31/365 Sprout

30/365 Dry Erase Art

The chest freezer in our living room makes for a handy dry erase canvas.

29/365 This boy can EAT.

I have no idea where he puts it all--other than his mouth.

28/365 Kale

This is my friend's new cat, Kale. She's named after the main character in the DragonKeeper Chronicles by Donita K. Paul.

27/365 Sunny snow day

iHeartFaces: Fix Friday #8

Over at iHeartFaces.com, they have a weekly event during which they take a "not-so-good" photo and give it to their contributors to "fix" in whatever photo editor they wish to use. There's no prize, but it's something fun for design geeks like me to do on a Friday afternoon.

Above is the image they provided for Fix-It-Friday, Week #8.

Below is how I edited it to my own liking.



This is another girl in a fantasy setting like I did for Fix It Friday #6. I don't know what it is about little girls; I always want to make them into whimsical fairies. Maybe they'll get an adult's picture up for F.I.T. one of these days, and I can be inspired some other way.

I used Photoshop's artistic filters, lighting effects, and overall color tweaking techniques. I'm a fan of masks and transparent duplicate layers. Various additional images were found around the web in bits and pieces.

I think I might have gone a little overboard on this one. LOL Please comment and let me know what you think!

There are a lot more images to check out from other contributors, so click on that link if you'd like to see them too.

26/365 We got your drift

25/365 Footprints

24/365 Jumpin' Jack Flash

23/365 I <3 Netflix Instant Play

Bonus awesome points if you can name the movie in the comments. B-)

22/365 New growth

21/365 My shoe went bankrupt on Indiana Ave.

My sister-in-law cleaned house in this game, and I was the second one to be taken down.

20/365 Organic...NOT!

Look closely above the sign.

Breathe In Breathe Out Promo Video

This is a video I edited for my friend Evangeline to promote her women's humor blog, Breathe In Breathe Out.



You may recall from my first Project 365 that I featured the photo I took for her banner last year.

19/365 Air Traffic

The sky must have been just the right temperature, and we must have had a lot of passing airplanes that night.

18/365 Postcrossing Cards

I have always been a fan of snail mail. You can ask anyone who I corresponded with in college. They probably have a boxful of hand-decorated envelopes from me. Unfortunately, life after college got busy with marriage, career, and later, kids. I still enjoy snail mailing on occasion, but those times are so few and far between.

I came across a site called PostCrossing.com which is a project that allows people to receive postcards from all over the world, practically for free. If you send a postcard, you will receive at least one back from a random Postcrosser from somewhere in the world.

Why send postcards to random people? Because there are lots of people just like me who like to receive snail mail! There is also the added element of surprise of receiving postcards from different places in the world.

I signed up for it and have four postcards ready to mail this week. This reminds me a lot of the Griffin & Sabine books. What fun! I'm excited to see what happens when my cards start crossing the ocean.

If you're interested, you can see my PostCrossing profile here.

17/365 Night Streaks

Experimenting with a long exposure here while driving.

16/365 Press to Order

This is how we celebrate Mondays. :o)

15/365 Take Out

14/365 Yum Neur

Most delicious Thai salad EVER.

iHeartFaces: Fix It Fridays #6

Over at iHeartFaces.com, they have a weekly event during which they take a "not-so-good" photo and give it to their contributors to "fix" in whatever photo editor they wish to use. There's no prize, but it's something fun for design geeks like me to do on a Friday afternoon.

To the right is the image they provided for Fix-It-Friday, Week #6.

Below is how I edited it to my own liking.



I really love the way this one turned out. Her face and expression lend themselves to the new fantasy setting.

I used Photoshop and many fun filters to get the sketchy appearance. Masks and high-transparency layers were used. Background is a part of an image I found on the web.

The "fairies" were created using various levels and types of lens flares.

Please comment and let me know what you think!

There are a lot more images to check out from other contributors, so click on that link if you'd like to see them too.

13/365 Sentence Practice

We got out the kids' version of Magnetic Poetry for my daughter to practice making sentences. She loves it, but sometimes we find strange things on the fridge door after she's been there.

12/365 New bike

It's what every 6-year old girl wants on her birthday from her daddy.

11/365 Froots

There are oh-so many things that strongly dislike about this sign. Let's start with the spelling. Agh! Signmakers, stop perpetuating the bad spelling of our next generation!

And the strawberry is upside down, which bothers me. It would have been better tilted at an angle, but upright.

The tiny byline part is unreadable as one drives past at 40 MPH, so at first glance, we have NO idea what this place is all about. For the longest time, I was sure they just sold fruit roll ups.

10/365 Morning Reflections

iHeartFaces: Week 9, Contest

iHeartFaces.com is a fun photo site that has weekly contests with various themes, adults' or kids' faces. They keep track of submissions by allowing entrants to link directly to their posts.

The "prize" is having your photo displayed on their homepage with comments from the judges and a link to your blog. This week, the theme is "creative crop", and I'm entering this one for the kids category:



Here's the original, before the crop:



You can check out all the entries for this week HERE.

9/365 Parent Torture Device

8/365 Good Times

7/365 Dragon's Egg

6/365 Kite Fliers

I apologize to you purists out there (you know who you are!), but I did take some liberties with photo editing here. The sky was washed out in the original, so I played with the contrast and brightness of the land and sky.

If you're interested, you can see the original here.

iHeartFaces: Fix-It-Fridays #5

Over at iHeartFaces.com, they have a weekly event during which they take a "not-so-good" photo and give it to their contributors to "fix" in whatever photo editor they wish to use. There's no prize, but it's something fun for design geeks like me to do on a Friday afternoon.

To the right is the image they provided for Fix-It-Friday, Week #5.

Below is how I edited it to my own liking.



The final image came out quite nicely if I may say so. :o)

I used Photoshop and many of its fun filters to get the overall look. A couple images I found on the web helped embelish the background and face.

The ear, I created mostly with the smudge and clone tools with a bit of paintbrushing too.

Please comment and let me know what you think!

There are a lot more images to check out from other contributors, so click on that link if you'd like to see them too.

Magpo #1

Um...yeah. I'm not sure what it means. I composed it while waiting for the kids to get in their PJs.

5/365 We're in strange territory. Back out.

My boy has a habit of leaving his cars everywhere.

4/365 Running the Treadmill

First time working out in...well, too long.

3/365 Picture of the Day

Desperate times call for creative measures.

2/365 On their last leg

These are the Valentine's Day flowers my husband got for me and my daughter. This was their last day on display.

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By the way, I just imported all my NaNoWriMo blogs to this one (2005-2008), so if you're interested, there are links to them in the sidebar. :o) Ah, it's so nice to have everything in one blog!

1/365 Tea Time (for free!)

Got my free Tazo tea just in time! We ordered an Apple Chai. It was delicious.

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Thus begins my second go round with Project 365. I'm super excited to get going again.