Pinterest

My friend Paula introduced me to Pinterest. I looooooove Pinterest now! It's like an online bulletin board you can pin stuff too. I used to bookmark stuff, but it's so much nicer to have the pictures to go with it. And I can follow my friends and anyone else I want to and see their pins too. You can see what I have pinned here. I have sooo many projects I want to work on now!. You need an invite to join, so let me know if you want one.

Some of you may have gotten an invite from me already. I need more people to follow, so join please. :)

Peeling potatoes

I haven't done this yet myself, but it just looks so easy! Now I want to buy potatoes so I can try this. Click below to see the video:

Potato peeling tip

WFMW: Cozi

I signed up on the Cozi website a long time ago, but have never really used it. This week I thought I would get into it to use the calendar, since my free calendar has never come in the mail. I found out the website also has a collage screensaver. It shows the time, pictures, and if I had anything on my calendar yet, it would show that too. I'm loving Cozi! You can go here to sign up. And of course, it's free!

Photoshop

My sister asked me about my new banner, so I thought I would post instructions on how I did it. We were at her house yesterday afternoon, but she now has something more fun than Photoshop: Super Mario Brothers on Wii. :)

I have Photoshop Elements 3.0, so some things may be a little different in newer versions. I'm not an expert, so there may be a better or easier way of doing these things. I started with this picture I took last week and cropped down to the size I wanted.

I wanted to leave some of the rosiness in Rebecca's cheeks before I did any other editing. So I used the lasso tool to select her cheeks, and feathered it at 15 pixels. Then select inverse, go to Select on the menu and click on Inverse.

I wanted to make the colors look kind of faded. To do that, duplicate the layer. Go to Layers on the menu bar, duplicate layer. Then change the image to black & white. Go to Enhance on the menu bar, adjust color, and remove color. Your image should now be all black and white, except on mine, Rebecca's cheeks are still pink. Then change the transparency, on mine it's on the right side. Choose visibility from the drop down box, then click on the gray box that says 'Ghosted'. I think mine looks like I used old film or something, so I'll do the same thing again. I want it to look a little more faded. So flatten the image by going to Layer on the menu bar, then Flatten image. If you're happy with your image, move on. Or do the same thing again, remove color and change the visibilty to Ghosted, and flatten image.

Next I added a vignette effect, or darkened the outer edges of the picture. Using the eliptical marquee tool, make an oval of the size you would like. It doesn't matter where it is right now, as long as it's the right size. Next you can adjust where it is centered. Then right click and select inverse, and right click again and choose Feather. I think I made this one 150.

So next, adjust the levels to make everything outside the oval darker. On my version, I go to Enhance, Adjust lighting, Levels. I'm going to put this one around 90. If you have preview selected, you can see the changes as you move the arrow on the right of the bar. Once that is done flatten the image again.

Next I added a hard light effect. First add a duplicate layer then from the Layers menu, choose Hard Light. Change the Opacity to the level you like. I usually put mine between 25 and 40%. For this one, I'll make it 25%.

Almost done! Last I added the text for my blog, chose the font I wanted (CK twilight), and centered the text. Flatten the image again, and you're done! :)

WFMW: Target

I've posted before about Kroger giving you .03 cents for each reusable bag you use. Yesterday I found out Target is doing the same thing, but its .05 cents for each bag. I've gotten a couple of free bags from Kroger when they've done their design a bag promotion. And most of them are made with recycled plastic or something. Another reason to love Target! :)

WFMW: Evernote

I've been using Evernote a lot lately. It's used to collect and save notes, lists, information, pictures, etc. I use it for making my Christmas list, typing up scrapbook journaling, recording stuff Rebecca is doing. I've created my own categories, added tags, dates. It's fun, organized, I love it! That's my little tip for the day. :)

WFMW: Swagbucks

I signed up for Swagbucks a while ago, and since I got my first prize this week, I'm ready to refer it to others now. Swagbucks is basically a search engine you can use to earn points (swagbucks) to use for getting gift cards and prizes. You can also refer others and get swagbucks. So if anyone signs up with my referral link, I'll get swagbucks, and I'll also get swagbucks each time you do! I redeemed some of my swagbucks, and my Amazon gift card was posted to my account yesterday! It's only a $5 gift card, but $5 is $5! And it didn't cost me anything. I was just searching for stuff I would normally just use Google for. Free gift card works for me. Click here to sign up for Swagbucks. If you sign up now, you'll get 3 free swagbucks just for knowing me! Okay, maybe not, but you'll get 3 swagbucks for signing up. :)

WFMW: doormat

My tip for this week's Works For Me Wednesday is about my doormat. I love my doormat. To really understand my affection for my doormat, I need to tell you about our driveway and the unholy amount of dirt in our garage, yard, house, cars, everything. Here's our driveway.


