I can't believe I done that

A few weeks ago I was looking through the upcoming themes for the I Heart Faces contests, and was really excited to see "bubbles" as a category. As you know bubbles has been a big theme on this blog lately. I spent Monday and Tuesday at the kid's school helping the teachers get ready for school open house Tuesday night and school starting on Thursday. Monday night I had visitation, and last night was open house. What did I do? I forgot to put up and enter my entry! I had the perfect picture!-

I love it. Amanda has some darling pictures and her entry up, toodle over there and check hers out!

I<3Faces: Crazy and Silly

This weeks theme is "crazy and silly".

Meet Haley :o)

Click here for the before and after.

crazy and silly: before and after

It didn't take me long to remember these pictures from our beach trip to know which one to enter for this week's iheartfaces challenge. Haley and Hannah got silly at Taylor's birthday dinner and this picture got snapped:

"Before":

I applied the Pioneer Woman's "cooler" action twice, then applied an unsharp mask using these settings:

After duplicating the layer, I applied her "Slight Sharpen" action;

duplicating again, I appled the "Define and Sharpen" action, reducing that layer to 25%;

duplicating again, I applied the "Dim the Lights" action, and reduced the fill on that layer to 50% and the opacity to 66%.

another pic caught:

I ♥ Faces: Silhouettes

Click to view more entries

I was SO excited when I learned about this category a couple of weeks ago because I had the perfect idea, Voila! The soccer field has the most beautiful sunset and since I'm there every Tuesday for two hours ... I took advantage of some special time with Jackson when his practice ended and Hannah's began ;o) and I just want to thank Bizzie Mommy, if not for her participating and my seeing it in her RSS feed, I would have missed this!

I can safely say I am so proud of this shot, the contest is secondary to the fun we had trying to get it *g*

I Heart Faces: Self Portrait

This week the theme is self portait. I thought this was a cute shot from the tea party last week. I didn't realize I had the camera still zoomed in, lol Click on the banner above to see more pics.

I Heart Faces: Easter

This week's theme is "Easter".
I got a kick out of this shot of Jackson when they were hunting eggs:
(they were using grocery bags for their eggs, lol)

iheartfaces: "My friend and I"

This week's theme is "My friend and I".

We spent Friday and Saturday with a friend of Jay's from work. His wife and he so graciously invited us into their home having never met the kids and I. We had such a good time there this weekend. Saturday he took us out on a nearby river on his boat fishing. I caught the first one then Jackson caught a very good sized catfish for a ten year old. The kids just loved "Mr. C" and he went from "Mr. C" to "Uncle C" by the time we left ;)

I got this picture when we were out on the boat and thought it turned out so well, so this is my entry for this week:

I ♥ Faces: additional pics

Here are more pictures I done when playing in Photoshop working on the contest picture.

This is the original:

I just LOVED this-



these were neat (can you tell the difference?)





and this is what I entered into the contest-



and the original! (added Tues. am)-

I ♥ faces: no flash contest

It's Amanda's fault. She entered Emma's sweet picture in a contest last week, and I followed the button from her post to this new-to-me blog I ♥ Faces. Photo editing is not really a strength of mine. I have realized in recent months that the camera can do a lot to help with the appearance of the pictures, in that, there are things you can do in the settings, etc ... then I found out MY camera had some of those! So my Canon PowerShot 95 (5MP) and I are getting to know each other ;o)

I was excited to see the entries for "Fix it Fridays"- that gave me hope that maybe one day you'll see pics on my blog as gorgeous as on Amanda's blog (sans twins unless the Lord suprises us, lol)

So I saw today the contest for this week, which is basically a 'use no flash' challenge. Hey, here in NC we're actually in Spring only with a slight bite in the air so I was happy to get outside today with the kids to take some new pics I knew for sure would have no flash attached. I got a few good ones but Hannah gave the camera some serious love with this picture, so this is my entry for the contest:

Click here to see the other pics I done, and to see the original.