The Missing Link – Week 20

Have you ever felt like something was missing from your life? Well, it could just be one of the links below. Hence my post title! You may ask yourself "Is she serious"? Well the answer is "No, I'm definitely NOT serious”. I'm just feeling silly. Seriously though, I thought I'd share some of my favorite links with you in an effort to spread the love. What's better is that I thought I'd make this post a weekly thang! No that isn't a typo. I told you I was feeling silly. So the links below may not complete your life, but I'm hoping they, in some way, add to it. I separated them into categories for easy navigation. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.

Are you using actions?

Since I got a new laptop I also made the switch from Photoshop Elements (PSE) to Photoshop CS6 (PS).  I was a little hesitant to make the transition because 1) Photoshop was very expensive and 2) I’d grown to love some actions that I had purchased strictly for PSE.  Actions that I hadn’t yet learned how to create manually.  I recently repurchased them on Paint the Moon and am so happy I did.  They work so much better in PS (or I think so anyway).  Not to mention the action selection has changed since I last purchased them and the bundles included actions like remove color cast and remove the wonky colors (love that word “wonky”)!  Today, I thought I’d share some before and after images.  I like to do this every now and then as I know it can be useful (or fun at the very least) to see how others are editing their images. 

Disabling the copying of images!

I am so excited today!  It’s amazing how one little post can do that to me! 

I’ve been extra cautious lately about protecting my images.  I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about watermarking your images so that people can not steal your photos.  Apparently stealing has become too much of a common occurrence!  Although I’ve been watermarking for quite some time, I wasn’t watermarking my photos in the ideal place.  I would always place my watermarks in the corner of an image so that it wouldn’t be a distraction to the subject.  Nothing was worse to me than having a gorgeous picture with a logo/text across it!  Now, however, I am watermarking right where I think it will be most difficult to crop out.  In addition to changing the location of my watermark, I’ve looked into disabling a photo so that it can not be copied.  I was lucky to come across this particular post over at Build a Better Blog!  It’s crazy to think that all it takes is a little HTML code to rock my world!   I realize that computer hackers can get around my little code, but at least I’m making it more difficult for them!  Go me!

I hope you will consider protecting your images too!

Desktop background being removed?

I’m going to share a little secret with you, well for all the MacBook users out there!  Apparently there is some type of glitch in the system that removes your desktop background every time you restart/shut down and log back onto your computer.  I was a little disappointed to say the least especially seeing as I just bought the new MacBook Pro Retina and wanted to personalize my desktop with a picture of my baby girl!  You figure you pay that much money for something that a simple thing like being able to customize your desktop background should work!  After trying many different things to resolve the issue with Apple Support on the phone, something finally ended up working!  So here’s the fix:

This is a test

This is going to be a short post.  I am using my new Macbook Pro Retina and just installed (or I should say my nephew just installed) VirtualBox so that I could run Windows 7 inside of my MAC operating system all so I could keep Windows Live Writer (WLW) as my blog posting tool.  Now if that’s not dedication, than I’m not sure what is!  If you’ve been following me, you’d know that posting has been a pretty BIG issue for me.  Every blogging tool that I’ve tried was removing my formatting (adding or removing spaces between paragraphs and images) so that my posts would look sloppy.  Anyhow, WLW is the only blog posting tool that has ever worked for me.  It keeps my formatting in tact!  I’m sure now you can understand why I’m so dedicated! 

The Missing Link – Week 19

Have you ever felt like something was missing from your life? Well, it could just be one of the links below. Hence my post title! You may ask yourself "Is she serious"? Well the answer is "No, I'm definitely NOT serious”. I'm just feeling silly. Seriously though, I thought I'd share some of my favorite links with you in an effort to spread the love. What's better is that I thought I'd make this post a weekly thang! No that isn't a typo. I told you I was feeling silly. So the links below may not complete your life, but I'm hoping they, in some way, add to it. I separated them into categories for easy navigation. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.

