35 Days of Favorites

Wow,  seems as though I just did 34 Days of Favorites not that long ago! I guess this year has gone by quickly!

Alright, so here’s the deal, for those of you who weren’t around for all the fun last year:

When I was a little girl, my mom would always make a list of our favorite things, usually food! Since the first year I started this blog, I’ve continued the birthday tradition, and shared a list of my favorite things.

Last year, I decided to see if I could come up with as many favorites as the number of years I was celebrating, and asked my lovely blog readers to share their favorites with me. At the end of it all, I entered the names of everyone who had commented during the series into a draw for a prize. Judging from the number of visits and comments on my blog during that time, it seemed as though people enjoyed it, so we’ll give it another go.

My birthday is on July 11, which seems a really long way off, but in order to post 35 favorites, my calendar tells me I need to start today! (I’m not going to post on weekends.)

Here we go – the first favorite…

I was having trouble deciding what to start with, so I checked to see which favorite was the most popular last year. The winner was…Most-Used Gift!

For this year, I must confess that my most-used gift was…a “stolen” gift! Maybe “borrowed” sounds better…

This last Christmas, Anika was given an iPad, which was quite a big surprise for our family.

Now, there are a ton of awesome things for people of all ages to do on an iPad, and we use it a fair amount for homeschooling. But fairly early on, it became clear that Anika was in need of sharing her iPad, so we had a long talk about it, and labelled it “The Family iPad”.

I did not think we needed an iPad. I had never imagined myself using an iPad. I had most definitely never imagined myself becoming very attached to an iPad.

But it happened.

Oh, my goodness, is that thing ever wonderful!

It puts children in bad moods, so that part is unfortunate, and we’re pretty careful with it, but most of the time, you’ll find our iPad in our kitchen.

I LOVE using it for recipes. Pair an iPad together with Pinterest, and it’s a cook’s dream. The screen gets splattered with food all the time, but other than that, it’s perfect.

So surprising.

And I really love seeing Ben browsing Pinterest on a pink iPad. Well…I guess he’s not technically “browsing” Pinterest. He’s the pancake maker in our household, and so he’s learned how to get around Pinterest to find all our favorite recipes.

There you have it. The shocking, stolen gift, used and loved by someone who doesn’t really like technology very much….I’ve been won over.

But that’s my Most Used gift. If I were to share with you my Most Loved gift from this past year, it would have to be this simple little item from Anika:

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Alright, time for some comments. What’s your favorite gift you (or someone close to you!) have received? What do you use and love? Any surprises? Something you were given that you would never have bought for yourself, but when it was given to you, you were hooked?

Aaaand…. today is your last day to leave a comment letting me know what your favorite book is! I’ll announce who won the free copy of Naked Spirituality on Monday!