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It's a little bit spooky!  

But cue the theme for the Twilight Zone because guess what? I'm at least 80% convinced that they DO have secret, magical powers!

Mia Freedman recently wrote about her experience with vision/inspiration boards and when she did, I couldn't help but breathe an enormous sigh of relief and murmur ''a-ha, so THAT'S how you discuss them without sounding like a complete nutter!'' Which was a teensy bit nutty in itself because uh, I was the only person in the room at the time. But anyway! 

Now, I would describe myself as a somewhat cynical person. I was shooting my parents suspicious looks at the mention of the name 'Santa' from a young age and can't help but shriek ''ha, we'll see about that!'' when the television informs me that I'm just going to lovetheir next infomercial, so this whole sticking-pictures-of-objects-or-outcomes-that-you-would-like-to-receive-on-a-corkboard-or-wall-in-the-interest-of-gaining-them business seemed like another concept to be dubious about. But being attracted to pretty pictures and finding myself extraordinarily bored one Sunday afternoon last year, I decided to give it a whirl. Pictures of European cities! Quotes about buying a home! Photographs of apartments! I began cutting away, adorning it with sequins, ribbons and using old earrings as pins, and before you know it, I had created my own vision/inspiration board to hang on the wall. Fast forward to six months later and goodness, would you look at that. I was packing everything up to (coincidentally?! I'm not sure!) move into my new apartment and observed that almost every image adorning my board was reflecting something that had somehow mysteriously, uncannily and utterly surprisingly come into my possession! From the deliciously handsome biker boots to the tickets to international cities, I'm not sure if it all came about purely serendipitously or because having a constant visual reminder of what I was working towards slowly seeped into my brain and forced me to concentrate on my goals harder, but either way, it did and I'm converted!

Sure, scoring an image of Johnny Depp and placing it somewhere prominent probably isn't going to make him say ''look, Vanessa. This relationship has been a joy but you know what? I heard that some girl called Corrine has a picture of me on her door, so I think we should stop seeing each other!'' any time soon, but who's to say that having a postcard from The Greek Islands in my line of vision isn't going to spectacularly improve my chances of visiting there? If the picture that I had of Mia herself (my teenage hero!) holding a white Macbook on my board is anything to go by (and while I absolutely haven't tucked the almighty 'former Editor-In-Chief of Cosmopolitan, Cleo and Dolly magazines' title under my career belt like Mia, I did end up purchasing a white Macbook a few months later!): NO-ONE!