Winner! Plus my new obsession -- Pinterest!

First off, I'm very pleased to announce a winner for last week's "Growing in Unity" party!  Our randomly chosen winner is Carol, who said:

Carol, I'll be emailing you soon with your prize info!

And now, on to my favorite new thing -- Pinterest!

Have you heard of it yet?  Chances are you have, and either you're already an addict (like I am), or you're wondering what it's all about.

If you're like me, you love to cruise around different blogs and online stores and whatnot, gathering inspiration and just enjoying the eye candy.  And you bookmark things you don't want to forget, projects you want to try, etc. -- but then you forget all about those things once they're tucked away in your bookmark folder.

Well, Pinterest is pure awesome for visual people like us. It's like a virtual pin board, so you can keep track of all the awesome things you see online -- crafts, recipes, home decor, books to read, vacations you'd like to take, anything you like. That way you can SEE everything you've bookmarked, instead of just bookmarking it in your browser and then forgetting it.  You can set up categories however you like, so it's always easy to see at a glance whatever you're trying to find.  This is what my own board looks like right this second:

As you can see, I'm just getting started in some categories, and in others I'm already going hog wild. :)

It's also a fun social sharing thing, because you can follow other people whose taste you like, and others can follow you. I have been having so much fun finding new people to follow and getting TONS of inspiration. If you want to check out what I've been pinning, you can take a look here.  Lots of the best bloggers are becoming Pinterest junkies (like Shelley from House of Smiths -- LOVE everything she pins!), and you never know who else you might find that you love.  My sister-in-law's mom, for instance, is one of the most prolific pinners every, and I get a ton of inspiration from her.  Oh, and one nice thing is that you don't have to follow every category a person creates.  I have a friend who is a teacher and pins a lot of classroom ideas -- I don't really need those, so I don't follow that board, but I do love the other stuff she pins.  It's great that it's not an all-or-nothing follower thing.

Let me know if you want an invite and I'll send you one! (I think the invite thing is kind of a gimmick, because I've never heard of anyone NOT getting invited if they click "request an invite," but it does usually take a few days. If someone invites you, I think you can join up immediately.)

So come play with me!  (And the gazillion other people having fun there.)  This isn't any kind of a sponsored post -- I'm just so in love with it that I can't help sharing the fun!