Pinterest: It’s a lot like Tumblr except with a working search tool. The site made its debut a few months back after a trial period in super secret invite-only beta mode, to the glee of everyone who loves a kitschy new social networking site. The shiny new site is almost literally like a candy store. It’s chock full of hi-res, well-framed pictures of just about anything you could want and then some. That is to say: it’s mostly food, cats, butts, and really really attractive people to go with the butts. Among the food and butts, however, is an amazing resource for creating your own delicious food and shaping your own butt. Pinterest is crammed with recipes, craft projects, and general life tips.

 

 

The problem with impossibly delicious-looking food or really nice looking crafts is that they never carry a pretty important warning: results may vary. A lot. Maybe the tutorial or recipe is too vague. Maybe the first person to do the project and take highly groomed pictures of it had some pretty expensive and rare resources to work with. Maybe you’re just not good at crafts. Enter the Pintester. Sonja Foust, well-known romance novel writer with a tongue-in-cheek edge, browses Pinterest. She finds projects that look pretty stellar to her and to us. She fails spectacularly. She documents her findings for all of us to see.

Sonja Foust is the hero the internet deserves. The writer approaches projects a good number of us have had our eye on and not only tries it out for our benefit, but does so with humor and style. She’s actually not that bad at crafting and making fancy drinks and crockpot recipes. Sometimes the recipes fail us. A lot of readers seek out Pintester to finally feel like they’re not alone when it comes to crafting and cooking disasters. A lot of us come because her experiments are hilarious, not just the results. It’s all about the journey, after all, not the destination.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So if you’ve ever thought about putting together that fancy Pinterest hair-do with nothing but filtered pictures as instructions, your latest attempt at Martha Stewart-ing your house ended in something on fire, or you’d just like a few laughs from a pretty clever and bold lady, check out Pintester. You really won’t regret it.