A black and white photo

I loved this photo of this sweet face that I decided to edit it once again, but this time in black and white.  I stumbled up a photo challenge on a blog The Paper Mama.

Meet Wylie

Have you wondered where I've been lately?  Have you missed seeing pictures of my darling two kids regularly occasionally?  Well, let me introduce you to this sweet baby girl, Wylie, or some might call her "Baby Bird".  She's one of the sweetest babies I've ever held...not the sweetest because I have two of the absolute sweetest babies/kids around but she's next in line!  You see her mommy is my best friend who also happens to be Ella's Godmother.  She loves Ella like her own and I love this baby like my own, too.  She has captivated my heart.  So, where have I been?  The weekend before she was born I was taking photos of her mommy's belly (and her daddy tagged along) and then the next weekend I was in the delivery room taking pictures!  Oh my goodness, AWESOME!  Then, the following week I went to her house and took more pictures of this sweet baby all swaddled up.  We had so much fun that I clicked that silver button a few too many times.  You see, I had so many pictures I couldn't figure out which ones to edit and not edit so I just kept editing.  And, that dear friends is where I've been.  Behind this lovely computer which I love, editing pictures.  In between editing I'm learning more about editing.  Whew.  Lots and lots of editing!  Since you probably don't care about my story and only want to see pictures here are some of my favorites of sweet "Baby Bird".

Isn't she just lovely? :)

Some of the other things I've been doing that prevent me from my regular updates are taking pictures for Scavenger Hunts like the one I did yesterday.  I got some really great feedback.  You can take a peak here if you'd like to see my bedroom shot everyone seems to like.

I also do weekly Shoot and Edit challenges.  Last week's entry is here.

I hope you all have a wonderful week and be sure to check back as I promise to have some more pictures of my two kiddos real soon.  Big things are happening in Bennett's life right now so stayed tuned!! :)

Love to all!

shoot and Edit - self portrait edited

Well, I sure have had a full week!  Editing a selfie wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be.  Maybe because I finally bought myself some Florabella actions!  They arrived into my inbox on Wednesday so I finally got to play with them on Thursday which is why I'm posting a little late. :)  I should be editing newborn pictures for my friend who is probably very anxious!  Instead I'm editing a picture of myself.  Ha!

Here are my edits for the week:

SOOC

ACR

Clean

Swoon by Florabella

Timeless by Florbella

Mini Fusion, Florida, Angel by Florabella

I have a lot more playing to do with these fun actions!!

Have a great weekend!

Shoot and Edit - Pink

Little Wylie (my best friend's daughter) made it just in time for this week's Shoot and Edit.  However, my daughter is really the one wearing pink.  It was so dark in the hospital room and I was having a hard time yesterday getting all my settings to cooperate.  I'll really have to step it up this week! :)

We are totally in love with this baby!  My daughter has asked for me to have another (but only a girl because she has a brother) and is a baby holding pro!  We're not having more.

SOOC:

For more pink photos go on over to:

Shoot and Edit - love/romance Edited

Earlier this week I shared a photo I took on Sunday of my best friend and her husband who are expecting their first baby, a girl.  She's due this Saturday and I can't wait to be there and meet her little princess.  You see, I get to be in the delivery room and photograph the precious moments their baby makes her debut.  I'm so honored she has asked me to be in there with her!  I just hope everything works out and I have someone to watch my kiddos when she goes into labor!!  On to my edits...

After reading Ashley's post I decided to watch the video tutorial on Grant's Curves Action.  I thought I'd try editing it one more time using the curves action and then I applied Mud Pies action.  I don't remember which action I used on the Final above but I think I like it better.

*If anyone has any delivery room photo op tips please feel free to leave them in the comments!!

Shoot and Edit - love/romance

I'm back for another week of Shoot and Edit.  This week the theme is Love/Romance.  On Sunday I took some maternity photos of my best friend and her husband.  She's 39 weeks pregnant and she looks and feels great!  Nothing says "love" more than a couple expecting their first baby!!  I didn't tell her I was using one of these...hope she doesn't mind. :)

Here's my SOOC...

