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Some of My Favorite Apps Lately…

Oh Joy | Favorite Apps

Oh Joy | Favorite Apps

As much as I sometimes want to resist the technology we have nowadays, it honestly makes life more convenient in so many ways. Today, I want to share a few favorite apps that are part of my every day…

Endless-alphabet-app

There are so many apps for kids, and we're always on the hunt to find ones that are both educational and entertaining for Ruby. While she's not quite ready to read or spell, she does enjoy matching shapes and loves the Endless Alphabet app that my friend Viv introduced us to. In addition to letting the child match a word's letters, it gives definitions of each word—both verbally and visually—as well as the sound for each letter as it's being pressed. It's such a cute and smart app, and it steps outside the usual "cat" and "dog" words, which I love.

Yahoo-weather-app

I check the weather pretty much every day and find a lot of joy in the beauty of the Yahoo! Weather app. The app showcases the work of photographers who use Flickr, with the weather information overlaid on photos of the corresponding city and its time of day. It all creates a beautiful visual of what your day looks like weather-wise.


Afterlight-app

I'm not a big fan of the preset filters on Instagram, as I prefer to adjust my iPhone photos more subtly myself. So I love the Afterlight app for the control it offers with brightness, contrast, saturation, and other basic photo-editing features. Afterlight also has the best crop tools, including some fun shapes.

Anylist-app

I've tried many methods for keeping a virtual running grocery list, and the best I've found so far is the AnyList app. It's not the prettiest app in the world, but it functions well and makes it super easy to add items while categorizing them at the same time. The best part is the option to share the list, which means that Bob and I can add to it when we need to and also update it when one of us is buying an item on it. It automatically alerts the other person that the item has been added or deleted.

What apps do you love that are part of your daily routine right now?

{Top photo by Bonnie Tsang}

52 comments

  2. These are really helpful – I’ve been meaning to try yahoo weather but never got around to it – after seeing it i’ll give it a go. And with our upcoming move, we’re list central over here so that should help keep our fam on the same page of to-dos. Thanks for sharing!

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  6. That Yahoo weather app looks beautiful, I really hate the standard one on iPhones, it’s so boring! I’m definitely getting Afterlight, the editing on Instagram is really too limited xx

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  7. I’m kind of obsessed with photo editing apps, so I’ll definitely be checking out Afterlight! Thanks for the suggestions!
    xx Sarah
    sarah kate style

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  9. I have been wanting to get an alphabet/reading app for my lil gal. She has been pretending to read and write lately, so I think she is ready. We’ll have to check out Endless Alphabet.
    I illustrated an app that Ruby might like! It’s called “Chipper’s Rainy Day Adventure” and it’s a choose your adventure-style app, but aimed at 2 year olds, so very simple.
    https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chippers-rainy-day-adventure/id494672431?mt=8

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  11. I love waterlogged (free), an easy way to keep track of how much water you drink daily. VSCO cam is one of my favorites for photo editing. Dots is one of my favorite (and addicting) games. Love Roadside America for finding quirky stops when we’re out and about (and worth the extra couple dollars for more regions).

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  13. I’ve been using Wunderlist for my running personal and work to do lists and Evernote with my wireless keyboard for writing with my iPad at coffee shops 🙂 I’m yelping restaurants a lot with their app and also enjoying epicurious app. You can search by ingredient or meal and it retrieves hundreds of recipes with reviewer ratings and will even generate a grocery list based on your selections. Love it.

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  14. Ooohh I’m loving that weather one. I don’t have that one yet. I actually wrote a post about my toddlers top 10 favorite iPad aps. Like you said, it’s hard to be totally unplugged. Sometimes, you just gotta hand the kids the iPad lol.

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  16. Oh finally I know what this weather app is. Saw it sometimes on other people’s iphones, but never asked. 🙂 Merci!

