There’s hardly a female left on the face of the earth who has not heard of Pinterest. But what about a Pinterest Party?
Let’s be real for a second: We marvel at why we never thought of some things, speculate on how people make others , and ponder why we’ll never actually get everything we pin. It’s a wonderland of discontent, creativity, imagination, and obsession combined. (Kinda like online dating sites. Or maybe not…)
Pinterest has a million (billion?) great ideas, but few of us rarely make the time or get the chance to actually do some of the crafty ideas we pin. A Pinterest Party can be a fun way to not only try out some of those pins, but also to provide an opportunity to invite new friends to get together.
A while back, my friend Heather and I started talking about having a Pinterest Party. She received some bath bombs for Christmas that a friend had found on Pinterest. She proposed that we try to make them for our first party. As a lover of all Lush products, especially their bath bombs and melts, I thought her idea was brilliant.
So being the Type A friends that we are, not to mention girls from the Deep South who jump on any opportunity to host an event, we sat down one evening and set about making a plan. (For those planners like us, I just have to tell you it was indeed a sight to behold—flow charts, bullet points, photo thumbnails on our order list. Sigh. Utterly beautiful.)
Here’s how we threw our Pinterest Party:
1. We wanted to keep the attendance list small–just enough women to be able to sit around Heather’s dining room table and visit while we were making our bath bombs. We also wanted it to be an opportunity to make new friends, so we invited a variety of girls who didn’t know each other. I invited 4 girls I knew and Heather invited 4 of her friends.
2. We asked the ladies to bring two things: a dish created from a recipe they found on Pinterest and $10 to help cover the cost of supplies.
And they did not disappoint. We heard a lot of, “I pinned this recipe, too, and I was wondering how it would turn out!” mixed in with “Oh my goodness! This so good!”
3. We decided that since Heather was hosting the party, she would take care of getting the materials for the bath bombs. And did she ever. When everyone arrived, each girl had a place around the table with everything she needed to get down to business.
4. We also discussed making our get-together a regular occurrence. We made a Pinterest Party board so that everyone could contribute ideas towards future parties. We decided that one girl will choose the “craft” each time, and she’ll be the one responsible for acquiring all of the supplies. Hey, somebody’s gotta do the work…we might as well share the load.
5. When the night was over, each girl went home with several bath bombs but, more importantly, several new friends. The beauty of the party was less in the crafts or the food—although that part was definitely fun—but more about the opportunity to meet new people and get to hear their stories.
Sure there’s a lot of criticism about Pinterest and the way it makes us focus on things that we don’t have and tends to chisel away at our contentment—and I can totally see that. But, as in all avenues of social networking, if it is used in moderation, it can also be a really cool way to bring people together.