Shoot and Edit - Good Night

It's week 3 of Shoot and Edit and this week's theme is "Good Night."  There are so many things that say "Good Night to me; like dancing with the kids in their pjs before bed, a fun bath and bedtime stories but I opted for a different route.  My husband travels and when he's home we have fun getting the kids ready for bed but then it's also nice at 8:30 when it's quiet and we can sit down and just relax and some nights even enjoy a glass of wine!

Follow me over to Jill's blog to find more entries to this fun weekly challenge.  She has great tips for shooting in low light which I need since there's no light in our house.

I'll be back Thursday or Friday with my edit on Ashley's blog.

Shoot and Edit - Good Morning Edited

Week Two of Shoot and Edit - Good Morning

I have my pancakes edited.  I worked on my photo last night and really didn't like it so I just redid it.  I still don't love it but it'll do.  I tried to figure out the whole layer mask but I'm pretty sure it wasn't working for me.  I read Rita's tutorial and followed her steps last night but don't think I did it correctly.  I'll try again when I have a little more time.  Here are my photos:

I cropped the photo and did some adjustments.  I love the new one I learned last week from Ashley: High Pass Filter and then I tried the layer mask but ended up deleting it so finished with a color fill of light pink with opacity of 6%.

In case you are wondering what the one I didn't care for looked like, here it is...

I added an action to it, maybe the Golden Vintage from coffeeshopblog, but it looks too dark.

Happy weekend!

Hop on over to Ashley's blog for more great edits!

Thanks to Ashley for providing such great tutorials on editing.  I'm really loving this!

New Header

I just learned a new trick in Photoshop Elements - storyboards!  I just made the new header at the top of my blog using a storyboard.  The photos are from the session we had with Jenn Z, haute shot photography, in November.  I just love, love, love all the photos we got from her.  What better than to have a little display at the top of the blog every time I click on it?!?

Shoot and Edit - Good Morning

Week two of the Shoot and Edit challenge theme is "Good Morning".  Initially I thought I was going to take a picture of my morning cup of coffee; however, this morning when I woke up, after a long night with a sick child, I remembered we ran out yesterday!  Since my daughter is sick I couldn't run to the store or even to Starbucks so I made pancakes for the boy instead.  Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day after all.

Here is my SOOC:

I'll be back on Thursday with an edited version of the photo.

Shoot and Edit - Edited

On Monday I posted a photo SOOC for the first Shoot and Edit.  I just followed Ashley's edits on her blog and edited my photo.  I just learned so many new things in PSE.  This is so neat.  I think I'm really going to like this weekly challenge!

Here's my SOOC:

Here's my edited photo:

First, I opened the picture in Camera Raw and adjusted a few settings.

Then I opened it in PSE and followed Ashley's edits.  I did everything she did to my own tweaking, of course.  After I was happy with all the edits I cropped it down and added a watermark, just for fun.

To see more Shoot and Edits visit the link up at:

Smile :)

There's a photo contest over at I heart faces this week and the theme is "smile" to celebrate their 2nd birthday.  Well, 10 minutes before the contest closes I decide to add a photo to the contest.  I haven't even edited it but I think it's such a cute one of my little one's sweet face.  She was so happy.

My sweet girl waited so long for this day!

To see more smiles go on over to...

Shoot and Edit

This week a new weekly photo challenge is starting over at Jill's blog and Ashley's blog.  I decided that since I want to improve my photography skills and especially editing that this would be a great opportunity.   The theme this week is winter.  Yesterday's snow was perfect timing to provide me with lots of winter photo capturing opportunities.  After going through over 200 photos I decided that I liked this one.  I like that it shows the snow falling, pure joy on my daughter's face and the snowman she just made with her daddy.

SOOC

I'll post a new post with edits following Ashley's blog later this week.