I’m assuming that a lot of you know what Pinterest is, but I love the site so much that I wanted to make sure EVERYONE knows about it. Once upon a time Google had a service called Google Notebook. I still use it, but it’s now become a site that you can only access if you used it previously. I use it to bookmark all sorts of things, like articles on birth, parenting, Chicago places you recommended that we eat, and a host of other things. It’s an awesome service that I’m grateful to have, but it does have one huge limitation, and that is the ability to bookmark photos (plus the interface overall isn’t very pretty).

Enter Pinterest!

To sum it up, Pinterest is a site you use for bookmarking things, and you do this bookmarking using images. Blogposts/pictures/items for sale/stuff from Flickr/quotes/etc/etc/etc. The one thing you can’t use Pinterest to bookmark is articles with no pictures or sites that use flash (that’s where Google Notebook still comes in handy for me).

When I was wedding planning this would have been a lifesaver! I had folders and folders full of pictures which had no sources (and thus were pretty much useless when I started writing for Weddingbee), and I couldn’t access them away from my computer, or easily share them with other people. Now I use Pinterest the most for bookmarking recipes, crafts I’d like to try, home decor ideas, photographs I love, and ideas for hair/makeup/outfits.

This is what I see when I clicked on my Pinterest page while writing this post. All those pictures you are seeing are “pins” that other people have saved to their own profile. If I like something I see on this Pinterest page, I click on the picture and pin it myself. Then someone who follows me likes it and pins it, and that keeps happening over and over. It’s fun to see what becomes popular!


If you’re browsing the internet and you see something you like, pinning is very easy here as well. Visit this page, and drag the “Pin It” button up to your toolbar. When you are ready to pin a picture and save it for later reference, you click on the Pin It button on your toolbar. Step two is selecting the picture you like best. Step three involves a box that pops up and asks where you want to store the pin in your boards, and asks for a description.

Quick note about pinning, try to remember to pin from the actual page where the picture/tutorial/post is, not the homepage. For instance, if you were pinning this granola recipe you would pin from http://thatwifeblog.com/2011/07/gluten-free-granola/, not from http://thatwifeblog.com. That makes it easier for everyone to find what you pinned later on.

You’re going to want to separate your pins into boards, so you can easily find them later. My Make It Again board is probably my favorite, I access it all the time to look up recipes I’ve used and liked previously. I’m also using Pinterest to help plan our Italy vacation, ookmarking beautiful photos, trying to figure out a knock-your-socks-off Jenna Cole packaging approach for my clients, and marking posts that give tips to help me “go green” with cleaning and beauty products. Yesterday I used it to make a board compiling all the ideas that I plan to use for making a church bag, based on your suggestions.

On Pinterest, you follow the people/boards you like. One of my favorite people to follow is actually the mom of one of my friends! (He was the “bridesman” in my wedding party if you followed my wedding blogging). She pins a lot of stuff, and I love looking through to see what she found interesting.

I have two options when I visit her profile. I can follow all of her boards (arrow on the left) or I can follow individual boards (arrow in the middle).

To use Pinterest, you need an invite, which I would be happy to send to anyone who asks for one in the comment section below. You can follow my pins/boards on my Jenna Cole Pinterest page once you have an account!

Blushink reminded me that Pinterest has an etiquette page, which is a great resource for those who want to learn how to play nice on the site.

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