I tend to get obsessed with certain things. Sometimes these are long-term obsessions and sometimes they are fleeting, but once I latch onto something, I tend to go into it full-force.
My latest obsession is Pinterest. If you've not jumped into this, think long and hard before you do. It's a wonderful world filled with recipes that I'll never actually use, crafts that I'll never really have the time to do, and home improvement ideas that I'll never have the money to fulfill!
The concept is that it's like an online bulletin board or binder. You know how you rip recipes out of magazines and stuff them in binders, drawers, or cookbooks? Maybe you tear out pictures of rooms decorated in beautiful color schemes that you'd like to try someday? This is an online place to capture things like this that you find on the internet (and SHARE them with everyone else on Pinterest). Others see your ideas, like them, and repin them to their own boards. You can keep track specifically of your friends' ideas or just peruse everything that anyone has found worthy of pinning. There are so many amazing ideas floating around out there!
You need an invitation from a member to pin things, but you don't need to pin things to look around. Warning: Once you start looking around, you're going to want to start pinning things!
In honor of my newfound obsession with Pinterest, I thought I'd share some of my other, longer-term, obsessions...
I have quite a collection of these, started when I inherited some of my great-grandmother’s costume jewelry when I was in college and added to from my grandmother’s jewelry chest, flea markets, and antique stores. The more rhinestones the better! I have “good” ones (Eisenberg) and cheap ones, but tend to love them all equally. Sometimes I’ll go on a tear and will wear a different one to work every day for weeks. A particularly virulent subset of this obsession is my collection of Christmas brooches. I can’t resist these and have such a large collection that I could wear a different pin every day between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve and never repeat. Again, some of these are high quality, most are not, but they are all lovely.
CorgisI love our spoiled-rotten pets (two German Shepherds and a Maine Coon cat) with all of my heart, but am obsessed with Corgis – specifically Pembroke Welsh Corgis. (There are two kinds of Corgis – Pembrokes and Cardigans.) I love that they are big dogs disguised in small dog bodies. I love their looks and their attitude. I love when Queen Elizabeth walks surrounded by a swarm of Corgis. After seeing the Corgis in the movie "The King's Speech," I decreed that I will have two Pembroke Welsh Corgis someday and that they will be named Bertie and Lionel.
Vintage Holiday Decorations
Why yes, we do have a six foot antique aluminum Christmas tree with a vintage color wheel. Is that odd? It's not our only Christmas tree, but it's definitely a favorite. I love all kinds of antique and vintage holiday decorations, especially Christmas ornaments and Halloween decorations.
(The Walt Disney World monorail set running around its base is linked to an entirely different story of obsession!)
Penguins
I have no idea why, but I've always loved these beautiful creatures and still do. They make me smile, waddling in their little tuxedos. Back when I was teaching high school, I accumulated a huge collection of penguin-themed Christmas ornaments as gifts from students over the years and have enough to decorate a penguin tree every year.This slightly scary almost 20-year-old photo shows me from my teaching days with a GIANT penguin lawn ornament that someone had given me. He was my classroom mascot and I can't tell you the number of times he disappeared, only to be found "up to no good" somewhere else in the school. (Yes. I still have him and, yes, that is a penguin crossing sign in the background.)
