Wow… my last Five for Friday post was in February! That’s hard to believe and yet, the facts don’t lie. But I have a lot to talk about today, so let’s dive in.
1) I ordered my first set of Chatbooks this week. If you’re unfamiliar with Chatbooks, their claim to fame is their Instagram photo books in which they automatically develop photo books of your Instagram photos for you. Each photo book includes 60 photos, so once you have 60 photos ready, they’ll send you an email and you can delete and resize photos as you want. They also do photo books for Facebook photos and your own photo roll and have different types of photo books. But I just did their usual Instagram photo book with the 60 photos. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time: photo books of the pictures I’ve taken of Dutch throughout the years. I’ve taken so many photos of my little man and I wanted to have a stack of photo books to flip through whenever I want. So, this week, I downloaded the Chatbooks app and got to work deleting photos until I only had photos of Dutch. It took a long time because that’s six or seven years of photos to sort through! In the end, I was left with five photo books, which means I have at least 300 Instagram photos of my dog on my feed. And let’s not forget the fact that I deleted photos that were grainy or too dark or I didn’t like, sooo, that’s a lot of Dutch. I ordered the hardcover photo books for $15 and I’m getting my first one sometime in early February. (When you start using Chatbooks, you can set it up to get “caught up” on your pictures and receive a bulk set of photo books at one time, or opt for getting 1, 2, or 3 books a month until you’re all caught up. I’m doing one photo book a month.)
2) Every few years, I like to go through my “Want to Read” shelf on Goodreads and delete books I know I have no intention of reading. At the time I started deleting books, I had nearly 900 books on my shelf and I figured I would easily whittle that down to a more reasonable number. I deleted books that had a low overall rating (anything under 3.5 stars), books that had been released more than two years ago and had less than 1,000 reviews, and books that didn’t seem interesting to me anymore and hadn’t been reviewed by any of my friends. In the end, I only managed to delete around 250 books, leaving me with more than 600 books on my shelf. And I’m sure that, in no time at all, my “Want to Read” shelf will be at an unreasonable number once again because that’s just the way it works when you’re a bookworm.
3) As of today, I’m 92 days away from my cruise. My mom and I booked this cruise so far in advance that I haven’t been able to get excited about it (and, real talk, there has been a lot of worrying on my end about paying my half of the deposit, but it’s going to get done). I cannot wait for this cruise, though. It’s what I daydream about during particularly mundane days at work. We haven’t decided what excursions we’ll do because I haven’t researched about them just yet, but there’s this fun zip line and cave tubing excursion in Belize that I have my eyes on. If we make it happen, this will mean we’ve zip lined in four different countries!
4) Pushing publish on The State of My Faith today was incredibly difficult, but writing about my faith journey and where I am today was extremely cathartic to me. Most of the responses I received were positive and even the ones that weren’t came from a place of love and not condemning me at all. (As a sensitive person, I highly appreciate that!) I know faith can be such a tricky subject and a lot of us come to it with a whole lot of baggage and strong opinions. For me, it was important to talk about the way my faith has evolved over the years because I think it’s healthy and normal for that to happen.
5) What do you have planned for this weekend? I am taking it easy tonight to knock out a freelancing project. Tomorrow, I’m meeting up with friends at the Mini Donut Factory and then doing something with my mom: maybe pedicures and furniture “window shopping.” And Sunday will be a laid-back day of writing, running errands, cleaning my apartment, and sneaking in a long afternoon nap. Happy weekend!
I’m glad I’m not the only one who lets their Goodreads get out of hand! I try to cull the list a few times a year and have made similar “rules” for deleting titles. I got rid of anything I physically owned, a few that I had on my Hoopla Favorites list to listen to the audio versions, and anything that wasn’t the 1st book in a series ( how do I know I want to read #3 in a series I haven’t read #1 in!?!) One time I was having trouble deleting items, but my list was in the 800s, so I had my partner Q pick a random number from a range I gave him. I like your more methodical approach to reviews, especially the less than 1000 reviews in a 2 year period– I may use that for my next culling!
It’s amazing how cluttered our TBR lists can get on Goodreads. I try to be intentional about the books I mark as “Want to Read” and yet I still find my list to be unmanageable at least once a year. At least I will never run out of books to read. 😉
I did that exact excursion back in May! It was my first time ziplining and while it was fun, it was short lived. Like 20 minutes total, and you stand in line waiting for 18 of that!
As someone who has been ziplining before, you may find it more for “beginners” and kinda boring. (But I have nothing else to compare to, so maybe they are all like that). Just thought I’d give you that feedback!
The cave tour was fun and relaxing! Especially if you get a good tour guide.
Oh, that is really good to know! I definitely want to do some sort of cave tubing while I’m in Belize, but maybe we can find an excursion that skips the zip line portion, since it sounds a little underwhelming.
I’ll probably be keeping it easy this weekend as well! I recently started a new job working from home, so my week is mostly spent on my own with my computer, so I’ve been using weekend to see people and spend more time with books than the laptop.
The Chatbooks sound great!
Also, have you heard of the podcast The Wicked Wallflowers Club? It’s an interview series with different authors in the romance genre, and I thought of your blog when I discovered the podcast not too long ago!
I haven’t heard of The Wicked Wallflowers Club and that sounds like a podcast that is perfect for me. I’ll check it out – thanks for sharing!
I try to clean up my TBR list on goodreads occasionally, too. It’s so easy for it to get out of hand! I should do that again soon.
I’m glad that you got kind comments on your faith post. Writing about things like that is HARD. I’m glad you didn’t get any attacking or mean comments. Faith journeys are so personal!
Faith is such a personal topic and it can bring up a lot of emotions and defensiveness in people. I was surprised that I didn’t get any mean backlash. Whew!
I’m glad I’m not the only one with an absurd number of books waiting to be read on my Goodreads.
It’s not just you, not by a long shot. There are just so many good books to read and not enough time to read them all. The consummate battle for bookworms.