called Pinterest, my poor bookmarks no longer need to be shoved into a dark corner of my hard drive. Pinterest is the 21st-century version of the fetish of clipping out pictures from magazine and pinning them onto a corkboard. Except instead of being limited to magazine pictures, Pinterest lets you pin any image from the entire Internet. And rather than having only a finite amount of corkboard, your Pinterest pinboards can be of any size and you can make as many boards with as many themes as your heart desires. I am absolutely addicted.

One of the coolest uses I've discovered for Pinterest is the ability to create a visual "to cook" list. My "things i want to cook" pinboard is currently made up of 175 beautiful photos of delectable concoctions that I plan on trying to recreate this summer when I move into my first apartment. The beauty of this board is that, to retrieve a recipe for a dish all I have to do is click on the picture and I am immediately transported to the original site where the photo was pinned from.

Pinterest.com

No matter how mouth-watering a recipe may seem, it is too easy to forget about it once it becomes one of many links in a bookmark folder hidden from view. Actually being able to see the rich colors and textures of the final product of this recipe, however, makes it almost impossible NOT to add the ingredients to your next grocery list. So if you want to get inspired, join Pinterest! But be warned: you will become an addict. Do with this information what you must.

P.S. Pinterest is still in Beta mode so requires a personal invitation from a current member. If you'd like to join Pinterest, just leave a comment or shoot me an email and I'll send you an invite!