Tag: pinterest

A Vibe Check for Spring: What’s In & What’s Out (According to Me, for No Real Reason)

~ Brooke F. ~ Leave a comment

Look, I’m not saying I’m a trend forecaster or anything, but I am saying I have a lot of feelings about things right now. Spring has me in a refresh-and-renew mood. Think open windows, iced drinks, and a chaotic urge to either completely change my life or do absolutely nothing. There’s no in-between. I live in a world of extremes…

So here it is: a completely arbitrary and highly personal list of what I’m loving lately and what I’m politely (or not so politely) retiring. No real logic. Just vibes.

🌸 What’s IN (aka bringing me unreasonable joy lately)

  • Cream soda – I don’t know why this tastes like childhood nostalgia and magic at the same time, but it does. Bonus points if it’s pink.
  • Cute coffee shops – I’m talking mismatched mugs, plants in every corner, and baristas who remember your name. We’re romanticizing our lives this year.
  • Taking walks everywhere – Walking as a personality trait? Absolutely yes. Give me sunshine, a good playlist, and no real destination.
  • Impressionistic art – Big yes to blurry florals and soft, moody landscapes. If it looks like a daydream, I’m into it.
  • Gas station snacks – High-end cuisine? No thanks. Give me peach rings and a questionable corn dog.
  • Retro games – N64, pixelated chaos, that clunky PS1 startup sound. Inject that straight into my bloodstream please.
  • Pasta – Any kind. All kinds. Pasta is self-care now.
  • Formal gowns for no reason – Go ahead, wear that dramatic dress to buy toilet paper. I support you.
  • Saying “no” to protect your mental space – Revolutionary, honestly. I feel like I have to remind myself to do this at some point every year. Gotta keep that FOMO in check.
  • Giving people the benefit of the doubt – Life’s weird for everyone. Let’s chillout for a second and maybe stop making character assessments of everyone on the interstate just because they didn’t use a turn signal once. Draining honestly and yet I indulge.
  • Microwave popcorn – The perfect snack for every situation. Salty, satisfying, and takes two minutes. Iconic.
  • Herb gardens – Even if it’s just one sad basil plant on a windowsill. We’re farming now.
  • Petting as many cats as possible – If there’s a cat, I’m stopping. Priorities.
  • Body spray – Strong 2006 mall energy.
  • Changing your bedding regularly – Like hitting a mental reset button. Plus clean smelling sheets are *chef’s kiss*,

🧼 What’s OUT (aka, I’m over it)

  • Buying ingredients but never cooking – If I have to throw out one more wilted bunch of cilantro…
  • Cheap soap – We are grown. Our hands deserve better.
  • Grudges – Too heavy to carry. Let it go, Elsa-style.
  • Cruddy socks that need to be replaced – Why do I still have socks with holes in them?? And why does it feel illegal to just throw them away?????
  • Plain coffee – I want cinnamon. I want foamed milk. I want joy.
  • Falling asleep to your phone/TV – No more scrolling into the void. Let’s reclaim bedtime.
  • Minimalism – Bring back cluttercore. Give me trinkets. Give me personality.
  • 6am alarms – Unless it’s for something exciting or airport-related, no thank you.
  • Self guilt – You don’t have to earn rest or joy or snacks. Be nice to yourself.
  • Hanging in groups that make you feel bad – Nope. Friendship should feel like sunshine, not stomach knots.
  • Not complimenting people but still thinking it – Just say it! Give strangers their flowers!
  • The color grey – It’s giving “dentist office.” Let’s inject some color into our lives.
  • Monochrome stuff – Matchy-matchy is out. Chaos layering is in.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at right now. Spring is the time to throw open the windows, eat snacks that make no sense, and maybe (just maybe) give yourself a break.

Tell me what’s on your in-and-out list. I love knowing what little things are making people happy lately.

🌼✨

My Pinterest Wishlist Life

~ Brooke F. ~ 1 Comment

I’ve always loved the way a single image can hold a whole feeling. I scroll through my saved photos and see a glimpse of a life I want via this lovely little gallery app we call pinterest. I save it all, friends. Food. Crafts. Clothes. You name it, I’ve probably saved it.

The problem is, I save the pictures, but I don’t always live them. I romanticize ideas. I want to do things like writing letters, playing music, making beautiful food but too often, they sit in the back of my mind like unopened books that I’ve set aside because I got too greedy at the bookstore (This is a metaphor. Totally hasn’t happened haha…). Lately, I’ve been thinking: What if I actually did the things my saved photos make me long for? What if I took those tiny, aesthetic wishes and made them real?

