But first some happy pictures from Wednesday. We drove out to visit my niece Zinnia for her 4th birthday. The kids played. I got to see my mom, my dad, and my grandmother who I see too little of. We had yummy food and cake. We had fun.

And now the not so happy. I am……

…struggling with my blog. I’m sure you can tell if you look back and see the frequency of my posts. Heck just look at my banner. My Halloween banner in the middle of November. I know I have moments like this with my blog. I don’t have anything to say. I don’t feel creative. I think about not blogging anymore.

Maybe it’s the weather. Maybe it’s that time of month. Maybe…maybe…I don’t know. That’s where I am at right now.

Maybe I won’t blog on here anymore. 8.5 years is a pretty good run. I’ve met some great people through my blog but maybe it’s time to try something else. I’m just not feeling it lately.

I could just do the Facecrap thing, I mean Facebook, though I am thinking Facecrap. All my family is on Facebook. I’ve been trying to post pictures there more often. I could just do that.

I think I’ve been feeling this way with blogging in general. I do more skimming then reading. And my commenting has been sporadic. I’ve been unsubscribing left and right. If I’ve been subscribed to someone for months and nothing about them stands out then why am I subscribed to them? Sure they have pretty pictures. But a lot of blogs have pretty pictures. They all blend into one another. Crafty this or crafty that, some unimaginative name that sounds just like someone else’s and for that matter why is anyone still subscribed to me? Is anyone? Ok…this is depressing.

I’ll feel right as rain next week. I’m pretty sure about that.

Here are our monthly family pictures. We took them pretty much on time. However, I didn’t put them up on the blog. I’ve been slacking in the photography department. I’ve been enjoying it as much as ever but I’ve been using my phone and instagram. A LOT. Well…a lot compared to a regular camera.

A lot of my posts lately have been drawings. I was quite enjoying a drawing spree there for a while. I was thinking about making changes to the blog, even debated on only posting drawings from now on. Also thinking about turning off my comments again. And then I entered the desert of blogging by going without a blog for what…a week and a half? Oops. We’ll see. I’m in another funk and stuff is going on and …. yeah.

It has been a month since I wrote my post, Rethinking Pinterest. I have been thinking about it. And I haven’t been pinning.

Yesterday, I read a post on Pinterest etiquette that set my teeth on edge. It was talking about copyright and proper attribution. But it completely ignored the elephant in the room. Even more annoying was a commenter who didn’t care about linking to original sources, saying if it wasn’t watermarked it wasn’t her responsibility. Really?!

So, today, I thought I’d share with you what all my thinking has come to. And my conclusion? What I felt a month ago has not changed, even with Pinterest’s new terms of service. I DO NOT want to pin things any more because unless I specifically ask for the photographer’s permission, I am infringing on their copyright. Simple as that. Because I like something, I’m going to do that person a disservice? No.

So you might be thinking, how wonderful Pinterest is and that person should be happy you liked them enough to pin them. Well, my reply, how do you know? Did you ask? That is the whole point of copyright. And plus, I really don’t like being sued. This photographer who is also a lawyer, Kirsten Kowalski, explains it much better than me.

And, so, I have deleted my boards. When I deleted them, it only reinforced my mindset in this matter. All my pins were gone from my account but if someone repinned something, it still showed up on Pinterest last night when I checked. And that sort of sickened me. That I gave Pinterest someone’s picture without their permission. Yes gave. Because me deleting it from my account didn’t delete it. Pinterest STILL has it.

But I have a solution. Will I still pin? Yes. But how? Pinterest has changed the way people blog. If I like something, and the blog has a pin it button, like I do on the bottom of this post, I know they are ok with pinning, so I will pin. But will I blindly go pinning from now on? No. If it isn’t written specifically somewhere that they are allowing pinning then I will not pin it.

So, I am restarting with Pinterest with this new set of guidelines for myself. It’s my happy medium.

Just some randomness before the weekend.

A what I wore today in drawings from a few days ago. I sort of like the colors by themselves without my drawing lines. I wonder what a comic would look like if I drew it like this?

And a wee little leprechaun.

Well, actually he looks gigantic here. He’s the leprechaun on my arm in this month’s banner. I don’t know why I put in tiny unseen details. Like his coat with the little buttons and the way it looks like a coat and not just green. You can’t see that when he’s sooooo very tiny. But I still put those details in. Why? I don’t know.

When I was making up the banner this month, I was laughing to myself making up a story behind it. I imagined two leprechauns magically showing up. Me and Alan are naturally surprised. LEPRECHAUNS!!

We are speechless at the wonder. I’m so shocked I do not even move my arm. Nathan, sitting in my lap, doesn’t even notice. But always curious Isabelle sees and joyfully snatches one of them up. She gleefully runs off while the leprechaun yells, “AAaaaahhh she’s got me!”

And…and…I am clearly weird.

Have a good weekend!

I was reading I am Baker today and followed a link to a very interesting post by Living Locurto about pinning on Pinterest. This is the second post this week I’ve read about Pinterest. And I don’t like what I’m reading.

I pin things I like occasionally but I’ve never really given Pinterest that much thought. Not much beyond how irritating it is to not be able to find an original source to something. But that’s it. I didn’t think about what was going on in the background in their terms of service. I was just putting up a virtual board of things I liked.

But reading that, “You no longer have control of that image, Pinterest does.” is very unsettling. I’m not being overprotective about my images. I don’t think I have anything interesting to pin. But reading this makes me NOT want to use Pinterest anymore. I don’t want to contribute to helping violate someone else’s image license. Because that is exactly what we are all doing, us pinners.

I’ve been reading some comments where people say, it’s not Pinterest’s fault. Well, I disagree. It is their fault. In their very friendly easy to understand About Pinterest, Pin Etiquette section they are promoting pinning, even talking about crediting sources. But it isn’t until you dig around in their hard to understand, in legalize, Terms of Use that it gets into the nitty gritty of copyright. So, basically, I feel like they’re promoting us all to infringe on others copyrights. I really don’t know how I feel about that. Sure it’s easy to use and pretty to look at. But…it’s wrong.

If Pinterest doesn’t change something, I think I need to stop using them. I can’t justify doing something that I think is wrong just because it’s convenient and I like it. I don’t know. I have to give this some thought. Anyone have any input on this? Maybe I’m tired and not thinking straight.