So I discovered my life’s newest, greatest time suck today – Pinterest.

From what I can tell it’s StumbleUpon, meets Facebook’s "Like" button, meets Google Reader, meets bookmarking, meets…everything that’s right in the world.

It’s awesome!

Basically, in a nut shell, when you find something you like online and want to keep it in one place (instead of emailing yourself the link or something) you "Pin It" to Pinterest.

You organize your pins by adding them to "boards" with different themes like food & drink, travel, home & furniture, kids, fashion and weddings, etc.

Then you share your pins/boards with people that follow you, and you can scan the pins/boards of all the people you follow, on one page that’s constantly being updated.

(did I explain that clearly? Probably not – here’s Pinterest’s explanation.)

As I scrolled through the hundreds of items that had been pinned by the people I follow, I oooo’d over recipes like S’mores Milkshakes,

ahhhh’d over clever ideas like gutter gardens,

giggled at pictures of hysterical children,

and got some good (although maniacal!) workout ideas…

Finding out about Pinterest actually came at a great time because lately I’ve been getting a ton of emails from people planning trips to Des Moines in the upcoming months (yay!) asking what they should do and where they should eat when they’re in town.

As an easy way to show them everything I’d recommend, all in one place, I created a Des Moines Board to point them to! It’s full of awesome places to go, fun things to do, great places to eat & drink, and everything in between.

The only places I couldn’t pin (for whatever reason) were:

Monterrey – my very favorite Mexican restaurant EVER

Proof – an insanely delicious cafe/restaurant downtown

Star Bar – home of my favorite veggie burger

The board is not complete by any means, but it’s a good start and only contains places that I have personally been to and eaten at. There are dozens (underlined, bolded, italicized and capped – DOZENS) of other restaurants in town that are simply spectacular, but I didn’t add them if I haven’t eaten at them. Maybe I should…I’ll think about it.

Anyways, checkout Pinterest, and say goodbye to your free time!

In other news, it was another scorcher today – 99 degrees with a heat index of 115 degrees – and I couldn’t bear to turn the stove on to cook the Chicken Piccata I had planned for dinner tonight. Instead, I took advantage of the truck-load of produce I picked up on Saturday and made an "it’s too hot to cook dinner" dinner of Fruit & Feta Salad!

A candy-sweet peach, tart plum, fragrant basil and creamy feta joined forces with a bit of baby spinach, crunchy walnuts and homemade balsamic vinaigrette, to create an unstoppable, beat the heat meal.

The tart balsamic vinaigrette, made with a splash each of balsamic vinegar and EVOO, then seasoned with salt & pepper, was an amazing contrast to the sweet fruit.

The cheese was the perfect finishing touch. Oooo this was good!

For dessert, Ben and I are going to go get some ice cream. I think we deserve a cool treat…

You see, our AC stopped working last night around 9pm (horrifying) and this afternoon we had to pay a repair man $107 to tell us that the unit had just overheated, and everything is actually fine.

Really?

At any rate, it’s back on now and sloooowly cooling our 89 degree home minute by agonizing minute, so we’re outta here until it comes down to a reasonable temp!

BTW, I still say I’d rather be hot than cold!

See ya!

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What’s the one website you can’t live without? The one you check every single day?