The Pinterest Monster

We are less than one month away from closing on the house.  I am going to spend the next month having that feeling you have on Christmas Eve when you're so excited you can't fall asleep.  Y'all still have that feeling in your thirties, right?  Anyway, we are excited.  I'm so excited that I have already created approximately nine Pinterest boards dedicated to various areas of the house.  This is me:

When Pinterest attacks, it is mighty.   It starts out as a friendly, harmless let's-just-browse-while-drinking-my-morning-coffee, and then all of a sudden it's an hour later and you're late for work.  True story.  Pinterest is at the same time wonderful and terrible.  Pinterest will teach you how to make delicious chicken.  Pinterest will revolutionize your relationship with broccoli.  It will show you amazing outfits with perfect accessories that in a million years you will never own.  However, Pinterest will also trick you into making a banana omelette by telling you they are pancakes.  Pinterest will convince you that ridiculous things are ingenious, like taking your bagel to work in a CD case and the classic using-a-dustpan-to-fill-up-a-bucket trick.  It will tell you seven hundred ways to a flat belly, none of which will make you look like that girl in the picture.  Pinterest also makes it very easy for misattributed quotes to "go viral," as the kids say.  (P.S., Olivia Wilde said that one.  In Cosmo.)   And don't get me started on parties.  Pinterest will unapologetically almost spoil a sweet boy's first birthday party.

But perhaps Pinterest's worst transgression comes in the form of home decor.  People don't live like this this, right?  These kitchens are not real.  No one has the thing where the cutting board pulls out and has a little hole for the trash to go straight into the trash can.  It's exhausting to see these things when you live in an actual house that regular humans inhabit.  Not a house with a tiny built in playhouse under the stairs.  (really? is this a thing?)  Or this house which is totally photoshopped and if it isn't, I'm moving tomorrow.  How is it possible to browse those boards without going completely insane?

See generally here, here, and here.

So the challenge here is to keep the Pinterest Monster at bay with a healthy dose of realism.  I have a great house to work with, but we don't live in a fairy tale.  I'm pretty sure that I can't DIY myself into a treehouse filled with endless wine fountains and an infinity bathtub.  Pretty sure...I haven't run all the numbers yet.  But even if I can't plant a tree in our master bedroom and construct a bed out of natural wood and a hammock, I am not a failure.  Our house will still be lovely.  But in the meantime, dear readers: