I’ve missed a few weeks over at i HEART faces, but could NOT pass up the Halloween challenge.  This is my favorite Halloween picture of my girls to date.  It was taken before I had my DSLR, and I had just started delving deeper into photography.

My entry for the pet challenge is my sister’s cat Nicka, who was NOT thrilled about her costume AT ALL! lol

Be sure to head over to i HEART faces and check out the other great Halloween-Dress Up photo’s!

So, the theme this week over at i HEART faces is excited.  What is more exciting than getting to meet your daughter for the first time??  Meet my friend Dorrie.  This was taken about an hour before her beautiful little girl, Peyton Elizabeth was born. 

Make sure to head over to i HEART faces and check out all the other excited moments!

As you may know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness month.  I’m pretty sure that almost EVERYONE has been effected by breast cancer in one way or another.  Personally, my Grandmother was a survivor and my husbands Mother lost her battle with breast cancer when she was only 36 years old.  Thankfully, times have changed and technology has gotten much better thanks to research and donations.  Another thing that has changed since the early 80’s is AWARENESS.  Ladies, we all know how it works.  We should all be doing self breast exams on a regular basis & go get your MAMOGRAM!  Yes it is a drag, but early detection is the KEY to surviving breast cancer. 

Last year I was honored to participate in the Atlanta, Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer 3-Day walk.  I, along with thousands of other women and men walked 60 miles in 3 days and raised millions of dollars to go towards breast cancer awareness.

It was a great experience full of laughter, tears, RAIN(on Friday), hope, determination, sore muscles, blisters & FUN!!  There would come a time where I thought I could not walk another step.  Then I would overhear a woman talking about how she is going through chemo treatments and yet….here she is walking like me.    

One of our teammates was not able to walk last year due to the fact she was diagnosed with breast cancer!  Char normally participated in Relay for Life, but for some reason she felt compelled to do the 3-Day instead.  She made the decision long before she even found out about the breast cancer.  Now if that is not a sign from above, I don’t know what is.  She had trained for months, raised the necessary $2,200 to participate and everything.  Needless to say she-as well as all of us, were heartbroken. 

BUT…I will say this: SHE IS A SURVIVOR!!

Not only is she a survivor, but she IS walking in the 2009 Breast Cancer 3-Day October 23-25th.  I’m not walking this year, but you can bet your booty that I will be there to cheer her on.  I also made a donation towards her fundraising goal.  She has met and surpassed her goal but there are others on her team who are still in need : Michelle, Heather, there are others on the team as well.  It’s as easy as picking someone   It’s even a tax deduction   Your support would be greatly appreciated!

I plan to post pictures from the walk throughout the month.  I didn’t take my Nikon along-it gets heavy after a while, lol.  So, be on the look out for lots of PINK!

It’s that time again over at i HEART faces, be sure to go take a look when you are finished up here

Thank you to Kim from  My Family Circus for sharing this photo of your cutie-pie nephew!

Here is the original photo:

Here are my edits:

I used a combination of Lightroom 2 & PSE7. 

The last one is my favorite….how about you?

Here is a little sneak peek:

And of course….we couldn’t leave out the new big sister!!

I look forward to taking future pictures of the Barber Family!

The theme this week over at i HEART faces is Blue.  I was looking through my work trying to find the perfect photo for the challenge.  I actually had one all picked out, even put it up on my flickr photostream.  Then it hit me!  I got a great picture of my BFF’s daughter, Ansley the other day when I was taking some maternity pictures for her. 

I was really just messing around trying to get Ansley in the mood to “play along” with us for the shoot.  This girls eyes…..they are just SO beautiful!  This is the second time I have used a photo of her in the i HEART faces challenge, lol.  I swear I do have good pictures of my own children, and I can’t wait until one fits the theme

Be sure and head over to i HEART faces and check out all the great “Blue” photo’s this week!

I just started playing around with them, editing my pictures in Photoshop Lightroom 2 and then taking them over to PSE7 to use the textures.

This is a picture of my Granny’s rose my Uncle gave her.  The pictures of got of them don’t do them justice.  The color was amazing!

This one was a different bush, but still beautiful.

I’m not sure if I am doing the textures justice, I honestly have not worked with them a whole lot.  I have to say, they are a ton of fun though!

This is my first fix-it-friday entry over at i Heart faces.  The original picture was taken by Catherine over at Catherine Halsey Photography.  This picture was a result from forgetting to change the camera settings after moving from the bright sunny beach to a shaded area.  Uggg..who has not made this same mistake??  I know I have, lol.  The great thing about digital photography is that your images can sometimes be salvaged.  You can head over to i HEART faces and see what all of the talented people were able to accomplish with this photo.

Here is the original picture:

After:

I used LightRoom2 and PSE7 to edit the picture.

In Elements I used actions from CoffeShop (click on images to take you there!) as well as some free textures from Retro Diva {designs}  Thank you ladies, for your hard work and willingness to share!!

Thanks for looking, and I would love to hear some feedback

~Melissa

 I love this picture of my best friend, Dorrie’s daughter Ansley and our other friend Rodney.  Ansley was having so much fun while he was throwing her.  Her emotions were to die for.  In some of the images you could see pure joy on her face, and others a little bit of  “woah, I’m going pretty high” showed through, lol. 

I look forward to sharing my experiences and work with all of you and hope you enjoy your visit to my little space on the net.