These are a Few of my Favorite Things: Beyond Bible Devotion App

I grew up in church, and therefore I grew up learning the importance of spending daily time in God's word, also known as a "quiet time". If you are a new christian or a christian who has never put this into practice, I urge you to do so. Quiet times are so vital to your walk as a christian, not to mention that for me it is in every possible way, my "daily bread". I feel as though I'm literally being fed and prepared for my day when I start it with some personal time with God.

All throughout High school I went through seasons where I was really consistent and then times when I wasn't. Spending time in God's word was more of something that made me feel like I was being a better christian than something that was really doing me good. (Note: I do not think it is a bad thing necessarily to begin quiet times that way as long as that is not the reason you are doing them for the rest of your life. Either way it is a good habit to form and sometimes it takes just forming a habit to realize how vital something is for you). I thought that surely when I was in college and more mature, this habit would better establish itself. For the first few years it was at the same pace. Then when I began nursing school, I am not afraid to be honest and admit to you that my quiet times were almost non-existent for those two years. I bet I averaged one every 2 months or so. There would be possibly a couple of weeks mixed in there where I would start a good pace and then it would just fall apart.

Looking back I think I was trying to be too ambitious with them. I thought to myself, I am pretty mature in my christian walk, I should be having 30 minute quiet times at least, reading several chapters of the Bible at a time. If you do that, many claps for you! Really, I mean it! I hope to eventually be there, but right now I am just not. That being said, it is okay to start small! And that's what I have came to realize within the last couple of months.

Now enter Beyond Bible Devotion App. I have heard of lots of people using it, but it has definitely become one of my favorite things and thought it deserved an entry of it's own.

This app has completely revolutionized my quiet times. Sadly, I am attached enough to my phone that I always have it with me, so if I forgot to read it when I was getting ready, I can quickly do it at work. It's fairly short, but long enough to provoke some good thoughts. It is $2.99, which to me was well worth it considering I would regularly spend more than that on a devotional book.

The writer of these devotions is also realistic. I find that some devotionals are all about the love, which is great, but to grow as a christian you need to be challenged as well.

I'm so thankful for this app and how much it has jumpstarted my individual time with God. If you are finding your quiet times lackluster, don't keep trying at the same old thing and don't try with something too ambitious that you are quickly burnt out and decide not to do anything at all like I did. It's okay to start simple. God just wants time with you and with only you. Bible study groups are great and being involved in church is equally great, but God also desires some time with only you.

Today is a new day, and a great day to start something new. I hope you have a great week and that God reveals himself to you in an awesome way.

In His hug,

Molly

These are a Few of My Favorite Things: Hipstamatic Camera App

How many people even buy cameras anymore unless they are like, photographers? Or bring them with them on vacations? I still do, and i love the quality of pictures my regular camera takes, but the convenience of a camera on your phone is just too...well... convenient! But then there's the fact that sometimes photos from our phones are rather unfortunately sucky blurry.

Even though the quality of our phone's camera lenses may not be the best we can still fake it with all of the apps that are available to us and allow us to change settings. My favorite camera app to use is not a new one, but it's still a goodie: Hipstamatic.

My first year of college I still had a little flippy phone and Josh had just gotten the iPhone. I begged him to get the Hipstamatic app so that I could use it! Before Instagram was even a thing (although I too love Instagram), Hipstamatic was already setting trends with it's square photos. It's a little pricy for those of us who stick to our free apps, but to me it was totally worth the $1.99 that it cost.

It has a lot of fun lenses, flashes, and films that you can experiment with. My favorite combo is the John S lens with Ina's 1969 film, but there are plenty more free choices and then a few packs that you can purchase.

A lot of my photos I post on this blog are taken with my Hipstamatic app and here are some examples of my favorites over the years that I have had it:

This is one of the first pictures I took with it. Not necessarily a great photo, but it does a good job of capturing what light is available.

I favor the particular settings that I use because I really like the dramatic lighting and colors that come to life through this lens and the vintage border that the film frames the photos in.

This was in Boston at the entrance of an aquarium, I just barely missed the sea lion swimming by.

Again in Boston.

This was taken of some pretty girls in Kenya.

This picture always makes me chuckle. The little boy on the right was clearly happy to see us with that sweet smile on his face while the little girl began crying after I took this.

This was taken on Josh and I's honeymoon in the Bahamas. This is with a lens that doesn't darken colors quite as much, but still captures small detail fairly well.

This was taken at the Atlantis resort looking through an aquarium up to one of their recognizable buildings.

I think this is another good example of how it does well with low lighting. Most aquariums are pretty dark, but the camera captured the lighting well enough so that the photo looks sharp instead of blurry.

