Beautiful Eyed Beach Bum ...

When I saw the prompt, I knew I had to share this picture that I took last summer of my son at the beach when we were camping with my parents.  I love my son's eyes!  I did apply a pre-set by Kelsey Smith that I got ages ago called "Dance," that I did just a little tweaking on.

  I Heart Faces - Beautiful Eyes Challenge

Thanks for looking, and check out more entries at the I Heart Faces link above!
 

I Heart Faces photography challenge: shadows

I have decided to enter this photo for the shadow challenge this week.  I didn't take it this week, thank goodness.  It was an amazingly chilly day this January that I took this picture at the Silvermine Invitational.  It was so cold that my camera would not stay on, and at one point my camera even re-set its date back to 1/1/1980!!  Wiped it right out.  I snuck a few shots on my camera, and on my dad's camera.  My dad would tuck my camera down under his jacket to try to warm it up so that the darned thing would work!  It was so frustrating as I could see the amazing potential if my camera had been in proper working order.


Still, I really have nothing to complain about, as I caught this pretty cool shot with a neat shadow of the skier!

Thankfully, this type of weather seems to be finally moving out.  The big pile of snow in our back yard has been reduced to a small pile of ice, and that should melt fairly quickly.  We've had unseasonably WARM weather today, but there is a threat of severe weather in addition, so that's an interesting trade.  Here's hoping that everyone stays safe today with the unstable weather pattern!

See more entries for the Shadow challenge by clicking on the I Heart Faces button above! :)

Fix-It Friday #89

I have no professional skill when it comes to photo editing. I just like to play in Lightroom! I saw a post on Facebook for the Fix-It Friday event at iHeartfaces.com with a link to the newest photo provided, and decided to give it a go, even though I know many other more experienced editors will be playing with the same photo. I am anxious to see what direction they take with it.

I decided to smooth out the subject's face a little, and went with a desaturated look, and added back in a pop to the blacks, reds and blues. I really like how it drew out his blue eyes, and the texture/design in his shirt. I would have liked to blur the background beyond the brick wall, but I wasn't sure how to achieve that, so I stopped with what I've got.


Here is the original with credits to the photographer, Dana Suggs:

and here is my edit:

and a second edit cleaning up the wood and the back wall with some cloning and slight gaussian blur in PSE, a slight vignette added in LR, and an addition of film grain from PSE applied to the brick wall.

You can see more on this week's Fix-It friday here:







Thanks for stopping by!

Vote for my Shutterfly book! :)

Check out my book in the Shutterfly Best Gift Ever Contest!

I've entered a Shutterfly contest! My parents went on a trip to Alaska. My dad took lots of pictures and tons of them were great and really interesting! But, they sat in envelopes after they were developed, and I had no idea what some of the pictures showed.

I got the idea to make a Shutterfly book of the pictures for Christmas. I got my mom to put the pictures from their trip on a disc ... she assumed I'd do digital scrapbooking with them ... and started a book. Then I got my parents' friends' email address in Alaska and asked them for help. They helped me with the captions, and even contributed some more pictures so that the book could include pictures of my dad, who otherwise would have been missing due to being behind the camera the whole time.

The scenery was breath-taking, and the trip was very special to my parents. It was an amazing feeling to see them open the gift at Christmas!

It would be awesome if you would vote for me ... please check out the above link to see it!

A Christmas re-cap ...

I didn't get to take as many pictures as I would have liked, but here are some pictures to re-cap Christmas morning at home, Christmas morning at my In-Law's, and Christmas morning at my parents' house.

At home:

At the In-Law's:

At my parents' house

It was a very busy day, and I wasn't feeling the greatest, but I enjoyed being with everyone. The kids were spoiled, as usual, and they are very happy.


Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year everyone!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas ...

Well, it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas ... on my blog.  Not at home yet.  I was thinking about setting up the Christmas tree today since I wasn't able to go shopping, but my husband doesn't think it should be up yet ... it's not even December 1st, you know.  Um ... Christmas is less than a month away.  I don't think it's too early.

For some reason, I'm more into Christmas this year than usual.  The last couple of years, I've been the one delaying the tree being put up because I just wasn't in the spirit. I'm glad that I'm more into it this year.  We've already been through the park to see the lights.  They are really pretty, though there are a lot of the LED lights replacing the less energy efficient ones ... and I think that is great ... except the LED lights are really, really bright.  I would love to see an invention of LED lights that aren't quite so bright ... get on that, will you? :)

The kids looked through the Kmart toy catalog today that was in my room somehow.  They pointed at nearly every item in the book.  Chase pointed at a remote control car ... that he already owns in a different color and has forgotten about.  It probably just needs batteries.  Julia wants anything girly, and a few typical boy toys too.  I was surprised when she pointed at Hot Wheels car track stuff.  Seriously?  You want that?  But, I didn't say that because I of course do not want to support those stereo-types.  They are already all to aware of them on their own.

They won't be getting many of the items they were pointing at, but that's ok.  I know they will be super happy with what they well we ... I mean wii ... are getting.  (Thanks, Mom)  I have a feeling we're going to have a rather electronic focused Christmas this year, though I plan to give hints to my husband's side of the family regarding non-electronic toys ... like Kung Zhu track stuff for Blake and Chase, and Zhu Zhu/Barbie stuff for Julia (she's feeling left out regarding Zhu Zhus).  I am hoping to goodness to avoid any little plastic figurines, and please oh please, no more NERF guns/ swords!!!

I participated in the Scrappers Give Thanks project this year.  See this post to see what I made, and see this site to see what was accomplished.  Thanks to the help of hundreds of people, and thanks to help from Persnickety Prints, 2000 digital and/or paper-pieced cards have been made to be delivered to children's hospitals!  It's an awesome project.  Oh yeah!  I re-read my post after publishing, and realized I forgot to share that I won something in the give-away!  I didn't participate in order to win a prize, but it's pretty cool that I did.  I won a membership to a subscription site called Scrap Happy.  I'll let you know what I think once I learn more about it!

I am setting a goal to make cards for next year's project throughout the year, so that I can have a big contribution next fall.  Maybe you'll join me!

Well, Blogger is starting to have some issues as I type this, so I am going to sign out.  Good time to visit the Powder Room and head to bed to read a book (ahem, Breaking Dawn ... again)!

Thanks for stopping by,

How to tackle Mount Washmore

Mount Washmore is one of the most frustrating things I deal with on a day to day basis. But, I think Ana White may have a solution with this project: Laundry Basket Dresser I think that would make my laundry area a lot neater, and it might even encourage laundry to be managed more quickly! I also love the possibilities of other ways to use it. One commenter suggested that it could be used to hold recycling bins ... and then I thought about the idea of having a place to store sports stuff, and the list goes on and on.

I thought the idea was so cool, and it looks pretty easy, so I thought I'd share! :)