Five Favorites

Linking up with Hallie this week to share some recent favorites that I am super excited about. 

Five to be exact. 

Here goes . . .

1 - PicLab.

My boss was showing off his new iPhone 5 when he clued me in to this new (to me at least) app. It's great. Many of you may have heard of the app "A Beautiful Mess" and I was so disappointed when I saw what it costs. Then I went and read the reviews and got even more disappointed. I'm so glad I held out because PicLab is free (and probably the same, if not better). And now I can create strange photos of my dogs in just seconds (and most interesting man memes)!

2 - Pixelmator. Maybe you noticed my new blog header? Yes. Things are different around here. I downloaded Pixelmator in the App Store last night. An hour or so of tinkering around and I had this bad boy to show for my hard labor:

Not to mention the countless other strange photos I created that hopefully will never see the public blogosphere. The app was $15 but I'm really impressed with what it does so far. It took me back to high school photography class playing around with Photoshop for hourssss. (Oh, what's that? You need someone's face on someone else's body? I'm your lady.) I will definitely be playing around with it more now that quality time with my husband consists of staring at our laptops! 

3 - Running. While my training updates have been nonexistent as of late, I have indeed kept running. My half marathon is on Saturday in Annapolis and I decided to take the plunge and buy my cousin's Marine Corps Marathon registration. (She initially registered—the slots fill up in TWO hours!!—but can't train due to a back injury.) I was so excited when I found out the transfer fee is only $30. So, I am committing to 26.2 miles on October 27, 2013 with Big Momma D for her 50th Birthday! It will be (God-willing) my third marathon and my mom's first!

Yup. Pray for me.

4 - Family Vacations. I just booked my flight to Ocean City, Maryland for a week-long family vacation. And it just so happens that my 83 year old grandmother will be married in the Church on July 1, my birthday! Yes, yes, she's the one that's the retired judge with eleven children. Go Grandma, it's my birthday! Get married like it's my birthday! 

5 - Natural Family Planning. Man, oh, man, there have been some pretty amazing NFP posts lately. I think there was a memo that went out to all the awesome Catholic bloggers that the past month was the best month to write NFP posts. (Didn't make the contact list.) Notables include Katie's, which brought up some really interesting discussion in the comments about postponing pregnancy in early marriage. Then I saw Kallah posted a comment and we started an e-mail back-and-forth on the topic. Kallah went ahead and wrote a beautiful post that has both inspired and emboldened me to write my own post (that I may just be editing until kingdom come). Obviously, there are countless other NFP posts that are so so thoughtful, like this one and this one, but I really do love reading them because it is certainly a situation just like this:

What Should We Call NFP?

The sisterhood. 

Those are just some things I am loving lately. Head over to Hallie's blog to see what the cool kids are into these days.