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  18. The Yahoo Weather, Afterlight, and Any List apps seem right down my alley. I’m always on the lookout for apps such as these! Thanks for sharing!
    P.S another great photo app with lovely editing features is VSOCAM. Check it out 🙂
    xo Akshara
    Simply Akshara

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  20. Great suggestions! I, too, love Afterlight! It’s not extremely practical, but Sky Guide is incredibly gorgeous! Using your location and time of day, it shows you a beautiful guide of the stars, planets, and constellations with features that allow you to zoom in, get more information on different stars, etc., and is really fun for night time bonfires!

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  21. My favorite camera app is Camera+ because you can take a few pics at once and edit afterwards. An app my kids love (and I do too because it is educational) is Monkey Preschool Lunchbox. Quick and easy to learn.

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  22. I love OVER and A Beautiful Mess for putting fonts and doodles on my photos….also Pic Stitch for making collages. I do most of the photos and photo editing for my blog on my iphone.
    Totally just downloaded that yahoo weather app 😀

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  24. Love Afterlight, A Beautiful Mess, and VSCO Cam. Also, I’ve become kind of addicted to Candy Crush…so there’s that! Thanks for the suggestions. The Yahoo Weather App looks awesome and I’ve been looking for a good list-making app so I’m going to look into Any List!

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  25. LOVE Endless Alphabet. The words are that bit more interesting, plus the monsters are adorable. I love the sounds the letters make too – really educational but also fun.

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  26. I love Field Trip. It uses your location and shows information about interesting things that may have happened near by as well as museums and restaurants.
    Love Over and Camera + as well.

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  29. Thanks for sharing, love the endless alphabet. And have been playing around with “crowsflight compass” lately… which has an interesting abstract concept…

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  31. Love that Yahoo weather app – just added it to my phone. I’d probably add the anylist app too but we order our groceries online so it stores all of our faves

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  33. Try Petting Zoo. You’ll giggle over the animals’ mannerisms just like her. And the music is wonderfully not obnoxious. We found it so charming we ended up getting a small print of a few of the animals!

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  36. I swear the only reason I have an iPhone is so I can use the Paprika app. It creates an organized grocery list based off of recipes you store in the app. Also, you can drag and drop recipes from websites. Best.App.Ever!!

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  42. I love the Pinterest app…super user friendly and great for updating. I also love the Google Books app…I’m an avid reader so it’s great being able to take my book on the go and pick up where I left off.

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  43. For lists, I also like the Simply Us app so my boyfriend and I can simultaneously cross things off our joint shopping lists and share our calendars. I’ve also been loving the BeautifulMess app to add words and doodles to my pictures!

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  44. I love this Yahoo! Weather app — helps me catch a glimpse of the sights and sounds my friends and family back home are experiencing.
    The Startracker app is an entertaining app I’d recommend. It helps you locate stars/constellations in the night sky! It’ll make you an instant astronomer!

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  46. I love the new VSCOcam, and drop box is very handy when you have a document or picture saved on your computer and need to access it via your phone.

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  47. I am not a fan of the presets in Instgram either. The Afterlight app sounds like a perfect way to edit pictures without the overly edited look. Thanks for sharing!

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  48. Afterlight has become my favorite photo editing app. I also really like VSCO. I’m always on the lookout for new photo apps.

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  49. Hi Joy! I love that brown bag, is it from Coach as mentioned? Do let me know the model name 😉 Cheers!

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  50. My toddler (2.5yo) LOVES Endless Alphabet. She, for the longest time, wouldn’t let me sing anything to her. (I don’t know why–I can carry a tune.) She wouldn’t even let me sing the alphabet to her! So imagine my surprise when, after a month or so of playing Endless Alphabet, she pointed to the letters on my sweatshirt, specifically the “y” in “university” and identified it, clear as a bell! Turns out, that app taught her a lot of her letters. And now she lets me sing the alphabet to her, I suppose because it makes a little more sense.
    Some of her other favorite apps are by Toca Boca, especially the house, band, and kitchen monsters. She also loves the PBS kids app, which seems a little too easy for her now, but it seems to me that they keep adding to the games with the updates, because every now & then something new pops up. (Not that I explore it–I leave that up to her.)

    Reply

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