Warning: DON’T READ THIS POST IF YOU LOVE THE INTERNET. Because if you’re as addicted to blogging and tweeting as I am, the last thing you need is another online way to waste time.

But if you like: art, food, home decor, dessert, crafts, photography, fashion, happiness, make up, tutorials, jewelry, etsy, joy and being inspired on a daily basis, I highly recommend you get on the Pinterest bandwagon as fast as if your pants were on fire and the wagon was covered in hot firemen.

My friend Brigid actually sent me an invitation months ago, because genius that she is Brigid knew it was a brilliant next-big-thing idea and also the sort of something I would love. I should send her a fruit basket. Maybe I’ll go look for creative fruit basket ideas on Pinterest. Because there are probably FORTY BILLION of them. I procrastinated for a few weeks, thinking I’d check it out when I had time and surly it wasn’t some sort of life changing website.

IT IS A LIFE CHANGING WEBSITE.

Here’s the overview: When you sign up, you create pin boards (like digital bulletin boards) where you can stick ideas you find online. The easiest way to pin is to add a shorcut to your toolbar following the instructions here. Then all the stuff you like is in one convenient, organized, neat-looking place. It’s  like a visual representation of bookmark folders in your internet browser. Here’s a screenshot of my recipe board, where I’m keeping all the recipes I’ve meal-planned for this week. It’s so much more fun SEEING the food than just reading about the food that I am actually more inspired to cook:

The second stage of Pinterest is following other people and their boards, so you can find inspiration right there on your homepage. You can follow all of someone’s boards or just one or two, based on what you’re interested in seeing in your feed. When you click on something that’s been pinned it takes you back to the original website, where you can get the info you need to make/cook/buy/try/read about the thing that was pinned.

This is what mine looks like right now:

Food, tutorials, fashion, all in one place. And here’s another shot, if I scroll down my page a little:

Home decor, a playhouse, tutorials, crafts, more recipes, things to buy…really, there are PLENTY of things to look at on a minute by minute basis.

Have I convinced you to sign up yet? Or do you have an account you’ve been neglecting because you just didn’t really “get it” yet? Here’s some Do’s and Don’ts to help you understand how to get the most out of your boards:

Pinterest DO’s:

– DO follow lots of people. The more people you follow the more stuff shows up on your homepage.
– DO follow people you don’t know. I promise it’s not creepy or stalkerish, so if you find a board that you’re in love with always add them!
– DO repin when you love something.
– DO use the search option to find more of what you want. I searched “polka dots” every day for a week to find inspiration for Little Evan’s birthday.
– DO check in often. Your friends will go on pinning sprees and looking at several days worth of stuff at once means you might miss something.
– DO unsubscribe from a board before a person. Maybe you love your friend’s sense of style but you don’t like pictures of babies or celebrities or quilts. Keep following their fashion board but unfollow the board you don’t like.
– DO use Pinterest to keep track of stuff you find in magazines. I do this a lot with recipes – if there’s an online version it’s so much easier to pin it than hold onto ripped out pages.
– DO check out the “staff favorites” boards and the ones Pinterest suggests you might like. It’s about expanding places you find inspiration, not looking at stuff you’d see on your friend’s blog anyways.
– But DO pin stuff from your friend’s blogs when you love it. I’m not going to lie, being pinned feels nice.
– DO be my friend on Pinterest!

Pinterest DON’TS:

– DON’T just repin stuff from other people’s boards. Add new content to the Pinterest community when you find it online, whether it’s from blogs, shops, websites, or friends.
– DON’T pin stuff to multiple boards. Pick the category it fits best and pin it just once.
– DON’T forget to label your pins with helpful tags and explanations, especially when pinning recipes. “Yum!” isn’t as helpful as “strawberry shortcake cupcakes”. For stuff from shops, adding prices is nice.
– DON’T just pin stuff from your blog. You can pin your own some sparingly, but follow the social media 80/20 rule: Promote other people 80% of the time and yourself 20% of the time.
– DON’T think Pinterest is just for bloggers. You don’t need anything besides an email to sign up and you don’t need online friends.
– DON’T post EVERYTHING you pin to Facebook or Twitter. I accidentally put my pins in my Facebook feed and was super annoying for a few hours before I noticed.
– DON’T forget that just because a picture is on Pinterest doesn’t mean it’s not subject to copyright. You cannot just take and use them on your blog without checking with the owner.

