It's another Fix-It-Friday over at I ♥ Faces! I have to admit that I was up with The Baby before 6am and after getting him back to sleep I sprinted for the computer hoping to have an uninterupted morning with the new "Fix-It" photo. The Boy started yacking lastnight at 8:30pm and I knew that today would be a "Mommy" day and not a blogging day... So here is my fix; I got a whole twenty minutes in before the pitter patter of little needy feet! Yehaw! I played this morning with "free transform", did a bunch of patch work because though the tear was beautiful, and I appreciate pouting, it looked more like a blemish with my "Troy" Action I wanted to use. I saturated some colors and sharpened around the eyes. Lastly I cropped to a square and because of my transform I was left with a black bottom right corner and a black top left corner, so I had to clone and stamp a little to cover those areas. Not too shabby!
LIGHTER EDIT:

DARKER EDIT


Head on over and have your chance! This Fix-It is open to all! As for me? My morning is going to continue with vomit covered laundry, and lots of it, and a good strong cup of coffee! How funny is it that the coffee didn't happen at 6am?! I didn't want to lose five minutes to making coffee, or creating kitchen noise that would wake The Boy. (Did you know that if you put Vanilla Dream Soy Milk in your plain black coffee, you needn't add sugar?! Delish!)

We went to playgroup this morning at our local community center. I used to not be able to go because I couldn't handle a crawler and a toddler on my own among the mobs of irresponsible parents that would let their hoodlums run amok. And there I was, sitting in the middle of the gym floor, watching The Baby RUN across the gym, squealing with glee, chasing balls and pushing "shopping carts" and FLIRTING with every baby girl in sight! My breath caught and I thought to myself "where is the baby? He is all boy, when did that happen?!"
That was then...

This is now...


As I am writing this post, challenging myself to edit the two photos and upload the blog within thirty minutes of sitting down at the computer (I might make it under an hour if I quit yapping), the boys wake up, first The Baby and then out wanders The Boy. The Boy sees the image of The Baby in newborn form on the computer and I say "that's The Baby when he was brand new out of Mommy's tummy." His response? "Yeah, he's like a teeny tiny little WORM!" Nuf said.

I'm in LOVE with I ♥ Faces. And every week I log on to participate in their photo contest and admire the entries from around the world. And some weeks I stumble onto amazing pictures that are so cute and fun, and yet, they are posted so tiny you can hardly appreciate the love that went into capturing the moment. So when Angie, co founder of I ♥ Faces, asked me if I had a tutorial to write for them, I immediately thought "YES!"

When I started blogging I was a simple cut and paste kind of girl who had NO idea what cyber text was or how to manipulate it. I thought that when I uploaded my photos to Blogger, the "large" size choice for my images was the largest possible display. WRONG! Fortunately, my talented BFF, Julie Rivera, takes pity on me and shares her many secrets. She taught me about rewriting my "Html" information, and life has never been larger or clearer for my blog since! There are two simple things anyone can do to their blog Html to make their photos appear larger than normal. There are so many wonderful Blogger posts out there, everyone should be showcasing their work large enough for us all to appreciate it!

To start, I size all of my Blogger images to 300 DPI and usually 5" x 7" or "5 x 5" for my square crop. This typically gives me a file size between 6MB and 8MB.



I add my photo to Blogger by the standard upload method:


Select "large" as the image size. Click to upload:


After the image has uploaded you get a paragraph of what I call "cyber text" in your Blogger entry.


And the original image will appear in your blog as this size:


Now for changing the Html or "cyber text" to make your image larger. Locate the area in your Html that I have highlighted and delete only that section: width: 400px; height: 294px; It is very important that you do not delete too much or too little, every punctuation matters!


Next you will locate this other little tid-bit I have highlighted and you will change this number from 400 to 640. This is a number you can experiment with but I always use 640.


Your NEW Html or "cyber text" should look like this, with the exception of your file name instead of mine:


And your newly enlarged image should look like this:


Keep in mind:
- Every cursor and punctuation will effect the display of the image so if your image does not display properly, upload it again and only delete the text specified.
- This process will NOT work properly if you have an image that is sized to 72DPI or other web sized files. Please size your file to 300DPI before uploading.
- These directions may only work in Blogger.

KIDS ENTRY:

ADULT ENTRY:


So I agonized over this week's entry, again... It shouldn't be like this, it's a FUN website and winning isn't everything- except the most gratifying form of validation... What is messier than a baby and a plate of spaghetti?! And the little devil on my left shoulder is whispering to me "there will be a hundred spaghetti faces in the contest this week..." I told myself all week long that I needed to come up with something more creative, something more messy, I am the mother of two boys, this should NOT be that hard to accomplish! In the end I didn't achieve "outside of the box" but I did get out of the "food box". And hey, last week there were over 400 entries in the kids category over at I ♥ Faces, my favorite photography blog. I can boast about a few good wins over the last month, as this popular growing website made it's debut, but this competition has gone global! I fear I haven't got a chance anymore and my husband, newly home from Iraq, is probably sitting in the bedroom right now reading "War And Peace", putting on woolly socks to keep warm in my absence, wondering when the dang blog entry will be complete...
As for the adults, here is TX we don't have that stuff y'all call SNOW. So during the winter months we make do with foam, and this Mama was having a blast, having not gotten to the part where she remembers that these children are going to need a ride home in her nice clean car!

I was moments away from posting this photo for I ♥ Faces, a weekly photography blog and contest, and I decided on another. I always over think this weekly contest, trying to achieve something different than the other entries, trying to post something that will set off a chain of events that will, of course, make me rich and famous and sought after. Oh heck, I'd be satisfied if I could expand my audience to a few followers besides my Mom and my best friend. I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that everyone would be posting food photos. So here is mine, The Baby and his hilarious "Not now mother! Can't you see I am eating?!" spaghetti face.I know at least Mom will appreciate it. Check out I ♥ Faces first thing Monday morning, I think my soldier photo has a fighting chance at being the new Adult contest button!

KIDS ENTRY:

ADULT ENTRY:


So I agonized over this week's entry, again... It shouldn't be like this, it's a FUN website and winning isn't everything- except the most gratifying form of validation... What is messier than a baby and a plate of spaghetti?! And the little devil on my left shoulder is whispering to me "there will be a hundred spaghetti faces in the contest this week..." I told myself all week long that I needed to come up with something more creative, something more messy, I am the mother of two boys, this should NOT be that hard to accomplish! In the end I didn't achieve "outside of the box" but I did get out of the "food box". And hey, last week there were over 400 entries in the kids category over at I ♥ Faces, my favorite photography blog. I can boast about a few good wins over the last month, as this popular growing website made it's debut, but this competition has gone global! I fear I haven't got a chance anymore and my husband, newly home from Iraq, is probably sitting in the bedroom right now reading "War And Peace", putting on woolly socks to keep warm in my absence, wondering when the dang blog entry will be complete...
As for the adults, here is TX we don't have that stuff y'all call SNOW. So during the winter months we make do with foam, and this Mama was having a blast, having not gotten to the part where she remembers that these children are going to need a ride home in her nice clean car!