Donuts and Window Light a great mix!

MCP Project 52's theme this week is Window Light!  I have great light coming in our windows in the morning.  On Sunday I got Monkey her favorite donut.........cream filled long john!  She loves them, as a matter of fact she eats more than I do!  I got some shots of her eating away with the window light illuminating her face!

Enjoy!!!

SOOC- Mother's Day

What a great day for mother's day!!!  It looked like it was going to rain and than the sky cleared and the sun was warm and bright and wonderful!!!  I very much needed day!!!  Monkey, Dennis and I went to the greenhouse picked out flowers for the front porch, I was going to get 5 of the same baskets, but I can't handle the same thing 5 times!!!  We got a variety!!!  So here are my Mother's Day shots...... one of Monkey and I sitting on the ground outside cuddling (she was tired, no nap yesterday) and a couple of the flowers we bought!!!  Enjoy, can't wait for the edits!

SOOC-Growth

So here are my Growth photos- Monkey decided she wanted to drive daddy's car that was taken out of storage on Sunday!!!  Of course she wanted no help!!!  No worries-we took the keys out and the ebrake is always on!  They grow up so fast!!!!  I can't wait to take these photos again when she is 16!  Wait....I can wait!!!

SOOC- Friends and Family!

So I have missed doing the now to WOW tutorial 2 weeks in a row!!!  That is just too crazy!  I have been so busy lately!  I have been gone the last two weekends, we went back to Des Moines on Friday and returned home on Saturday, which I than got ready to host Easter!  I love hosting holidays!!
What a great day!!  Our first Easter egg hunt in the new house and Monkey's first too....last year she was too little and slept through it!  She caught on fast......so here are the pictures for my SOOC......I promise this week I will get the edit done!  PS- I really like Ashley's tutorial last week!!!

SOOC-Easter

So when I think of Easter I don't think of the typical Easter Bunny, I do think of polka-dotted eggs, lambs and cute cuddly things.  So, here is my Easter shots of Monkey and LuLu he rocking lamb, with her shirt that reminds me of a cute Easter Egg!

SOOC

So this weeks Now to WOW's theme is Faith.  I really didn't know what to do for this at first....  My husband is a church decorator (Here is his website, I help cut and design the stencils) so I do have some wonderful pictures of insides of churches!!!  But, they weren't new pictures and I didn't want something so literal.
This weekend there was some CRAZY weather. 9 tornadoes touched down and we drove one hour in down pouring rain and head hurting lightening.  Although we were in a tornado warning we didn't have any touch down or any damage done around our home or town.  Unfortunately some towns were destroyed in western Iowa near where I got my first job.
Sunday the sun was out and it was so warm!!! Than another small storm came up so quickly we didn't know what hit.  I got some great shots after the rain had moved through to the east and the sun was shining in the west. (Although they need to be cropped)  Sometimes you just have to have Faith that you will be safe and everything will pass......

Now to WOW!!!

So when I read Ashley's blog to day I did a little cheer, than a little dance, my first hour class thought I was strange!  But I love adding textures to my images......love, Love, LOVE IT!!  I am so in my zone this week!  I joined a challenge group on Flickr with SkeletalMass's textures, he is wonderful.  Both of his blogs are on my blog roll.  There are also so many other Flickr resources out there for textures.

So I did my first photo and followed very close to Ashley layers and what she did, then I went and did my own thing, I did however use the same textures she used.

After my first one I thought why not do a screen shot with my recipe on it!  So the last two have screen shots.  I do a lot of layer masking when I am working on portraits because you might get a strange line in the face or lose some detail.  I always use a brush at 50% or lower when do that!

 

On my last one I did what I love to do.....add brushes.  I added a little brush frame around it.  Sometimes I layer mask with brushes as well, it gives different tones with the layers.
Here are some examples of my texture challenge using brushes in my layer masks.  The flower is my photo, the fairy was for a challenge.

Waterdrop Tutorial

Hello everyone!  Some people have asked about the link to the water drop tutorial so here it is  http://www.clickinmoms.com/blog/?p=1792.  I also posted it in a comment.  I can't wait to show you some of my students water drops, they are awesome!!!  Stay tuned for a post with the link to my Digital Camera page on my art room website!

Up two Ways

So our SOOC Now to WOW challenge this week is UP!  I decided to interrupt that two ways, one literal and one not so literal.....

The first ones are of Monkey playing on top of her slide with her hair standing up, than there is one of her outside and  UP as in the temp is UP.....70 degrees on Sunday!  It was wonderful outside and we played and played and played!!!  She really loved it out there.  The last one is of her falling asleep up, she was soooo tired!

Now some of these aren't my best SOOC shots, but I love them anyways! 

SOOC

So the Good to Wow theme this week is GREEN! Of course I think of spring when I hear green, but spring has sprung in NE Iowa yet so a plan B was put into action.  My Monkey's blanket is bright green, she loves it.  My sister got it for her before she was born, $1 at Target, drags it around the house with her everywhere.  Enjoy! 

Nelly Nero's Actions

NELLY'S VEVIA ACTION

JUST NICE N EASY ACTION

First of all..... Thank you for all the great comments, my art "teacher's eye"helps me with my crops, of course I crop about 3 or 4 different ways before I actually decide on which one I am going to use. 
One of the reasons I love doing challenges is going to the other blogs and checking out the wonderful photography added by different photographers.  When you do that you also get invaluable resources, blogs that have tutorials, presets or my favorite ACTIONS!!!!  While checking out Now to Wow photos on Jill Samter's website I ran across and wonderful action used on a flower photo, it than led me to flickr where I got so download Nelly Nero's wonderful actions.  As of right now, I have only downloaded one of her sets, but it was HUGE!!!!  Tons, Tons, Tons of actions and they are WONDERFUL!!!!  If you read my Now to Wow post you can see my flower photos! So mt favorite photo got a 5 second reedit and I think it is wonderful.

1st Day of Spring......tomorrow????

Tomorrow is the first day of spring!  Also my little bro's bday!!!  Big 19!! 
In Iowa weather is crazy.  This month we went from 40 degree weather to a snow day in a day.  This morning we woke up to a nice frost.  But at least most of the snow is gone!
My Monkey decided to sleep in and my husband left to work in Rochester with his brother.  So, I decided to go out side and take some pictures. The sky was so clear and the sun was out, lately you don't know if that will happen.  This week SOOC theme is flowers, well the snow has barely melted from my flowers, but the frost on the brown flowers from last season was beautiful!  Here are some of my shots, I didn't know I would like so many of them.  I can't wait until Thursday when Ashley posts her edits, of course I will do some editing before that to some of them!  I hope you like my not so typical flower photos!