Here’s what my Pinterest-inspired dream life looks like along with the breakdown below:

📜 Writing More Letters – I have a picture of old-fashioned letters, some sealed with wax, resting on a desk. Something about it feels so intentional, so full of care. I want to bring that back ya’ll. Deep down, I wish to write to friends just because, to send little notes instead of just texting, to put thoughts on paper and let them live outside my head only to be tucked away in a memory box after sitting on a desk for awhile.

🌿 More Picnics, More Sunshine – There’s a saved photo of a perfect picnic: a basket, fresh fruit, a gingham blanket spread over soft grass. I want to stop treating picnics as some rare, whimsical event and make them part of my normal life. Even if it’s just grabbing a sandwich and sitting outside, I want to spend more time in the sun, breathing in the fresh air, existing outside of office walls.

🎸 Actually Playing My Guitar – I found a picture of a girl playing guitar in a cozy corner of her room, lost in the music. It reminded me of how much I love playing. But it also made me recall how easily I fall in and out of the habit. I go through phases. I pick it up, play for a while, then let it gather dust. I want to be more consistent, to play for the joy of it, not just when the mood randomly strikes.

🍳 Becoming the Girl Who Cooks – A picture of girl mindfully reading a cookbook over a stove. That’s the kind of life I want. I want to fall in love with cooking. And maybe not just the eating part, but lean more into the creating too. I want to slow down, enjoy the process, and make meals that feel like care in edible form. I have somewhat achieved this within the last 3 months but there’s always room for practice. Plus, my toxic trait it leaning into my comfort recipes too much. I want to try new things too!

🗡 Owning a Sword (Just Because) – There’s no deep reason for this one. I just want a sword. A beautiful, slightly impractical, completely perfect sword. Let me live my medieval fantasy.

☕️ Living the Café Life – I save too many pictures of aesthetic café tables, lattes with perfect foam, and plates of delicate pastries. If I could, I would quit my job and dedicate my life to café hopping, sipping coffee, and eating croissants for a living. Unfortunately, capitalism exists. But maybe I can make it a small goal…just a little one to visit more coffee shops, to carve out time to just sit with a book and a cappuccino, even if it’s not my full-time occupation. Just a little me time. Or maybe I’ll bring a friend a long sometimes. ❤

🏡 The Cottagecore Fantasy – A little house with a garden, fresh herbs hanging in the kitchen, mornings that start with tea on the porch. I know I can’t drop everything and move to an English village tomorrow, but I can take small steps. Maybe growing herbs in my kitchen, learning a new skill that feels homely, creating the cottage feel wherever I am. Maybe that’s where that starts?

🧁 Making Cute Desserts for People I Love – I save so many pictures of perfectly frosted cupcakes and cute little pastries, but I never actually make them. But really, I’d love to learn to bake things that are as pretty as they are delicious, to surprise my friends with treats just because, to bring sweetness into life in the most literal way.

These are the pieces of the life I dream about. These are the things I don’t just want to admire in pictures, but actually live. Maybe it won’t all happen overnight, but little by little, I want to bring these Pinterest-worthy moments into my reality. I think our lives are made to be much more than galleries.

What’s on your wishlist, friends? ✨

Can Pinterest Actually Help Your Writing?

~ Brooke F. ~ Leave a comment

Welcome to a writer’s guide to Pinterest where I plan to discuss the good, the bad, the pretty. (I’m sorry, I love this tag line format, okay?) And rest assured, as someone who has dumped many, MANY hours that I cannot get back into this social media app, I am an expert on this matter.

Pinterest is where I go to build my dream library, organize my “writing room” ideas, and pin cute coffee shops I probably won’t visit but love to look at. As a writer, Pinterest has been an absolute gem for inspiration; you could almost call it a mood board for my entire brain. But as far as promoting my writing? Well, let’s just say Pinterest isn’t quite built to send people flooding to your latest blog post or novella.

Here’s the scoop on how Pinterest can actually help (and where it kind of misses the mark).

The Good: The Perks of Pinterest for Writers

  1. An Endless Well of Inspiration (Literally, It’s Bottomless)
    If you’re ever stuck on a writing project, Pinterest is the perfect place to scroll through photos of foggy forests, vintage journals, and other people’s aesthetically pleasing bookshelves. The platform is a visual feast, which makes it amazing for building storyboards or getting character inspiration. Dreamy landscape? They’ve got you covered. You’ll be drowning in imagery before you even get through the first page of your search.
  2. Organizing Writing Ideas Like a Pro
    Pinterest boards are a lifesaver when it comes to keeping track of all those ideas we want to come back to someday. Want to keep that list of dialogue ideas, character profiles, or writing prompts handy? Just pin it! In a way, Pinterest lets us organize our creativity, which is both refreshing and slightly magical (especially if you’re like me and tend to misplace things…like ideas).
  3. Perfect for Building an Aesthetic (Hello, Vibes!)
    Whether your story is set in a gloomy castle or a sunny seaside town, Pinterest boards let you curate a “vibe” that can bring your creative world to life. You can find everything from historical costumes to quirky cafes, and it all adds a splash of personality to your work—even if it’s only for you to look at. Sometimes, having that mood board handy is just what you need to get into the writing groove.

