644,000,000 and Counting!

A lawn couch, found via stumbleupon & saved to pinterest

Six hundred and forty four million...that's the approximate number of websites out there, as of March 2012 (according to  Netcraft). Gadzooks, that's a lot of information! Assuming there are things at both ends of the spectrum that I'm not interested in, there's still so much stuff in the middle that could be interesting or funny if I only knew it existed!

My most-favorite way to explore the web is stumbleupon.com. Stumbleupon allows you to choose categories that interest you (for me it's things like books, crafts, cooking, fine arts, gardening, etc.). Once you've chosen the categories, click the "Stumble" button and you're off on an adventure! To fine-tune your likes/dislikes, the folks at stumbleupon provide a thumbs-up and thumbs-down button. If you use this to rate the page they've sent to you, the program will consider those likes and dislikes before it sends you on another adventure. I don't want the system deciding what I want to see too much, so I usually only use the thumbs up/down for total-misses, or bullseyes.  I have found so many things that inspire me, make me laugh, or make me go "hmm"!

If you give a page a thumbs-up, stumbleupon will save it for you in a list, which is not organized enough for me. That's why I use pinterest.com when I find (and want to save) a bit of inspiration or beauty or the newest best-brownie-recipe-on-earth. I haven't seen a better way to organize web content than pinterest. I can set up boards (categories) however I choose and "pin" a website to that board with a simple click. When I'm short on inspiration for dinner or a new craft project, I can go to my boards and see what sparked my interest yesterday, last week or last year.

Making a purse from an old book

Take the picture at the top of this post. I stumbled across this at readymade.com Will I ever decide to "sprout a couch"? Probably not. But the idea that someone thought to do it, did it and then posted the directions for the whole world to have, makes me happy and it's worth pinning just to remind me to think outside the box!

Here's a fun idea that I found on curbly.com. This idea of making a purse from an old book looks liked something I might actually get around to doing one of these days!

There's so much fun and inspiration on the internet. Taking a little time to find what moves me is so worth it and it's a simple thing to do. I hope this has moved you to explore a little more!

Here's a link to my pinterest account if you're curious about what I find worth saving. Let me know if you set up a board or two...I'd love to see what moves you, too!

Peace,