Spring inspiration: bikes

by on April 15, 2013
in inspiration & creativity · 4 Comments

Written by editor Nicole Bennett of Gidget Goes Home.

The days are getting longer and (hopefully) warmer– it’s that time of year when we start itching to be outside more and more!

I recently fell in love with the idea of riding a cargo bike. What is that exactly? Well, it’s a bike that can carry not just one rider, but also a gaggle of kids and stuff, for riding around town. I think it would be such a fun way to get around– saving money, no emissions, exercising, enjoying the fresh air in my beach town…

I can’t afford one right now, but I can sure dream. I’m going to blame the fact that my husband himself works for a company that makes a unique bike. And while I’ve been thinking about it, I thought it would be fun to take some further inspiration from my bike dream.

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4 steps to prioritize the mending pile

by on April 12, 2013
in home & garden, inspiration & creativity · 12 Comments

Written by editor Nicole Bennett of Gidget Goes Home.

Ah, that mending pile. It seems to fall into the category of to-do items that contains things like Mary Poppins’ carpetbag… that is to say, it seems never-ending. There is always a button to sew back on, a strap to repair, a hole to patch. And if you like to repurpose and upcycle, then the options are endless as to what could end up in the pile.

So today, let’s take a tip-toe-ing baby step towards that pile and organize it a bit. I think that might help the tasks seem a little less daunting. Are you with me? I’ll use my own collection of things that need attention to guide us through this little experiment.

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Why I like Pinterest better than any other method of inspiration organization, and how I make it work for me

by on April 5, 2013
in inspiration & creativity · 29 Comments

Pinterest: organize your inspiration

Written by editor Nicole Bennett of Gidget Goes Home.

Some pinners, it seems, have a love/hate relationship with Pinterest.

By love/hate, I mean that they love all the good ideas, but they hate the pressure to DO ALL THE THINGS that they find on Pinterest, and they then find themselves pinning lots of ideas, but actually doing next to none.

I saw this phenomenon early on, and created From Pinterest to Real Life to combat this tendency, and to encourage us to not only pin, but to also create.

I’ve struggled a lot with discontent in my time, but the truth is, I don’t really experience the hate part of the relationship with Pinterest myself. My bloggy friend Anne, at Modern Mrs. Darcy, wrote about this awhile back, explaining that some of us are just more likely to experience social comparison than others. I find that I can get Pinterest to serve me quite well, rather than me bowing down to it as an alter of discontent.

Here’s why I love Pinterest, and how it’s helped me organize my creative endeavors more than ever before.

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From Pinterest to Real Life: February 2013

by on February 22, 2013
in inspiration & creativity · 7 Comments

Written by editor Nicole Bennett of Gidget Goes Home.

I can hardly believe we’re rounding out February already, but I guess it is a short month after all. I’m on a bit of a birthday high still as I celebrated last weekend– I like to think that God gave me a winter birthday to help me get through my least favorite season. I’m a total Summer Girl, but February is still one of my favorite months.

The end of the month is one of my favorite times to blog because I get to recap the creative ways I’ve actually used Pinterest to inspire some real-life creations.

I find myself lacking the time to just “surf” Pinterest these days. As much as I would love to scroll through my feed and see what all the creative people I’m following are pinning and repin to my heart’s content, it just hasn’t been happening these days.

How am I using it then? I’m collecting and curating ideas I find elsewhere, whether that’s in magazines, on blogs I read regularly or random links I get from others on Twitter or Facebook or via other blogs. I pin them to as a way to bookmark my ideas in logical ways. This is why Pinterest is such an effective way to catalogue ideas for me– I always used to lose track of my bookmarks since I couldn’t visually see them categorized. Oh, Pinterest, how I love thee!!

I had a lot of fun tackling a few things on my to-do list this month.

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State of the creative life

by on February 18, 2013
in inspiration & creativity · 3 Comments

Written by editor Nicole Bennett of Gidget Goes Home.

Whew. I’ve had a long, full, fun weekend of celebrating non-stop. Since Valentine’s Day and then through the weekend celebrating my own birthday, there has been tons going on.

I took a few days off blogging while I celebrated and enjoyed getting my new computer set up (!!), and now today I thought I’d give you a little update on what I’ve been up to and check-in on my own creative goals.

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