The Bad: The Downsides of Pinterest for Writers

  1. Driving Traffic to Your Work? Not So Much
    Here’s the thing: people on Pinterest are mainly looking for visuals and ideas, not links to blog posts. Most users are there to save images, maybe jot down a few notes, and then go on their merry way. I’ve pinned some of my writing work before, but it’s rare for people to follow an image all the way to an actual article or story. Pinterest is more about the “aesthetic save” than the “click-through,” so don’t expect it to be a major traffic source.
  2. Lack of Community Engagement
    Pinterest is not the place to chat, bond over writing struggles, or get feedback on your work. There are no extensive comment sections where people are swapping tips or sharing the same cozy creative space you might find on other platforms. Truth be told, they DO have a comments section on individual pins but it’s not laid out very well nor is it heavily used among the platform’s users. Pinterest is more of a solo mission; everyone’s there for their own pins and projects, so if you’re looking for a writing community, look elsewhere.
  3. It Can Become a Time Sink (Oops)
    Pinterest may look harmless, but let’s not kid ourselves—it’s a gateway to spending hours pinning everything under the sun without actually writing. There’s so much content that it’s easy to fall into the “one more scroll” trap, especially when it feels like you’re being productive. At some point, it’s best to stop pinning and start typing. (Believe me, I speak from experience here, ok.)

The Verdict: Is It Worth It?
If you’re in need of visuals or inspiration, Pinterest is fantastic and I highly recommend it. With your own private library of images to draw from, it can make the writing process a lot more fun as well as help you visualize things you’re struggling to picture yourself. Just don’t rely on it for promotion, because Pinterest users are likely just passing through.

Happy pinning (and happy actually writing, too)!

Aesthetics that I really love Pt.3

~ Brooke F. ~ 9 Comments

I promised. When I make a promise I will never ever break that promise.

…especially when it comes to making these posts. I sorry, I’m just a helpless pinterest girl.

1. Koicore

This is an aesthetic I sort of made up awhile back. Basically it’s characterized by a love of fish, lilypad-esque color schemes, and an emphasis placed upon reducing plastic use. Yaknow, cute stuff like that.

I separated the aesthetic into two types….White Koicore and Green Koicore. I even made a little graphic showing the visual differences between the two.

Cute, right?

Anyways here are a few more mood boards just in case you don’t entirely get the gist just yet.

2. Persephone

Kind of proud of the name I came up with for this one. Basically this aesthetic is botanical gothic. It is characterized by statues covered in ivy, a heavy mist hanging about a garden, and pomegranates of course. Perfect for when you’re feeling girly and feral at the same time.

3. Lady Detective

Lord have mercy, I am an absolute sucker for this aesthetic. I couldn’t find any other fitting name for it to be entirely honest. But surely I can’t be the only one who lives vicariously through this aesthetic? Surely? Its the perfect mix of vintage and adventurous that just makes me oh-so-happy. Alas, I blame my obession with Nancy Drew as a child.

4. Jaded

The perfect mix of luxurious and dark, Jaded is an aesthetic that is characterized by royal imagery as well as the color pairing of green and gold. Examples can be seen below!

5. Stainglass

There is something magical about stain glass windows. The shimmery, colored says of light that stream through the glass onto altars and pews evoke a such a positive and peaceful feeling. So it’s no wonder that I’m drawn to such an aesthetic as this.

I was sad to find through a few pinterest searches that this aesthetic is severely underrated/barely exists if at all. So I, of course, had to remedy that. I created a new section in my Aesthetics pinterets board and got to work. This aesthetic I think would be characterized by Renaissance-type imagery and fashion. Pearls, harps, lutes, candles, crosses, gold, tapestries, and tunic tops seemed to suit this aesthetic nicely.

I doubt this aesthetic will catch on however, I hope a few pinterest girls who have a thing for medieval inspired fashion and the Renaissance era can appreciate the few moodboards I’ve created.

And I think that just about wraps up our little aesthetic-round up though, if we’re being completely honest here, I’m probably going to continue this series as more novel aesthetic concepts pop into my head or onto my pinterest feed. There is no end in sight! See ya’ll soon!