If you’re an internet nerd like I am, there’s a few that I’m loving today that you just gotta try!

{1} Picasa
For a free download, you can lots of your photos on Picasa. They are synced up to the web instantly. And best of all, when you’re blogging, you can select photos from your Picasa account. We quickly ran out the free space allotment, and bought 20GB for $5/year. I love to have ALL of my photos in one place. I upload photos that I want to share onto Facebook. Also, with Picasa you can set your security settings. Some albums you can make public and share with the world, others you can share only to those with a secure link to the album. I even use Picasa at work to share internal company photos.

{2} Pinterest (Follow me at http://pinterest.com/lbaareman/)
As mentioned in this post, I too have joined the Pinterest wagon. I used to get tons of home decorating magazines that I got for cheap online (at Amazon for example…) and I would never have time to look through all of them. My goal was to eventually sit down and clip out photos of my favorite rooms or decorating ideas and make an “Idea Binder”. Well, this goal eventually turned into a closet full of old magazines that was driving Jason crazy (he finds joy in getting rid of things, and I can be a pack-rat, go figure…) Well, with the invention of Pinterest, I threw away all my old mags, and now I keep track of things I like and decorating ideas online (clutter free!).

My favorite thing to do on Pinterest is just scroll around, looking at cool things that everyone (or just my friends) have “pinned” and shared with the world. I typically will do this as a good distraction while Jason and I are watching Pawn Stars or The Office reruns on our Roku.
*P.S. – if you need an invite, I’ll send ya one!*

{3} Picnik
I use Photoshop at work all the time. That program was made to be difficult to use! For the last 5 years, I have been wondering why there isn’t an easier to use (and cheaper) Photoshop out there. Well, turns out there is! I love Picnik, and use it for work all the time. Another great option is FotoFlexer.com. I just used Picnik to make our new header – how do you like it?

{4} Mint:
Although we still use our trusty Excel Spreadsheets to keep track of our budget, I have recently discovered some pretty cool features that Mint has to help us with our finances.

• It’s completely Free!
• You can load ALL of your accounts (credit cards, home loans, checking accounts, investments, etc.) into one place for easy access and calculation of your net worth. 
• You can view all of this instantly via the Iphone App!
• Mint will send you weekly summaries of your financial performance 
• Mint will also send you email alerts (if you want) about bills that are about to be due.

So what are you waiting for? Check it out!

{4} Free Web Fonts
I absolutely LOVE fonts. Maybe because I’m in marketing and spend a lot of time trying to make things look “cool” – but I still would be shocked if everyone didn’t find the following website AMAZING! Google has provided TONS of free downloadable fonts here: http://www.google.com/webfonts. I have since been using Maiden Orange on lots of work projects. Google also makes it easy to incorporate these fonts into your website.

{5} Youtube (Favorited Videos)
If you already have a Gmail Account, you can connect it with Youtube, create an account, and start favoriting videos and channels. I love that I can keep track of the videos that I love, save some for later, and even subscribe to channels and be emailed when they have a new upload.

So here are some of my recent favorites: