The food poisoning, that is. We won’t ever, ever discuss that I got God awful food poisoning and may or may not have spent a good part of the night asleep on my parents’ bathroom floor.

We won’t discuss how, now, I am uber paranoid about hand washing and may or may not be searching frantically for a step stool so the boy can wash his own hands whenever he chooses (which manages to be All.The.Time. – Is it too early for an OCD check?). Which may or may not is causing a slight problem, seeing as how he’s only 2, not quite able to get up steps without some hand holding, and a little small for his age.

This is the first stool that caught my eye, the Ecotots Surfin Kids First Wave Step Stool. It’s entirely adorable. However, it’s also not nearly tall enough for the kid to reach his intended destination. There are two types of stools in the child world. One steppers and two steppers. One steppers were not what we needed. On I went.

While I found the Safari Storage Step-Up Stool ridiculously adorable and that it had storage (!!!). it really didn’t solve my “can’t climb so well” problem. I needed a two stepper with a railing. I had no idea if anyone even made them.

Apparently, they do! The High Rise Step Up would raise the boy up just enough to not only reach the sink, but the kitchen counter when he wants to help make his snacks! It looked perfect!

While I would love to end this blog with a “and I got it and it was perfect and I never had to sleep on my parents’ bathroom floor again”, unfortunately, the husband is just not convinced it’ll do the job. And, for the price, if he’s not sure…well, you know.

So, here I sit, trying to figure out if I can build a railing for a double stepper out of plywood and craft glue.

Not so much, huh?

The Original:

Jumping back on the Letter of the Week bandwagon (after jumping off for a ridiculous amount of time), I’ve created 2 downloadable PDFs. Being that this coming week’s theme is Rainbows and letter is Dd, there is an Alphabet with both lower and uppercase letters and a rainbow coloring page.

If you do download them, comment and let me know what you think!

I really enjoyed working on this one and, thanks to the Boy’s current obsession with WordWorld
, I am able to explain my process this time.

Here is the original photo:

The Process (in Photoshop CS3 – No actions used):

I began by cropping and leveling the picture. I manually level because, most of the time, auto level gives me entirely too harsh of a photo.

I decided to bring out the eyes, just a tad. Using the burn tool (set to Shadows, 9% with a small round brush), I lightly darkened around the edge of the iris. Then, using the dodge tool (set to Highlights, 12% with a small round brush), I lightened up the area around the pupil. Back to the burn tool (Shadows, 5%), I lightly darkened the eyelashes and top eyelids.

I applied a Gaussian Blur (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, 4.2). I created a layer mask and filled with black to hide the layer. Using a medium sized, soft round brush at 25%, I painted with white (on the layer mask) over the face. It softens the skin just enough so that the next step doesn’t cause it to become too harshly sharpened. I, then, merged down and named the layer “Girl”.

With Unsharp Mask (Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask, 154%, 2.6 pixels, 13 levels), I sharpened up the image, just a bit.

Duplicating the “Girl” layer and renaming it “BG Blur”, I desaturated (cntrl/option U) the image by -84 and Gaussian Blurred the image by 10. After creating a layer mask, I painted (large, soft round brush, 100%) around the girl with black (on the layer mask) so that only the was blurred and desaturated.

I duplicated “Girl” layer again, renamed it “Blue”, and changed the hue (cntrl/option U) to a nice turquoise-y blue color (Hue: +140, Saturation: +66, Lightness: +23). With the “Blue” layer selected, ntrl+click the “BG Blur” layer mask and create a new layer mask for “Blue”. This will clear out the same area as is clear in the “BG Blur” layer, leaving just the blurred/desaturated layer blue. Using a large, soft round brush, paint black (on the “Blue” layer mask) over the brown object to the left, lower the layer opacity to 42%.

I created a Curves adjustment layer to bring up the lights and down the darks, just a tad.

With a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, I brought up the Saturation by +9.

Again, duplicated the “Girl” layer and this time renamed it “Color”. Using Hue/Saturation (Cntrl+U), I turned the saturation up to +50, turned they layer opacity down to 36% and created a layer mask. After filling the layer mask with black, I cntrl+clicked the layer mask on the “BG Blur layer”. With the “Color” layer mask selected, I filled the selection with white. This should leave only the girl with higher saturation.Then, using a medium, soft round brush at 25%, I painted (on the layer mask) her face and shirt with black, to reduce their saturation. I went back in with white (on the layer mask) over the lips and eyes.

With a second Curves adjustment layer, I brought up the eyes just a touch more. Then added a black, white and pink border, and, voila!

The Finished Product

The Original

I have nothing but a million completely valid and acceptable excuses for my absence. So, as an apology, I’ve uploaded a Cinco de Mayo coloring book I made for my son out of clip art and whatnot. Feel free to take it with no strings attached*.

Except that by downloading, you agree to forgive me…forever…for any and everything I do wrong. Ever again.