Intermittent Exotropia… (wish I had control over my baby’s eyes)

I think I last left off telling you about how well Alivia was tolerating the eye patch.  Feel free to catch up on previous posts regarding Alivia’s Intermittent Exotropia HERE.  Since, and unfortunately, I’ve been seeing her strong eye now deviate outwards.  After a phone discussion with her Ophthalmologist, it was recommended that I stop the patch for at least a week or two to see how her eyes are doing.  If I’m not seeing her strong eye deviate, I can resume patching.  The goal, according to her doctor, is to keep the vision in both eyes as equal as we can.  As a reminder, the patching was not to treat the eye from deviating but to assist her in using the eye muscle in her weaker eye thus preventing vision deterioration/loss.

Free Financial Templates… Can I afford this & how much money will I have left over?

I’ve been thinking of doing a post on finances for a long time now but never had a spare minute to create the spreadsheet templates that I wanted to attach along with it!  I woke up early this morning to work on them and just finished typing my last number.  I feel confident enough to speak on the subject of finances since I’ve always been great with money!  It started when I was a little girl and would steal the coins from my dad’s end table in my parent’s bedroom.  Yeah, I was a little thief, but soon those coins would add up to $10, $40, and then to hundreds that I would stash under my mattress!  Even when I found something I really wanted to buy, I almost always found a way to talk myself out of it.  No doll, clothing, board game, etc. would satisfy me the way watching my money grow did!  Soon I would have enough to open my first bank account and so that’s what I did with the help of my mother of course!  I never felt more grown up than I did on the day we opened that bank account.

The Missing Link – Week 18

Have you ever felt like something was missing from your life?  Well, it could just be one of the links below.  Hence my post title!  You may ask yourself "Is she serious"?  Well the answer is "No, I'm definitely NOT serious”.  I'm just feeling silly.  Seriously though, I thought I'd share some of my favorite links with you in an effort to spread the love.  What's better is that I thought I'd make this post a weekly thang!  No that isn't a typo.  I told you I was feeling silly.  So the links below may not complete your life, but I'm hoping they, in some way, add to it. I separated them into categories for easy navigation.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.

Finally shooting RAW!

Guess what?  I’m finally shooting RAW!  I didn’t think the ol’ laptop was going to be able to handle the RAW files, but I lucked out!  It didn’t shut down once!  It’s amazing how much you can alter a RAW photo file.  So much more than a JPG/JPEG that’s for sure!  You know what I love though?  A photo that barely needs any processing!  As much as I love to have fun with edits, it’s quite refreshing to get a shot that needs little to no tweaking!  Especially when you’ve taken hundreds of photos! 

Alivia’s Birthday – Part 1

We’ll call this post Part 1 since my laptop apparently can’t handle editing RAW files.  I’m hoping to be able to process the rest of my sister’s pictures when I get my new Macbook Pro in a couple weeks! 

So these pictures, like I mentioned in Monday’s post, were taken by my sister so don’t fall off your seat or anything but, yeah, I’m actually in them!  I was having such a great time processing these pictures until my computer would randomly shut down when I opened a RAW file.  It was ridiculous!  You can imagine how long it took me just to process these ones that I’ve attached here. 

Alivia’s Birthday Party!

Alivia’s birthday was yesterday!  She turned two years old at exactly 8:58 pm!  I can’t believe two years have gone by!  It’s like I was just mixing formula for her bottle, turned around, and a little girl took my baby’s place!  As much as she’s changed, if I look hard enough, I can still see the newborn in her.  Her eyes and nose are quite the same, only a bit larger.  Her mouth is the only thing that has really changed.  Although the shape remains the same, her lips have become fuller.  And the shape of her face that was once a tiny round circle has become slightly more defined around the jaw line!  And these are just her physical differences.  I could write a book about how much she has developed mentally!  It’s crazy really! 

