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.

Edit Me... (boy I've missed you)

Do you know how long it's been since I've participated in one my favorite photo challenges?  Quite simple, it's been TOO long!  The Edit Me photo challenge has, hands down, been the challenge I look forward to most!  I love having the opportunity to edit someone else's photograph.  My favorite ones to edit are of people so I was especially happy to see this weeks photograph.  I love the positioning of the children, the tree trunk, the background, etc.; pretty much everything.  With that being said, I made the following very clean and simple edits in PSE:

1.  Cropped.

2.  Brightened a bit,

3.  Boosted contrast,

4.  Warmed up (boosted the yellow hues a tad),

5.  Lifted the shadows from the girls face,

6.  Sharpened faces,

7.  Added a subtle vignette, and

8.  Resized for web.

Somebody stop me!

I wasn't sure what to do here but I just loved the picture that Jamie provided for the Edit Me Photo Challenge so much that I found myself still making edits to it even after I already linked up and entered my 'one' submission!  To me it's not about the photo challenge and whether this is entered in, I just wanted to be able to share my other edit with everyone because I fell in love with it.  I used Picnik as my editing software.  My goal was to focus in on those colorful striped knee socks so I converted it to black & white again but, this time, left the vibrant color on the socks and shoes.  To finish it off, I applied a vintage frame in PSE that I purchased from Paint the Moon.  The Polaroid was a frame provided by PSE.  I thought it was cute!

Woo hoo; very excited about the Edit Me Photo Challenge

I'm lovin' the picture this week for the Edit Me photo challenge over at My Reflection of Something.  I know I always say that but, seriously, this picture is so adorable!  It was taken by Jamie over at Mommy's Camera.  The original shot was so great it would have been really difficult to improve.  Instead I went for changing it completely.  I absolutely love the colors in the original shot, but I wanted to convert to sepia so that you would focus on the striped knee socks!  I just happened to find a paper bag frame in PSE that I decided to put it on.  Thought it was cute and, for some reason, fitting!  So here is my entry:

Edit Me

Yay it's Wednesday.  And why am I so excited?  Because today the linky for the Edit Me photo challenge opens!  I was a little hesitant with this weeks photo because it was already so lovely.  How could I make it better?  Then I realized I don't have to make it better, just different. 

Another Photo Challenge

Okay, so here is another photo challenge I chose to enter!  These are fun!

The Challenge:

Your challenge? Take this already lovely photo and give it your own style. You can use any editing program you like. Crop, color, texture, quotes, effects, actions... anything you can come up with is fair game! Just make sure that you share a little bit about your process with us, so we can learn from each other!

And here are my edits made with http://www.picnik.com/:

- adjusted exposure

- adjusted saturation

- sharpened

- used a softening effect in the background

- brightened eyes

- used a vignette

- etc., etc., etc.