This was taken on a Colorado camping road trip Josh and I took. Sadly I took very few photos with this app during that trip, but I love how it captured the smoke coming off of the fire in this one.

A particular subject that frequents my photos.

Disney World!

Again, not a lot of good lighting, but turned out to be a pretty decent photo. That's not to say you may not have to take a couple of shots to get one that is sharp, but still, in my opinion, better than a photo you could've taken with just the camera app that your phone provides.

Do you see why I love this app? Do you love it, too? I'm so glad you do! The website even does little photo contests you can enter and allows you a means to print your Hipstamatic photos as well! I have printed some and they turn out to be pretty high quality for phone pics! I hope you enjoyed hearing about one of my favorite things and I hope you have a fabulous Monday!

In His hug, 

Molly

P.S.- If you are enjoying our blog so far, please be sure to follow us so that we can also follow your blog! If you don't have a blog you can easily subscribe with your email in the little box in the right column (it does not show up on a mobile web browser). We won't send you anything annoying or spammy, just updates every so often about us, the Brooks's.

These are a Few of My Favorite Things: French Girls (it's not what it sounds like)

Mondays. Poor Mondays. They always get the stigma of being the worst day of the week. Sometimes this can be true, but personally I think it's more of a bad attitude issue than that Mondays are really that bad. Also I think if you are in a bad mood (which you kind of put yourself in if you just already assume your day is going to be bad), things will go wrong just because you're expecting them to. I don't believe in Karma, but I do think that a bad attitude can effect your outlook on your day to day life. Just like a positive one can really turn things around.

That being said, I wanted to turn Mondays into a positive day by creating a series I will post every Monday (hopefully.) of my favorite things. Maybe some of these are already your favorite things, or maybe they will be completely new to you. Either way, I hope it reminds you to find joy in the small things in life and maybe expand on or relish in your favorite things rather than dwelling on the things that aren't so favorite.

Today I will start out with this new app I discovered (because I'm sure I was the first one to find it. Everyone probably already has it, really). It is called French Girls. A quirky play on words from the infamous line in Titanic, "draw me like one of your french girls..." ooh la-la!

I also enjoy weirdness, and this red-haired fellow is pretty wierd...

I have wasted spent a lot of precious time as this app has become one of my new favorites (hence why it is the beginning of my favorite things posts). With this app you shamelessly take a selfie, submit it, and wait for someone to draw you! Some are amazing, some are creatively not what you expected at all, and some are just plain bad.

Let me stop right here and warn you that, as is everything on the interwebs, people can be inappropriate. That means you may possibly see drawings of unfortunate body parts and of naughty words. If that puts you off, you may choose not to partake in the fun that is this app. However, this app does give you the ability to flag drawings you believe to be inappropriate.

And did I mention this app is free? Because it is. So if you try it and don't like it, no harm no foul. At least you didn't spend $.99 on it, right? Now you can choose to buy more colors, but I'm content with the ones it provides.

Anyways, here are some selfies that I submitted. Kind of embarrassing. I feel the need to explain that I do not regularly have this amount of selfies on my phone's photo album. These selfies were taken purely for the research purposes of getting the best drawing of myself for this post. (I'm totally doing more though).

This was the first one I did. I didn't realize my curly hair was so representative of a sheep- and a yellow sheep at that!

This next one was a little nicer :) Thank you, stranger!

I mean let's be honest, we all want the really good creative people to draw our photos, not the people who don't try and just draw hair. So I submitted several in a row. More exposure that way. And who cares how dumb you look, you don't know these people, right?

As you might have guessed, I was starting to run out of selfie ideas...

Even Joshy joined in on the selfie fun! hehe

And don't just sit back and let people draw you, let your creative juices flow and draw a few yourself! You don't have to be great at it, just be as creative or as silly as you want! Here are some of the ones I created.

 

Beautiful, no? Some people get really serious about it, but that's what makes it more enjoyable to look at! It is like looking through a selfie art gallery! (I'm convinced some of these people use their iPads and stylists) Here are some of my favorite ones people have submitted! 

So why is this new app one of my favorite things? Besides that it is just silly and fun, I love the creativity that people bring to it. I love seeing the different perspectives that people have when it comes to a subject. Yes it is just a phone app, but I really believe art can be whatever you want it to be. 

I hope you enjoyed the first installment of my favorite things! Sorry this one was kind of long! Probably most of my favorite things posts won't be this lengthy. I'd love to see the selfie art that you create or are created of you with this app! 

In His hug, 

Molly

P.S.- If you are enjoying our blog so far, please be sure to follow us so that we can also follow your blog! If you don't have a blog you can easily subscribe with your email in the little box in the right column (it does not show up on a mobile web browser). We won't send you anything annoying or spammy, just updates every so often about us, the Brooks's.