I Heart Faces- Outtakes

I pulled my camera out to capture my youngest daughter experiment with finger paints. She was so excited and such a cute mess! I didn't notice the snot bubble in all the photos until after I uploaded the photos. How lovely!

I Heart Faces - Week 8

This week's theme at I Heart Faces is "Hands-On Fun".  This is an older photo of mine, but still one of my favorites. We had gone to visit a local nursing home with a group of kids. The kids handed out flowers and sang songs. We went to brighten the residents' day, but I think we were the ones who were encouraged the most.

Sweet Dreams

This week's theme on I ♥ Faces is "sweet dreams". I haven't had time to participate in awhile, but when I saw the topic I remembered this photo of my 3yr. old dd this past summer. She had wore herself out playing outside all day but would not fall asleep. Finally she asked to swing and it didn't take long for her to finally fall asleep. I wish this still worked--lol. She could use a nap right now.

I Heart Faces--Back to School

Well I would have had my daughter pose with her teacher, but her teacher was still in her pajamas--lol!(Yep, that would be me). We are getting back into the school groove here in the Spell household. Of course the holiday this week is throwing me off. I need to get off the computer and back on track... ;)

To check out more back to school photos visit:

I ♥ Faces Funny, Silly Faces

My son is a ham! He has a great sense of humor and can also be a big tease. Yep, he's the jokester of the family. Can't you tell?

I remember an incident when he was just a baby. We were on a trip and he and his sister were in the backseat of the car in their carseats. We saw a dog out the window and we asked him what a dog says. He replied, "Woof,woof!" Then he kept barking. This made his sister mad and she yelled at him. With the biggest grin on his face, he looked at her and made one last "woof, woof" at her. I never knew teasing started so young!

For other funny, silly faces check out:

I Heart Faces---The Feet Edition

This is one of my favorite baby photos that I took of my dd#3. I love the curled toes and the little creases in the bottom of her feet. Oh babies grow so fast!

To see some other cool "feet" pictures, head on over to:

I ♥ Faces - Sports in Action--Sort Of

I have to admit that I had to go to my archives to find a sports photo. Besides hating to take holiday photos, I guess I also don't like sport photography either. Considering we usually have several kids in different sports at one time, you'd think I'd have a ton of photos! I don't. My excuse is that I don't have a 300mm lens :)

This picture makes me smile though. You know how action-packed a 4yr. old soccer game can be (yes, I'm being sarcastic)--well my daughter is giving the opposing player a stare-down. She's telling him that he better not dare take the ball. If I remember correctly, he went on to score lots of goals that game. :)

For more action-packed sports photography, check out the rest of the entries from:

Bubble Trouble--I Heart Faces Week 24

This week's topic for I Heart Faces is Let's Hear it for the Boys. I love this photo of my ds. If you look closely you can see tiny bubbles on his hand and his dirty fingernails! He was concentrating hard on not having the bubble pop when I snapped this photo of him. The older he is getting, the harder it is to take photos of him. He'd rather get a tooth pulled than smile at the camera--lol. I'm having to resort to using my zoom lens and snap when he isn't looking :)

Check out all the other awesome photos at:

I ♥ Faces Week 23 Sepia

Oh my charming little guy. I can still remember the day I took this photo. He and his younger sister dressed up and asked me to do a photo shot of them. They wanted to look old-timey. I was so pleased that it was their idea and not mine--and I love the results!



Check out I ♥ Faces for even more sepia-toned images.

I ♥ Faces Week 21 Birthday

This is one of my favorite birthday photos of my ds. I pulled it out of my archives---boy he was sure cute when he was little! (I'd still say he's cute now but he'd just roll his eyes at me--lol) I need to work on my birthday photography though. Looking through my photos, I have come to the conclusion that I really don't enjoy photographing events. I hardly have any Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter or birthday photos. I don't know if it is because I'm so involved and don't have time, or if it is because the photos always seem the same year after year that I just give up. I'm going to have to really study all the entries from this week so that I can have some fresh birthday photo ideas for the next family birthday celebration. You can check them out too by clicking the button below:

Fix It Fridays Using PSE 4.0

It is Fix It Fridays over at I ♥ Faces. Above is the original photo. Below are my fixes using PSE 4.0. See you can still do cool stuff with older versions of Photoshop! (Still crossing my fingers for CS4 someday ;) )


The first thing I did was crop the photo. I tend to like tighter cropped photos, so I wanted to get rid of some of that dead space on the top left of the photo. Next I did a couple of adjustment layers using levels. I wanted to brighten the photo up so and add a little depth. Next I ran Photoblast ContraPop. Did another levels adjustment layer, ran Photoblast Beauty Glow and then sharpened the eyes a little bit.

For the black and white photo I used the color photo adjustments listed previously and then ran Photoblast GoldenRod action.

Thanks Katarina for letting us play with your photo!

I ♥ Faces - Week 19 Blub Book Photo Challenge

I can't tell you how excited I am to have good weather. Since the lighting in my house is terrible for photos, I take most of mine outside using natural light. Last week I took the kids to the local garden. There was a log cabin with a covered porch and it was a wonderful backdrop for photos. I have found the perfect spot to take photos of my kids! I let DD#4 crawl on the porch and I started snapping away. It was hard to get her to stay still long enough for a good photo! She wanted to be on the go. She has been one hard baby to photograph. It has been difficult for me to capture her smile on camera, but I finally did it.

For the purposes of this contest, I fall into the professional category. Me a professional? When I see what I consider "professional" I have a long way to go! :)

I am submitting this photo into the www.iheartfaces.com Blurb book photo contest. If chosen, I grant I ♥ Faces permission to use my photo in a printed version of a book for commercial useand possibly advertising of a photo book on both the Blurb and I ♥ Faces web sites.

I ♥ Faces Week 18 - Laughter

This is my first time joining in this challenge. I've been a little intimidated with all the wonderful photogs posting there, but I figure I need to just do it. :) That's the only way for me to get better. The theme for this week is laughter. If you go to I Heart Faces you can see all the other cool entries on this topic. Or you can just click the logo above. :) Feel free to join in this challenge with me! I'd love some company :)