Seeing all the things I want to cook/make/buy all at once makes my life so much easier and more organized. I can actually re-find stuff I saw on the internet and thought “oh, I should do that!” Now I CAN do that. I’m also slightly addicted to checking what’s been pinned from my own blog. It’s reaching an unhealthy no-there’s-nothing-for-dinner-can’t-you-see-I’m-busy-looking-at-recipes-on-pinterest-WHAT-DO-YOU-MEAN-THAT’S-SUPER-IRONIC??? levels of time consumption, but I don’t even care. I love it.

Are you going to sign up now? Are you addicted yet? Do you have any suggestions for ways to make the most of Pinterest?

I get a lot of spam here on ye olde bloggity blog. I would take it as a sign that I was somehow hitting the big time in the internet world but the truth is I’ve ALWAYS gotten a ton of spam, even when I had exactly three readers. I think I just look like an easy target: no comment verification, no captcha, the ability to post with a fake email address. Luckily, WordPress has a handy-dandy feature called Akismet that catches 99.9% of the spammy comments without any effort on my part. But that’s not to say the spammers aren’t TRYING to get published. Today I thought we could examine some of the valiant spam attempts to get their links and keywords published instead of banished to the spam folder (current count: 3,682 comments)…

Flattery:
What I dont comprehend is how youre not even a lot more popular than you might be now. Youre just so intelligent. You know so significantly about this topic, created me consider it from so many diverse angles. Its like men and women arent interested unless it has some thing to accomplish with Lady Gaga! Your stuffs great. Continue to keep it up! (I’m the next Lady Gaga! Says the guy who’s allergic to apostrophes!)

Dang i thought your blog was killer, gave me a car load of information, i never knew, thanks blogger.

Never thought blogging could be soo fun and interesting. Man you know how to do it brother. (Thanks…brother)

You are such an amazing writer. Wishing you a strength and peace that surpasses all understanding as you continue to walk the high road … you are amazing, and I honor you for being YOU! You represent grace and dignity … with a smile that melts anyone blessed to be on the receiving end of it. God Bless you Always, Carrie!!!! (oh, well, that was going really well until the end there)

Sympathy:
Wow that was unusual. I just wrote an incredibly long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t appear. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Regardless, just wanted to say excellent blog! (Oh noes, penis enlargement medication website, I am SO SORRY we’ll never know what you had to say!)

Randomly Political:
Thanks to the Glen Beck wannabees this stuff is occasionally taken at face value. (on a post about breastfeeding)

I think this president #needs to# go and let’s #get back# on path. I Worship this country! (on a post about my wedding)(and left by someone called “lake havasu city tourist sites”)

“In a recent study, the United States was ranked the 114th happiest country in the world. Then Sarah Palin stepped down. Now we’re at 17.” –Conan O’Brien (that was all part of the comment – I really doubt it was actually left by Conan)

Perhaps English is not their first language. Or their second:
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A stardom situated situation is a accommodation video of kind-hearted procreant behavior, as performed alongside means of a notable and his or her partner(s), which finds internet and/or bootleg.

you are my inhalation , I own few web logs and rarely run out from to post : (.

A powerful share, I simply given this onto a colleague who was doing just a little analysis on this. And he in actual fact purchased me breakfast because I found it for him.. smile. So let me reword that: Thnx for the treat! However yeah Thnkx for spending the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and love reading extra on this topic. If potential, as you change into expertise, would you mind updating your blog with extra particulars? It’s extremely useful for me. Massive thumb up for this blog post!

(Don’t those all sound like that episode of Friends where Joey uses the thesaurus to write the recommendation letter? “Large aortic pumps!”)

Helpful and Important (and Fake) Tech Information:
Hey, just reckoned Iwould let you know that your blog page isn’t displaying proper on internet explorer 4. Anyways, carry on the great job !

Doing some browsing and observed your internet site seems a fraction messed up in my AOL cyberspace browser. But fortuitously scarcely anyone practices it any more but you may want to look into it (maybe your problem is you’re still using AOL?)

And my favorite, Honesty:
howdy, I’m havin a tough time attempting to rank well for the term “kokomo dentist”… Please approve my comment!!

