A New Look...Changes Bring Freshness

I hope when you clicked over here yesterday, you felt a breath of fresh air!  It was getting kind of stuffy in these parts, and change was needed!  I've wanted to change my layout for a while to one that offered a bigger post section, so my photos could be bigger.  In order not to be overwhelmed, I started looking at blog templates a couple of months ago as I had time.  About a month ago, I picked Typography off of B Templates.  I tend to like the adapted from wordpress templates, and I tend to like something simple and classic.

After picking a template, I downloaded my old one (just in case, you know), copied and saved lots codes so I wouldn't have to redo everything, and got to work on my header.  I'm not really a fan of photo editing only because of the time it takes and also because Photoshop is currently only on Jeremy's computer.  So I went searching for some free online photo editing programs.  I came across Pixlr and I have to say I'm quite impressed with what this free little site does.  Here's what I like about it...

• it works in layers, similar to Photoshop
• it's free and I didn't even have to sign up to use it
• I can save the edited photo directly to my computer

Really the only negative thing I have to say about it is that it doesn't do text very well, at least it didn't seem like it did.  You can put text on the photo but I couldn't for the life of me find where I could change the font or the size.  (Update on the Pixlr text...in the comment section you will see a comment from the Pixlr blog, so it is possible.  That little box didn't show the text options when I tried it, but I just went back on and it was there!)  That said, here are the photos I started with...

I love this picture of the kids.  It's just such a sweet moment between them, but I didn't like the washed out sky and felt the picture overall needed a color boost.  So...I cross processed the picture and then used the magic wand to get rid of the sky and inserted this sky in there (after it was cropped and cross processed).

I was almost satisfied.  I decided to flip the picture and ended up with this...

I cropped a little more and used Piknik to add some text and ended up with what you see at the top.  And after all that, I am pleased!

While you're here, feel free to pick up my new badge...











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And if you head over to my store, you'll notice a few changes over there.  The biggest one being my new store badge...











<br> <center><a href="http://ibelieveinlovestore.blogspot.com/"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3378/4594376978_d552161d2e_o.jpg" /></a></center><br>

Thanks so much, friends, for coming to this space and for your comments!  My desire continues to be that this spot would be fun and life giving all at the same time!