Fix-it Friday

Another Fix-it Friday is here!!! :o) When I first saw this pic I thought it would be easy..... I was wrong!!! I had a horrible time getting the colors right. I am blaming my nearly antiquated PS Elements! :o) I do not have any actions installed on it at this time, maybe they would have helped but, then again, maybe not.
Here is the original:
Here is my first edit in color: My first was actually much better than this but I accidentally erased it and can't duplicate what I did. Grrr..... >:o(

My B&W: I followed the directions from Kimi Kreations (which I found through I ♥ Faces)


My Sepia/chocolate tinted: Also found through the above link




I am not totally happy with these but they are the best I could do (esp with my limited time today) For more great edits go to I ♥ Faces :o)

School & such

Well, we have completed our first week of school and started our second!!! Overall it is going well..... except I have the hardest time keeping my little man busy and quiet! I love how laid back and fun this curriculum approach is! If the first week is any indication, it is going to be a GREAT year!!!
I am very thankful that the first weeks of school are just review though, as it gives me time to work out all of the bugs (such as keeping above mentioned 2yo out of mischief!!!). The kids are loving school and so am I. I am finding that I do a lot better with a schedule. O.k. so I really already knew that, but have not had the motivation to make one until now. On top of school I got a part time job!!! Did you fall out of your chair reading that? Haha! That sounds so much more official than it really is........ I get to take my kids and go hang out with a friends sweet kids for 1-2 hours, 2-3 days a wk. Definitely won't be raking in the big bucks but I should be able to earn either a new lens for my camera or new editing software in 6 or so months! :o) Yay!!! I have always felt so selfish if I spend money on myself. My hubby just works too hard to earn it so I hate to use it for myself (much to his frustration). It will be kind of fun to have money that I don't feel bad about spending. :o) Now, we'll just have to see if I can do it............. :oP

On another random note: I cut the kids' hair this weekend. The girls ended up much shorter than I had originally intended but looks cute. It was just getting to be too hard to take care of. I am sure that it would not have been so bad if I would keep up on trimming it but, anyhow, it is done and the girls love it. :o) LM got his done too.... his hair doesn't get long it get's BIG! Before you know it he's headed for an afro and the only hope is the clippers! He loves to get his air cut like Daddy's though....... actually he loves to do anything that Daddy does. Such a boy! :o)

O.k., enough randomness for today. I need to get ready for work! :o) LOL!!!

Sorry this post is so scattered..... :oP Seems it has just been that kind of day! I actually wrote this hours ago but, the one chance I had to get on the comp, my internet was too sporadic to get this posted. Oh well, such is life!

I ♥ Faces

I ♥ Faces is having a non-contest challenge this week. It is a "before and after" challenge in which each person has the chance to showcase their pics at an earlier date and then a pic from the month of August. The idea is to see how each person has improved........ I have only known of I ♥ Faces 4-6wks so wasn't going to enter this challenge, I feel that I have progressed so much since i found their site though that I decided to take the embarrassing plunge.....

I have loved photography as long as I can remember.... My first camera was a Polaroid that I earned selling cards and wrapping paper..... For those that knew me then, don't panic! I am not going to post any of those pics!!! I have slowly upgraded through the years...
I got Photoshop Elements about 4 yrs ago but, up until the early part of this year, the only thing I could do with it was fix red eye and crop. I would also occasionally try to paint out distracting backgrounds.... I knew nothing of layers, opacity,actions, etc.... I didn't even know there was a photoshop that wasn't in the elements family!!! I had a Nikon coolpix that I loved for macro but HATED for kid pics. It was just too slow! So here is a before pic with my first attempts at editing:
(Hmmm.... not so great. I think all I did was too lighten shadows.........)


Here is one of my more recent color edits.... and also the start of pics taken with my new DSLR. My wonderful hubby bought it for me after my coolpix died!





One of my first B&W's........ I tried to compensate for the lack of contrast by "hand tinting" and diffusing the glow. Um, BAD idea!!!

Here is my most recent B&W done with a technique I just learned through an I ♥ Faces entry....


I am still struggling with a near fatal vignette addiction and a heavy hand with my PSE but, after reading through the other before and after entries, I have hope that I will recover and my skills will improve. I also am still strictly shooting Automatic but an hoping to change that soon! :o) Through I ♥ Faces, and the many blogs I have discovered through them,I feel like I am learning new things every day!
Head on over to I ♥ Faces
to see more Before and After entries..... Most are a lot less wordy than mine! :o)

Fix-it Friday!