No, this isn’t actually a post about housekeeping, although I could write another one of those if you want. I got a LOT of real-life feedback from people who read my last housekeeping post, including people who are actually using my lists as their lists for staying on top of things. That’s a lot of pressure – especially since I never even printed them out for myself so I have to keep searching my own blog for today’s cleaning schedule. I’ve been keeping up with my “do one major chore a day” plan pretty well, except for Tuesday where I refused to clean my sink mostly on principle – I cooked for lunch AND dinner so doing the dishes twice in one day was more than I could handle. Is that really pathetic? I’m going to go with no, not pathetic, just the life of someone who is SO EXHAUSTED by 3 pm she can fall asleep on the couch while a toddler hits her in the head with things and yet still has 8 more hours before bed. So yeah, my sink can stay dirty and the FlyLady can suck it.

Wow, that was quite a tangent. Here’s the bloggy housekeeping stuff I was ACTUALLY talking about:

1. I entered BOTH kids in a local (suuuuuuper amazing) photographer’s contest to become her kid model for the year. She’s offering a free photo shoot for the family AND for the child who wins, and since she takes the kind of photos I can’t afford I’m hoping I can enlist your help. I think you have to like the My Four Hen’s Facebook Page first, but then if you could “like” the pictures of Caroline (in the Little Miss M4H album) and Evan (in the Little Mr M4H album) I would love you for eveeeeeeeeeer.

These are the pictures you’re voting for:

2. I swear this is the only time I will mention it, but if you could take a second to click on the Top Baby Blogs button over in my right sidebar it would keep me from getting super depressed over being, like, 546th on the list. I’m never going to be on the front page and I HATE the begging for clicks but I have found a ton of other awesome blogs to read from browsing that list so I’d like to stay on it. You can vote once a day, every day, so if you happen to remember without me bugging you I’d appreciate it. Oh and if you want you can like bebehblog on Facebook too – the link is over in the left sidebar. I like to make people click on things and am also very needy.

3. I have no idea how to go about this so I’m just putting it here: although I’m already committed to running the BlogHer ad banner, I would love to help promote handmade shops with ads here on bebehblog. If you have a shop (especially a newish shop you’d like to start advertising) please email me at bebehblog at gmail dot com. I have no idea what a 125×125 ad goes for on a smallish mommy blog but I can assure you I am willing to work with ANYONE’S budget.

4. Ditto everything in number 3 but instead of “blog” substitute “BlogHer conference in San Diego”. Can I wear your product? Can my baby wear your product? Would you like your name on the back of my business cards? Conferences are expensive y’all, and even if you’re thinking “I’m a tiny shop! I can’t afford to sponsor someone!” you should email me. I’m not looking for someone to cover the whole cost, just maybe a couple of frappuccinos.

5. Last year I participated in the March of Dimes and thanks to the generosity of my friends, family and blog readers I raised over $500 for our team. I didn’t get my act together early enough to do my own fundraising this year – although I’ll probably still walk with our Stroller Strides team as moral support – but many of my internet friends have formed their own teams and are trying to raise money for MoD. If it’s a cause you like to support, please consider donating to one of them – especially Jenny, who gave birth to TRIPLETS at 28 weeks and credits the work MoD does for preemies with having all three adorable babies home and healthy now.

6. If you don’t mind, can you leave a comment telling me what kind of post you like best? Do you like the ones with lots of pictures? The iPhone linky? Wordless Wednesday? The “what’s for dinner” posts? Everyday motherhood crap? Baby & toddler updates? Crafty stuff? I’m sort of an all-over-the-place blogger because, well, I’m not interesting enough to write about just one thing all the time but if there’s something you wish I’d write about more I can try to make that happen. Sigh. There I go, acting like someone besides my mother CARES what I write about. And even she hardly ever comments so I’m not even sure she read anymore.

Ok, I promise that is all the bloggy business I’m going to shove in your faces this month. Or next month. I may be annoying again in April but it’s my birthday month so you can’t be mad. It’s in the blog reader’s handbook. What, you didn’t get one of those? I’ll mail it right out.

…here’s a list of things I am going to blog about. (aka LAZIEST BLOG POST EVER)

1. A photo tour of the new nursery/playroom. I finished all my projects weeks ago, I just need to hang ONE frame on a wall and put the toys up on the shelves. Oh yeah and find a time to take pictures during daylight hours.

2. An epic post about the double stroller we ended up choosing and all the ways I love it. Bonus fun: We put it together wrong and I sent the company snippy emails until they very politely explained I was an idiot. In the nicest possible way! But this post needs a lot of pictures and I keep forgetting to do it during daylight hours. I meant to take pictures when we used it at the mall the other day but forgot my memory card. I forget things a lot.

