IHeartFaces - Collage

My Collage submission is of the gorgeous flowers we saw this past weekend. I have a new favorite flower and it is Foxglove. Absolutely gorgeous! My son leaned in for a quick smell. Click to enlarge.

Fix It Friday - Little Cutie

This week at iheartfaces the Fix-It Friday is a little beauty and her doll baby. I used Florabella's Vintage Wine action and then added her linen texture. Super simple this week! Click to enlarge images.

Original:

My edit:

iheartfaces - Dramatic B&W

Life is crazy right now. My mom's cancer has progressed and she is dealing with many issues and is in and out of the hospital. That has put this blog on the backburner. It's actually put photography on the backburner. I still love entering the iheartfaces challenges though so I wanted to stop by with this week's photo.

This is my son looking in the front door waiting for me to get boots on his sister. He wanted to play in the snow really bad! Lol! Click to enlarge.

iheartfaces - Angles

This week at iheartfaces the challenge is angles. Sometimes I try really hard to get an angle that is new and different. Unfortunately what I envision usually doesn't display on the picture. However, the photo I chose for this week is one that I really enjoy. It is a photo of my daughter on a carousel horse. Let me know what you think! Click to enlarge.

iheartfaces - Bundled Up

Where I live, we have had more than a couple chances to "bundle up" this winter. This winter we had three major snowstorms. All three had 18+ inches of snow. Our last one was the beginning of February and there is still snow laying in the yards. This is after having five days of mid-50-degree weather!

Here is my submission for the iheartfaces Bundled Up Challenge. Click to enlarge.

iheartfaces Fix It Friday - Pinball

Pinball can be a mesmerizing game to watch. The lights and the sounds are probably too much for a child to pass up. Such is the case with this week's Fix It Friday by Amy Pinney.

I will try and go through the steps I took but sometimes I make so many changes that I forget what I did.

Original:

My edit:

1. Used levels and curves to adjust exposure.
2. Cropped.
3. Cloned to take the blue shirt out of the corner.
4. Used the Florabella Cappuccino texture.
5. Cropped a bit more.
6. Used the magnetic lasso at 5feather to select her face.
7. Ran Gaussian blur so that I could get the color but not the actual texture on her face.
8. Dodged the eyes a bit to make them stand out more.
9. The green in the background was distracting me so I lassoed that and desaturated.
10. Touched up the face to make the green completely gone.

iheartfaces Challenge - Jump for Joy

This week iheartfaces is Jumping for Joy! I am jumping for joy because I am finally starting to understand my camera in manual mode!! Yay for me!


I am also trying to take photos for the challenge instead of going through my folders and finding what I feel is the perfect shot. I have many pictures of my son jumping that I could have used but I really wanted to use my newfound "manual" skills and get a new shot.


So, here is my wonderful hubby jumping for joy. The poor guy was sick but obliged me in my quest to get a good shot. I took several this day and many of my son but I decided to go with this one. I like the contrast of the b&w conversion. Unfortunately I can't seem to fix the blown-out side of his face. Live and learn. To see outtakes from my attempts at Jumping for Joy, click here.

Click to enlarge.

iheartfaces Fix It Friday - Garden Baby

It's another edition of fix-it Friday at iheartfaces. This week we have a beautiful little beach baby (oops, she was in a garden but it looks beachy to me. Lol!). To me, this photo just screamed sunbleached. I wish I could remember the steps I took but honestly, I just kept playing until I got it the way I wanted. I will attempt to tell you what I did.

Original:

First I cropped, adjust levels and curves, added the Florabella Milk & Honey overlay, adjusted to liking, then ran PW's seventies action, adjusted to liking and finally ran PW's Soft & Faded action.

iheartfaces Challenge - Hands On

For this week's iheartfaces challenge I decided to actually take a photo instead of looking through my past photos. That's the point, right? You'd think I would have done that many challenges ago!

Here is my daughter playing with a lovely glob of Play Doh. This was no ordinary glob, in my daughter's eyes this masterpiece was ........................ "poop". Nice.

iheartfaces Challenge - I Wanna Dance!

My kids love dancing! I knew I had a great picture for the iheartfaces dancing challenge. My daughter, who had just turned two at the time, had a ball at my cousin's wedding last summer. She outlasted some of the adults! Here she is busting a move under the disco ball. If you look closely you can see her disgustingly-dirty-but-I-had-fun socks. Click to enlarge.

iheartfaces Fix It Friday

It's Friday! I love Fix It Friday. I have so many of my own pictures to enhance but I don't know where to start. Fix It Friday at iheartfaces allows me to be creative while only worrying about one picture. Love it!

This week is a picture of a sweet little girl. I didn't do a whole lot to the picture. I played with leves and curves. Tried to hide some of the shadow on the right and then added some textures for fun. I sharpened the eyes and then did some dodging and burning to get a somewhat natural look. Does that make sense? I'm not wild about my crop though. I might have to figure something else out.

