Mojo Monday: Pinterest Fails

If you're anything like me, you love Pinterest. It's so useful for bookmarking DIY ideas, gathering inspiration and basically making your interwebz experience an enriching one. Browsing Pinterest the world feels like a better, prettier, happier place.

There are times when perusing the copious amounts of visual perfection where I think to myself that I really must suck because my home doesn't look like that. Or wow, I really fail at making my trash look like a work of art (or I fail because I actually throw away my trash). Or my poor child has none of those wonderful pin worth experiences because I'm a fail mom.

When I'm in a Pinterest-shows-me-how much-of-a-complete-failure-I-am  mood it can be hard to remember that for each pretty image we see, we don't see the creators hard work, tears, and skill developing it took to get them to that point. Chances are those images are the end result of some good ol' fashioned failing and lots of practice.

This led me to begin curating Pinterest fails on a board called "Nailed It?". Now I'm reminded that life isn't always accurately represented on Pinterest:

I have personally made these and they
did not turn out anything like the pretty
Pinterest photo above. The bottom is
an accurate image of my own results.

Jello is not as easy to work with as you'd think

From Craft Fail Blog

I decided after comparing my life to the perceived lives of others on the interwebz that I needed to just stop. When I attempt a new recipe/craft/DIY project found on Pinterest I need to remember the person giving the directions has done the thing multiple times or has some information and experience I don't. And it's all okay. It's okay for my results not be Pinterest worthy. It's okay for my kid not to have a super mom every single day of his life. It's okay my house sorta looks like a bachelor pad and that I'm the kinda person whose every white shirt has a tomato stain on it. It's who I am.  Most of my world is far from pretty and pin worthy.

It's liberating to be able to try these things in the space of who I am. It's liberating to give myself permission to fail miserably and comically. Having that self-permission keeps the pressure off and keeps my mojo flowing. Sometimes I don't fail. Ultimately, not worrying about end result and focusing on the experience of just trying something from my Pinterest board is always a win.

I pinned, I failed, I learned, I tried again. Mostly, I laughed because my results never look like the thing I saw on Pinterest, but that's okay and perhaps even pin worthy.

♥Carrie

P.S. Do you ever see a pretty Pinterest DIY and wonder how it'd be cleaned or what it would look like after a year? I do.