Ahhhh! I love fridays! :o) This week I tried some new things... First off, I downloaded, edited and posted the pic without looking at what anyone else has done. Usually I browse before I edit but I wanted to see what I could come up with, without mooching ideas off of everyone else first! :o) This was such a lovely pic to work with, it seems like the possibilities for it are endless!

Here is the original:


I can't detail all the steps for my edits but on the first I did adjust hue/saturation as there was too much yellow in the pic for my taste..... I also Desaturated the bricks in the background and blurred them as I thought they were too distracting. I made a duplicate layer with soft lighting and did both a Gaussian blur and vignette on the outside perimeters. I thought this picture really benefited from the dreamy look of the Gaussian blur. :o)


Here is my first edit:


Then I tried for the hand tinted B&W look again. I use the gradient map layer and adjusted it to about 80% opacity, I then did a Level layer and adjusted that to suite my taste. I then further desaturated and blurred the bricks. I used the saturation tool to add color to the areas that I wanted and then burned the edges for the vignette look. I also did the Gaussian blur again because I like it so much! :o)

Here it is:


And then I decided to try something new and do an angled crop. I again desaturated and blurred the bricks, applied a vignette look to the edges and played with the hue/saturation.....

Here it is:
Next time I need to keep notes so I don't miss any steps when telling you what I did, but at least I was able to give you a vague idea this week! :o) My apologies if I've missed anything important!

For more great edits visit Iheartfaces :o)

Insecurities

We are starting our homeschooling year here pretty soon. I have not blogged about it because, quite frankly, I am rather insecure about it. I have never liked to be the odd one out, though I pretty much always am so should be used to it by now! After researching different theories/methods of homeschooling (my research started with THIS great article) and much prayer, I/we decided on an eclectic/CharlotteMason (CM) type method for our family. I got a WONDERFUL book called 'Educating the WholeHearted Child' by Clay and Sally Clarkson. I have found it to be very informative and it really addressed what I was wanting for our home school. I did not want to just bring public school home, I didn't want school to be a drudgery, and I wanted it to fit with who we are and how we live. I wanted it to be Christ centered and I did not want them getting mixed messages from their curriculum and what we teach them (e.g. creation versus evolution). I perused homeschooling forums and looked at tons of stuff online and I kept coming across 'My Father's World' curriculum. It takes a CM approach but has everything lined out for me. I am just not ready to do it all "from scratch" yet! :o) We are also doing ABeka math and I will add a couple extra activities as well.
I guess what makes me insecure about it is that, after much research and prayer, I came to this conclusion but none of the other HS families that I know have. Now, I will be the first to tell you, the beauty of homeschooling is that you can tailor it to your family and your kids as individuals, but it is still awkward to be alone in my convictions. Once again I see just how different our family is from those around us, don't get me wrong; differences can be good......... but sometimes it would be nice to find a family that was really like-minded in some of the areas that are so important to me. Somebody to compare notes and booklists, share ideas and exploration days, etc..... with. It would be fun for the kids to have other kids doing similar studies to theirs......... I think the longing for a friend and the insecurities of doing this alone are greater because of our current living situation. With less than 500sq ft for the 5 of us I can't set up our learning area the way I want. I struggle to do things if they are not set up "just so" before hand. If I don't have things lined up and in order I get fearful that, once again, I will fail. It seems as if having someone walking the same homeschooling path with me would lesson my chance of failure..... Silly, but that's how I see it........

Anyhow, depending on what my sweet hubby says about certain business paperwork that I have to do.... We will either start tomorrow or next Thurs. My kids CAN'T wait!!!

Another Fix-it-Friday!

This picture was more of a challenge than I thought it would be. I had a hard time getting most of the red out without ruining the over-all color of the pic. I tried some new methods and ended up liking my B&W best.

So, here is the Original entitled "No Limits":




And here is my B&W, I tried for a hand tinted look......

One of the things I love about IHEARTfaces is reading through and seeing what others have done.... I learn so much this way!!! One of these days I will get better at this and will be able to write down how I achieved the look that I end up with!

ETA: O.k, I realize this is a day late, but I couldn't leave this pic alone......... I decided to try a sepia filter on this pic. Just gives it a bit more warmth!


I may keep trying too! Since I have nothing better to do of course!!! lol!

editing

One of my new meds is making me feel rather icky and, as I don't feel up to much of anything and I can't my DVD player to play any of our movies with sound, >:o( I decided to edit some more pics from IHeartFaces. So here are 2 older pics that I edited this afternoon:

Original

Edit

The color on this looked much better before I uploaded.......... It was more vibrant, not so gray.


Original

Edit
Decided to try something new on this one. I've never done a border like this before and I tried several other new techniques as well......