Here is the before:

And here is the after:

I Heart Faces Weekly Challenge - We ♥ Kisses

This week at iheartfaces the challenge is all about loving kisses! Who doesn't love kisses from their kids? I especially loved when my babies were learning to kiss and gave those open-mouth kisses. So sweet. However, for this week's challenge I chose a picture of my two kids on their first Valentine's Day together. My son loves his sister and even as a baby he was constantly giving her smooches. Clearly, she wasn't always receptive to these gestures of sibling love. Lol.

Fix It Friday - Snowman

This week at iheartfaces we have a photo of Angie's daughter with a little snowman. The background is the perfect backdrop for using texture!

Here is the original:

I changed the levels and curves, fiddled with saturation and then

added a ghost bokeh from Shadowhouse Creations.

iheartfaces Challenge - Texture

I love texture! Seriously. Hardly a day goes by that I'm not fiddling with texture on some photo involving my kids. However, I decided to go back to May 2007 for this week's iheartfaces challenge. It is of my daughter the day she came home from the hospital. The sheets on the hospital bed made for the perfect backdrop to play with texture. It was so fun playing with a picture I haven't seen in a while. Although we aren't having anymore children I have to admit that this picture made my heart swoon for another.

Fix It Friday - Family

So this week at iheartfaces we have a Fix It Friday that has been on my mind all morning. The Zwart family has been given the news that the patriarch of the family has terminal cancer. Not just any cancer, leukemia.

Leukemia is a cancer that I know all too well. Twelve years ago my mom was diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. She was 43. Thankfully her youngest brother was an exact match for a bone marrow transplant. She has had many residual effects of that leukemia but she lived. By God's grace, she survived. Now, here we are twelve years later and she has been diagnosed with stage 4 esophageal cancer. She's 55. We've seen God's miracle once and we are praying for that miracle again for her.

I am now praying for that miracle for Jeff and his family. Please feel free to visit their sites and offer some encouraging words and/or prayers for this young family. Jeff's Caring Bridge site. Adrienne's Blog.

Here is the original photo:

Here is my edit. I cropped, adjust levels and curves, ran Pioneer Woman's seventies action and I was done. Again, please keep this beautiful family in your prayers.

iheartfaces Challenge - Best Face Photo

The iheartfaces Challenge this week is Best Face Photo. They are celebrating their one-year birthday! I have been a part of iheartfaces since August of 2009. I'm so sorry I didn't know about them sooner, I love the site. So without further chitchat I submit my photo for this week. This is a photo of my son on New Year's Eve. I take a photo of my kids on the last day of the year, every year. I decided to do a closeup this year as well. Worked out well for this challenge!Also, his eyes really are that blue. I did not change the color at all. People have always commented on his baby blues since he was, well, a baby! I think they're absolutely stunning. He gets them from his daddy.

Fix It Friday - Birthday

This week's Fix It Friday celebrates I Heart Faces one-year anniversary!

Here is the original photo:

I wanted to focus on the child and decided that black-and-white with a splash of color was the best way to accomplish that. I ran Pioneer Woman's B&W Beauty action and then used a layer mask to highlight the candle. I hoped by doing this it would distract the eye from the cup in the foreground.

I Heart Faces Themed Photos

I Heart Faces is one-year-old this month!! To celebrate they are having a special contest. We need to present photos that naturally or electronically shows their I Heart Faces name/logo. I'm all about the computer so I used their logo and ran with it. Below are my five submissions for this awesome week!!

“I am submitting these photos into the I Heart Faces logo photo contest. By entering, I am granting I Heart Faces LLC permission to consider my photo for use in the marketing and promotion of their website.”

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5.

Hilarious Outtakes

Brooke from Dinkypops No More chose the photo of my husband in my grandmother's wig as her third place I Heart Faces Hilarious Outtakes winner. Thank you Brooke! And thank you to my hubby who didn't care that I was posting that less-than-stellar photo of him for all of you to see!

Here is what Brooke had to say:

Third Place:

Momarazzi Chronicles
I was sitting on the couch looking through entries, when my husband leaned over, peaked at my computer, and said "Now that one is funny!". I couldn't agree more and giggle each time I think of this guy sporting grandma's wig.

I ♥ Faces Challenge - Hilarious Outtakes

This week at I Heart Faces the theme is Hilarious Outtakes. I have quite a few from this holiday season. Below are three of my favorites and a bit of an explanation! Lol!

On Thanksgiving my family found my grandmother's old wig. We all took turns trying on the wig. This is my husband in the wig getting ready to say something to me. I snapped the picture and this is the result! Lol! I've been told he looks like The Church Lady.

This is my son's attempt at being Rudolph, a red Christmas light up his nose.

My daughter showing off her makeup techniques. She found my mascara and figured out how to open it and swipe it across her pretty little eye.

Check out I Heart Faces for more funny photos!