I am not a natural Pinterest girl. I am a Pinterest girl wannabe. I do like a good hair-brained scheme, and I am learning that Pinterest is a veritable treasure trove of creative ideas. And, some years after I created a Pinterest profile, I can now reliably pin something and find it again later. 

Without having to google how to do that.

This weekend we hosted a sleepover birthday party for a newly 9 year old junior recipe tester. Quite late in the planning I thought it would be fun to turn our lounge room, into which 7 juniors were sardined, into a tent. Turns out that tent pegs and carpet aren't a thing, and so I settled for the creation of a canopy instead.

I turned to Pinterest. All that was required was to rig up a canopy to hang below the ceiling. 

Turns out you can create and achieve anything, given an appropriate amount of time. Time, I was a little short on. This week we cooked for His Excellency General The Honourable David Hurley AC DSC (Ret’d), Governor of New South Wales at a wonderful 40th anniversary celebration at Interaction (more on that soon!)

With His Excellency and the other dignitaries served, I turned my attention to the celebration closer to, or rather in my, home. The party was due to commence at 4.30pm. The juniors required collection from their educational institution at 3.10pm. At 1.42pm I raced to Spotlight and purchased a curtain stretch wire, 2 pre made curtains and a bunch of paper lanterns. What could possibly go wrong?

I returned home at 2.14 pm, congratulating myself that I had almost a full hour to redecorate. To hang the wire I located the first wall stud, just below the ceiling and screwed the hook into the wall. I measured the stretch wire required and cut it to length. Veritably crowing at my DIY prowess I still had about 35mins remaining.

The second wall stud was, perhaps predictably given the time constraints, much tricker to locate. I climbed the ladder and hammered a lot of nails into the plaster board. I knocked on the wall endlessly. I did not locate anything solid behind the gyprock.

Because the task required the inspection of a lot of very small holes, and because my eyes have out aged my willingness to hammer things, I now have glasses. I climbed down the ladder to don said glasses. Because there is nothing wrong with my distance vision, the glasses made the ladder steps look lumpy. This, by the time I was again atop the ladder, made me feel woozy.

Because the nailing, locating and screwing of hooks required both hands there was none left to clutch the ladder until the wooziness subsided. I settled for standing on tippy toes, pressing my head into the ceiling to steady myself. I am relieved to report I did not fall down.

With the curtains finally hung I started stringing up paper lanterns. To get around the curtains I had to stitch them through the curtain and around the wire. This necessitated climbing the ladder with a sewing needle and thread in hand.

Threading the needle and stitching the lanterns around the wire was difficult without my glasses. Climbing the ladder was difficult with my glasses. Sewing lanterns to suspended wires requires two hands. Dealing with wooziness atop a ladder requires at least one hand free.

All of the above can be combated with the courage to stand on tippy toes at the top of a ladder and pressing your head into the ceiling to steady yourself. None of this is mentioned in any Pinterest project that I have thus far found.

No. I am not a natural Pinterest girl.