Easy Mother's Day Card

Here is the card I made to send Travis's Grammy Jo for Mother's Day. This turned out to be one of the easiest cards to make!
The make the tulips, I used the wings from Stampin' Up's 2 Step Bird Punch.
I wish I could take credit for this idea. Unfortunately, I am not that creative. I actually found several cards online with these tulips, so I'm not sure where the original idea came from. I used this card as my inspiration card.
For the white cardstock in the middle I used my scallop edge punch (also from Stampin' Up). It's hard to tell in the picture, but I also ran it through my Big Shot machine to give it a polka dot texture.
I am completely blanking as to which stamp set I used for the "For you on Mother's Day" circle.... It has flowers.... and yeah that's all I remember. It's a cute set though.
Then I just added a bow to the bottom of the tulips, and that was it! Super easy, and I think it turned out pretty. I hope she likes it!

I Heart Faces Collage

Are you tired of I heart faces stuff yet?? :D
I wasn't actually going to participate in this one, but I took some pictures of Madelyn the other day that I loved and wanted to make into a collage anyway. And, as it turns out, that is the I Heart Faces challenge this week!

So here is my beautiful Miss Madelyn. She wanted to play outside the other day, so I decided it would be a good time to do some Bible reading. She saw me, and asked if she could look at it. Madelyn LOVES to flip through my Bible and look at the pages.
I pray she never loses that love :)

(click on the photo to see it larger)

Fix-It-Friday #50

It's that time again! I've decided to give Fix-It-Friday another go. If you want to participate, or see the other great fixes, go to the I Heart Faces website.

Here is the original:

And here it is after my fix (using PSE8):

Ok, let me just say this girl is gorgeous!
First thing I did was brighten the whole image using the brightness/contrast button.
Then I used the lasso tool to select the eyes, and selected unsharp mask. Then I brigtened them and bumped up the contrast a bit, again using the brightness/contrast option.
Next I smoothed out her skin using the spot healing brush tool (love this tool!)
Next I used Pioneer Woman's "Colorized" action (I turned down the opacity to 75%)
And finally, I reduced the noise in the photo using Windows Live Photo Gallery (PSE probably has a noise reduction option, but I have no idea where it is)
I think that's it! I played around with this one a lot, so it's quite possible I forgot something or I have my steps in the wrong order. Next week I plan to write it down :)

Easter Sunday... (and the worlds best pie)

Easter Sunday was a fun day in our house. Madelyn must have known it was a special day, because she awoke at 5:30AM. AWESOME!
We decided to start our early day with her Easter basket.
Madelyn was extra excited about getting a basket this year. The week before she helped me pick out two baskets to give to our friend Cindy, who was collecting them to take to kids at the children's hospital.
So she was very excited to get one of her own.


She loved her Curious George socks (or as she calls him, Monkey George)




And her stickers





And Curious George notebook and pencil set
(sidenote: all Easter basket goodies, with the exception of her Veggie Tales DVD and Cabbage Patch doll, came from Target's $1 section. Score!)


Then (well, 3 or 4 hours later since she woke at the crack of dawn) it was time to get dressed for the most important part of the day, church.




After church Madelyn got to go on her first Easter egg hunt. It was very windy and a bit warm, but she had a blast! Definitely a fan of the egg hunt. When all was said and done she had enough candy to last us the rest of the year.








Easter was a special day for me, too.
After giving up sweets for Lent, it was finally time to enjoy some sugar! Not wanting to waste any time, I decided against making something from scratch.


But lets be honest, I could never make anything as wonderfully beautiful as this:


I sliced a piece that seemed to be a perfectly reasonable size...


And almost immediately went into a sugar coma.
Seriously, this thing is RICH. Especially for someone who hasn't ate sugar in a while.


However, it was it was completely worth it.


Happy (late) Easter!

Fix-It Friday #49

It's time for my first Fix-It Friday!
I love the I Heart Faces website. Every Friday they have a feature called Fix-It Friday, where the readers are encouraged edit a photo, and then share it with everyone. It's so interesting to see how different people edit the same photo.
Since I just got Photoshop Elements 8, I decided to try out this week.

Disclaimer: I am by no means a pro at this. In fact, I'm pretty sure I have no idea what I am doing. But there is no better way to learn then to just jump right in, right? So here it goes!

Here is the before:


After #1:


After #2