3. A photo tour of our new master bedroom now that it’s finished. Except it’s NOT finished because the closet doors we bought are hollow and so trimming them to fit our odd shaped closets doesn’t work and dragging three doors back to Home Depot just to spend several hundred dollars on non-hollow doors hasn’t been at the top of our list of things to do recently. SO!  As soon as we wrap up the project (and I can find time to take pictures during daylight hours) I’ll get right on that “after” pic.

4. My round up of Things I’ve Knit Recently that includes all the Christmas knitting I sent as gifts and didn’t want to post about before people received them. Luckily I DID remember to take pictures. I just keep forgetting to write the post because I’m too busy knitting. IRONIC.

5. A zillion words about how much I appreciate all the help and support I’ve been getting in the past few weeks. I would be out of my skull already if I had to do everything for both kids plus keep us fed, clothed and not crushed to death under piles and piles of trash.

6. Lots of other stuff that keeps floating around in my head at 4 am when I’m trapped under a sleepy, nursing baby and immediately falls out again as soon as I’m able to get to my computer. I swear my babies have eaten my brains. OMG ZOMBIE BABIES.

Thank you for your patience with my all-over-the-place topics and filler-pictures of children and dogs. I promise to get my act together…soon. Maybe. Ok, probably not.

But for now, please enjoy these pictures of children and dogs.

The lab is Hershey, my parent's dog. Little Evan is VERY excited to have TWO dog friends this weekend. The dogs are...less excited.

The other day I saw a comment on Twitter that said something like “Before you post a craft tutorial or idea on your blog, always Google to make sure someone else hasn’t already posted one.”

And then my head exploded.

To be clear, the tweet wasn’t directed at me. Crafting is only a teeny tiny part of my blog and definitely not my area of expertise. I have never gotten a nasty email or comment about the originality of my projects. And I try very, very hard to keep it that way. There is no reason at all I should have taken the kind of offense to the remark that caused my brains to splatter all over the wall behind me.

I understand that people copying each others work is a big problem in blog land. There was the cooking magazine that reprinted a blogger’s post without her permission and then told her “Well the internet is free, so technically we can print anything we want! Plus, we edited your crappy writing so much, YOU should really pay US!” (No, really, this just happened.) And just this week Jill found her recent craft tutorial on a site that claims it “collects” posts from across the internet and republishes them – without giving her byline. But they’re doing it to help you! You’ll get tons of traffic! From this site no one has ever heard of and has no valid contact info!

I also know stealing someone’s design/craft can be a huge problem for handmade businesses, since there’s really no way to copyright something like a ruffle or a rosette. That’s not cool. Don’t rip off creative people you admire – SUPPORT them.

BUT. Posting a recipe for, say, zucchini bread even though there are already a zillion recipes online for zucchini bread is not plagiarism. Neither is posting a how-to on a ribbon mobile or felt flowers or using an empty frame as a whiteboard, although if you Google any of those you get dozens and dozens (hundreds)(sometimes thousands) of responses. Demanding no one ever use an idea someone else has had is like saying “OK, Mommy bloggers, since I’ve already read posts about cloth diapers, potty training, making your own baby food, pooping while giving birth and cute kids, ALL THOSE THINGS are off limits.” If we limited the internet to only 100% original thoughts it probably wouldn’t exist. Neither would most books, movies, art, music, etc. Have you ever read the New Testament? Some of those dudes totally tell the same stories, even though they were told before!!

How about instead of assuming you are such a special snowflake all YOUR ideas are one-of-a-kind and it’s everyone else who’s stealing we agree to some rules for polite blogging?

1. If you are “inspired” by someone else’s idea, link to them in your post.
2. If you flat out USE someone else’s tutorial, link to them in your post, and maybe stick to just posting pictures instead of your own “how-to”.
3. Changing the NAME of a recipe is not the same as inventing a new recipe. You have to actually modify the ingredients/instructions to make it new.
4. Use common sense – don’t be a douchecanoe. When in doubt, link link link.

But for the record, the internet is a really huge place. I promise there is more than enough room for everyone’s yarn wreath tutorials (coming soon to bebehblog!)

Like I said, I didn’t really need to get so pissed off about this – I’m just having a pissed off sort of day and angry blogging is the pregnant woman’s equivalent of drinking a bottle of wine.