I realize this picture is from a while ago, but our driveway looks pretty much the same. We do have more grass in the yard, since we no longer have bulldozers, tractors, or cement trucks pulling in and out of our yard. But we still don't have gravel in the driveway. It's still dirt. So you can imagine the dirt we get in our house, in the garage, on our clothes, in the car. . . .it's everywhere. I won't even go into how muddy it gets after it rains. We had a plain rug at the garage door, which is where we usually come in and out of. But it did little to keep dirt out of the house. I was constantly sweeping and sweeping and sweeping and. . . I tried to introduce a no shoes policy inside the house. Everyone seemed okay with that except for Steve. Rebel. So I bought this fabulous door mat for about $10.


Ours says 'Bless this Home', but you can see what I mean. Since getting my wonderful doormat, it has really really cut down on the dirt in the house! And as a result, cut down on the sweeping and sweeping and sweeping and. . . I love it! It's a simple thing, but it makes me happy. Now we need to work out something to keep dirt out of the car. I dream of someday having gravel in our driveway. Someday. . . .

Yellow/White Pages opt out

We never use phone books, and they just take up space. We get the yellow pages, yellow book, the white pages. . . We can look up anything on the Internet, so we really don't need phone books. I heard about this website where you can opt out of getting the yellow pages and/or the white pages. So I just signed up and opted out! Once you submit your request, you'll get a confirmation e-mail. No more yellow pages for us! Hopefully it works. :)

ETA: So far, no more Yellow Pages have arrived at our house!

Works for Me Wednesday: Bloglines

I recently signed up for Bloglines. It's a free online service to manage your favorite blogs, and it lets you know when they have been updated. I spent a little time familiarizing myself with the features, and I'm getting all my blogs in an organized list with folders for my coupon blogs and scrapbooking blogs. One thing I don't like about it though, it doesn't show all the graphics and pictures that would show up if you went to the actual blog address. But so far, I'm really liking it! If I was smarter and html savvy like Steve, I would post a permanent link for you to add my blog to your own bloglines. You can add a link to your favorites though. Then you just need to be on the blog you want to add to bloglines, click on the 'Sub with Bloglines' link. I hope that made sense. Like I said, Steve is the one that knows more about that sort of thing than I do. Hope you enjoy Bloglines! I'm going back to edit my bloglines settings now:)

Works for me Wednesday: Roboform

I sign up for a lot of coupons and free samples online. A lot of the freebies are new products and usually come in the mail with good coupons. It's kind of exciting getting free samples in the mail. Yesterday I got two free samples. It's better than getting just bills! But it does get to be tedious typing in my name and address, etc. every time. I found out about this cool thing called Roboform. Once you download it, you can put in your profile information. Then no more typying everything again and again. Just click on your profile at the top of your internet browser. Roboform fills in all of my information for me, and I just click submit. So easy! :) Just click here, and download the first one. It also has a feature that saves all of your passwords for different websites for you, but I won't be using that. The one I use is the free version, but there is also one you can pay for, but I don't know much about it.

ETA: Roboform is not free now, so I'm trying lastpass.

Works for me Wednesday: Microfiber Towels

My tip for this week is about microfiber towels. I've seen them with the cleaning supplies for about $3 for one, which I'm just not willing to pay. So I got mine in the automotive section at Target for $5 and something for 12 towels. They don't come in pretty colors like the more expensive version, but they do the job. I use them all over the house (except the bathroom), and they pick up everything. I use them with my Swiffer sweeper thing on all our wood floors, on the windows, mirror, kitchen counters, dusting furniture. When I'm finished, it just goes in with the laundery. They have a weird texture that I can't seem to get used to, but other than that I love my microfiber towels. I never have to buy swiffer duster thingies or use up lots of paper towels. It saves me money, and it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside because I'm not adding more trash to our burn pile. Who invented microfiber? Wish I'd thought of it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Works for me Wednesday

I've been reading this blog, Rocks in My Dryer, lately. There's some pretty good tips and ideas on there. Today is Works for me Wednesday, and the theme is kitchen organization. Steve always says that organization is my hobby, and I always insist it isn't. I just like things to be organized. I don't neccessarily enjoy the process of organizing. Anyhoo, my kitchen tip is this: Sometimes I would find myself trying to remember whether the dishes in our dishwasher are clean or dirty. And on the rare occassion that Steve actually opens the dishwasher he might question the same thing, though this is not often a problem. My solution is simple. Our dishwasher has a light that stays on after it's run, and it stays on as long as you don't completely close the dishwasher. So after it runs, even if I open it to get one or two things out, I don't close it completely until I unload, so the "clean" light stays on. I usually unload it as soon as it's done, and that little detergent door slaps open, I know it's time to unload it. Not something that's going to shake the world of dish washing, but it works for me! :)