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Archive for November 23rd, 2010

My Favorite Road Trip

Posted by Heather Manning On November - 23 - 2010

 1 And we got nowhere.  But it was a blast.  It was the floods of ‘93 here in Iowa.  My best friend Danielle and I decided that we wanted to make a spur of the moment road trip to Council Bluffs to see my grandpa.  We went on the interstate.  The interstate was closed by Adel.  Couldn’t get through.  Water over the interstate.  We took highway 6.  What do you know, road was closed by Adel, water over the road.  We tried so many different routes and could not for the life of us, get past Adel.  Adel was like it’s own mini island.  Blocked from the north, south, east, and west.  Who goes on a road trip when you are in the middle of a record flood?  When you are under a boil order.  When downtown Des Moines was completely under water.  Only Danielle and I.  We had so much fun doing it though.  Laughing as we got to each road block.  Turning around and going another route.  My mom thought we were crazy that day.  I think that was the day I cut off all of my hair (it was to my waist).  I left my braid on the phone and left.  My mom freaked out, not thinking I would ever cut off my braid.  She thought someone had kidnapped me and left that as notice.  Nope, just trying to get out of central Iowa, mom.  I’m sure my mom will remember that when I trigger it with the braid story.

I’m pretty sure we played this song, over and over again.  It tended to be our road trip song.

excuse the letterman intro, I couldn’t get the other video to load well.

So many road trips we took, many times to Council Bluffs, many times just driving around as we found out that it’s true.  All gravel roads in Iowa DO end in Madison county.  :)   We always ended up there when we just randomly drove around.

I miss those days of just getting in the car, rolling down the windows, and driving wherever the road would take you (and get you back before curfew of course). Danielle, we’ll have to do that again when our kids are grown up.  Just get in the car and drive and drive and drive.  Bet you we end up in Winterset.  Or somewhere in Madison county, by a bridge.  Let’s just not do it when there’s a flood again, you know we’ll never get out of town.

P.S.  That picture is of Danielle and I in high school, with our friend Cristin (order – Danielle, me, and Cristin)

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I wrote this blog post while participating in the TwitterMoms and Discount Tire blogging program, making me eligible to receive a $50 gift card and be entered for a chance to win a prize valued at $1,000. For more information on how you can participate, click here.

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5 tips for editing and creating beautiful digital photo projects

Posted by Heather Manning On November - 23 - 2010

This is right up my alley everyone.  If you follow my blog, you know I love digital scrapbooking and I love photography.  I have my own digiscrapping store that is sadly neglected right now and I’m behind on scrapping, but it doesn’t make my love for it any less. As sick as I am right now, I couldn’t help but jump in on this post!  You can do so many things digitally when it comes to your photos!  Here’s my own tips.

1 – Start digiscrapping, of course!  You can have your pages printed out into books from places like Artscow. You want to use a photo editing software, I use paintshop pro, but I also have Adobe Photoshop Elements, and you can also use Gimp, which is free.  Here’s an example of one of my favorite pages I have made.

IAm3-sm

That one was from Alyce’s birthday.  I try to scrap a page for each of the kids birthday!

2 – Don’t just document the special occasions.  I take so many pictures of my kids.  I scrap everything.  To me, the simple every day occasions are just as important as the big holidays.

That’s one of Jordan, playing the Wii before doing his chores.  Something like this is just as important to document as his birthday.

3 – Don’t forget yourself!

ThisOneIsForMe-sm

Mom tends to be holding the camera all the time.  Make sure that you have pictures of yourself to remember too.  The kids will want those as they get older.  I’ve done quite a few all about me pages for them.

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There’s my bucket list. :)   Just things for the kids.  So when I’m gone, they have these memories of me.

4.  Use digital photos to make your holiday cards – or any cards.  I always make our Christmas card, which I need to get done this year.

Here is last years.

2009ChristmasCard-SM

I also make their Valentine’s Day cards -

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You can also make your own cards.  I don’t have a picture on this one, but you could totally add one for another special touch.

sendingyoucardpreview

5 – It doesn’t always have to be serious.  You can have tons of fun with digital photo editing.  Make an ATC card and print it out and laminate it.  Then sneak it into your husband’s wallet!

ILovePato-sm

Just a little something to make him smile when he got into his wallet.

I do that kind of stuff all the time.

There are so many different things you can do with digital photos, changing them with PSP scripts (that I have in my store), many people have actions for photoshop available. You can use masks, overlays, frames, tons of details that you can add to a picture.

If you want to start digiscrapping, you can Google digital scrapbooking freebies and you’ll come up with tons.  I have quite a few samples in my own store you can start with too.

AlyceOnceUponATimeplay-sm

There’s one where I extracted Alyce on the slide and placed her on the page.  You can do things like that.  You can do selective coloring -

sohappy-sm

Notice her shirt and shoes are the only colors in the picture (and they were pink, I changed them to red to go with the red on the layout.)

Or you could go with all black and white -

MyBoys-sm

One where I extracted Katiana and put her in a fantasy world -

APerfectDay-Kat-sm

Another fun one about me – HATED this hairstyle.  Had to scrap it.

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And another neat one – my absolute favorite layout ever and one that I won a wacom tablet with -

If you want to see more of my layouts I have made, with credits for who the kits belong to, click here and you’ll get all the posts.

I could go on and on with this one, giving you more and more tips.  If you can think of any questions, post them in the comments and I will definitely get to you on those!  You can also check out tutorials on digiscrapping that I have up.

About Adobe Photoshop Elements:
Get a complete solution for photos. With Adobe Photoshop Elements 9, you can make your photos look extraordinary with easy-to-use editing options. Share your stories in beautiful, personalized print creations and Online Albums. And easily organize all your photos and video clips from one convenient place.
More info:
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Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/AdobeElements
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PhotoshopElements

I wrote this blog post while participating in the TwitterMoms and Adobe blogging program, making me eligible to receive a $50 gift card. For more information on how you can participate, click here.

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