I Taught My Mom To Use Pinterest....

Happy Friday!

As an only child, I find it hard to be so far away from my parents, and I love finding ways to communicate with them beyond the telephone or email. Spotify is what works with my dad (we both have the same bizarre taste in music and can share all sorts of strange songs and artists each other at the touch of a button - it's awesome!), and I have been convinced for some time that Pinterest is my mom equivalent.

My mom is hands down the most stylish gal I know, and I talk to her often about clothes and interiors and ideas about everything. We are both very visual people, and the fact that we live 1,000 miles apart really gets in the way of our ability to communicate sometimes.

One such distance-related communicative "roadblock" occurred earlier this week when we were discussing my grandmother's apartment in Kansas City. I am helping my "Mama Norma," as I call my grandmother, redecorate her apartment, and I am tres excited to get started (on the left there is Mama Norma, and on the right is my mom - photo credit, Isaac Alongi). There are a number of distance-related issues with actually performing this task though: I live in New York, Mama Norma spends her winters in Arizona (because who wouldn't, if given the option?), and the apartment is in between. I am also working entirely from memory at this point (no photos, no floor plan), which makes the redecorating a little bit difficult, don't you think?

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Thus, I called upon my mom to beg her to please take some photos of the apartment and try to locate a floor plan and also to bounce some ideas off of her. But in the midst of our chatting, I tried to describe ideas I'd had or images I'd seen, and kept failing miserably to capture what I was visualizing. It went something like this: "I was thinking about something like... Oh, nevermind... Did you see that thing I pinned... Oh nevermind, you're not on Pinterest... Ok, well, there's this fabulous kitchen on Pinterest that has a really light color scheme... and this other kitchen on Pinterest where I like the drawer pulls... and this living room on Pinterest that's just perf... OH! I JUST WISH YOU WERE ON PINTEREST ALREADY!" I expected my mom to sigh and go off about how technology was just so. frustrating, and she just. couldn't. But much to my delight she said, "Oh, I can do Pinterest. Yeah. Get me on Pinterest." It was said with great defiance, and I loved it. "Okay!" I said, and right then and there, she logged onto her computer and we went about the Pinterest set up.

At first it was a little like this:

But then it was like this:

Soon enough, she had a name, a photo, a follower (me), a followee (me again) and about 5 boards and twenty pins.

And it was a little like this:

I don't have children, so I haven't yet experienced the wonder you must feel when seeing your child discover or do something for the first time, but I think this was my equivalent. Yesterday, I called my mom just to check up and say hi. But I didn't even get a chance to say hi: 

"IS THIS MY PIN-INTEREST FRIEND?!?" Yes, she calls it Pin-Interest. "Did you see that thing I sent you on Pin-Interest?! It had the neutral sofa and the mirror behind it?"

I thought for a second. You can't send things on Pinterest. Only share. "Oh! You mean the one I pinned and you repinned? Yes! I did! I was hoping you'd like it."

"Oh ha! That was you? Well, I like that. But not with the mirror. I really just like the sofa."

And so we are able to communicate visually from 1000 miles away. It's magical, and I'm so happy.

If you're curious, this is the image we both pinned (yes, it's from Restoration Hardware, and no, you may not judge):

Happy Pinning! Happy Long Distance Communicating!
KK