The Missing Link – Week 17 (Crafts/DIY edition)

Have you ever felt like something was missing from your life? Well, it could just be one of the links below. Hence my post title! You may ask yourself "Is she serious?" Well the answer is "No, I'm definitely NOT serious." I'm just feeling silly. Seriously though, I thought I'd share some of my favorite links with you in an effort to spread the love. What's better is that I thought I'd make this post a weekly thang! No that isn't a typo. I told you I was feeling silly. So the links below may not complete your life, but I'm hoping they, in some way, add to it. I separated them into categories for easy navigation. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.

I just want to cry!

If you’ve been following me, you’d know that I got my new MacBook Pro in the mail, however, I’m typing this on my old laptop.  Why, you ask?  Well I’ll tell you…

First, and most importantly, Windows Live Writer (which is the tool I use to write my posts) isn’t supported by MAC and after hours of searching for a new blog posting tool, I’ve come up with nothing!  That’s right NOTHING!  I’m not yelling, I promise.  I’m just venting.  I tried publishing some test posts using two different applications but with no luck.  Ecto removed my formatting so my post was a mess and MarsEdit apparently published my post but it wasn’t showing up on my blog!  Really?  Qumana couldn’t find my blog at all even after multiple installations and I’m pretty sure Bleezer was the program that needed my FTP host and path which I still have yet to find!  I’m worried that I will not find a blogging tool!  I could use the Blogger interface but I’m cringing just thinking about it.  They always remove my formatting so my posts are all over the place.  You know, paragraphs and images inconsistently spaced!  It drives me MAD!

Truly wordless; imagine that!

Getting my craft on!

I have a little treat for you guys today!  I’ve been crafting all weekend (you know in between changing diapers, giving baths, washing clothes, cleaning out my closet, making returns, etc.) and you can say I’m rather exhausted!  It was so much fun though!  Crafting I mean.

The Missing Link – Week 16

Have you ever felt like something was missing from your life? Well, it could just be one of the links below. Hence my post title! You may ask yourself "Is she serious?" Well the answer is "No, I'm definitely NOT serious." I'm just feeling silly. Seriously though, I thought I'd share some of my favorite links with you in an effort to spread the love. What's better is that I thought I'd make this post a weekly thang! No that isn't a typo. I told you I was feeling silly. So the links below may not complete your life, but I'm hoping they, in some way, add to it. I separated them into categories for easy navigation. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.

Which edit are you digging?

So here’s the scoop.  I need some help.  If you follow me, you’ll remember seeing this picture of my hubby already.  I've decided to print it but not sure which edit I like better.  I thought you guys could help me choose.  Please, however, do not take #2’s crop into consideration when you are choosing.  It’s really not cropped like this; I just wanted to fit it into the same size box as the rest of the photos and I was working with a collage template.  In my original crop, his chin is not cut off and you can see more of his hair.

Child Photography (Are you editing faces)?

I have a question?  How do you edit your photographs of children?  Do you touch up faces?  If so, how much?  Sometimes I edit without thinking.  In this case, I had edited a picture of a child where I removed all blemishes from their face.  To me, a blemish is equivalent to food crumbs, dirt, bruises or cuts/scrapes which I’d also remove assuming it didn’t fit into the picture.  In other words, if I caught a picture of a child eating birthday cake and then removed all evidence of food from their mouth, it wouldn’t be quite as interesting.  Another example would be if I caught a picture of child crying who fell down and was lifting their pant leg up to see their boo boo but then I removed all evidence of the cut/scrape, it wouldn’t really make any sense now would it?  It’s like I’m removing half the story.  In this particular case, however, this child was posing for me.  It was a close-up of their face with no real story behind it other than “I’m so freakin’ cute with my BIG brown eyes”!  Blemishes in this case were distracting.   It takes someone like my husband to say “do you think the parents would be offended” to make me stop, think, and realize, “I’m yeah, they might find it insulting”! Crap! What to do, what to do?