Picture Perfect

I don't know if you remember, but a while back I had written about scrapping your pictures even if they aren't perfect. I still stand by that - BUT - some teens from our church introduced me to a little gem of a website called "Picnik".

Picnik is a great little site for editing your pictures, especially if you don't feel comfortable with Adobe or other more complex programs. It is all set up to be dummy-proof! The best part is that you can use it's more basic features for free! Tooth whitening, red eye removing, blemish healing, softening, black and white, and many other features are simply a click away! The biggest downfall to using Picnik is that you can only edit one picture at a time, so it is not really time efficient. I am unsure if that would change if you chose to pay for the premium service or not. The other thing I have noticed with Picnik users (in general - not every user) is that a lot of photos end up looking like some sort of abstract art. You have to know when to stop. Just a tip if you decide you would like to try it out - remember to save the picture at the highest quality possible if you plan to print it AND remember to save the picture with a new name so you do not lose your original!

I hope this will inspire you to use a few of those pictures that you might have overlooked due to imperfections.

Brand New Day

Sigh! Teenage girls! I know I was a teenage girl at one time (long, long ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth!) but I don't remember being as catty at girls seem to be now! Maybe we were, and time has just blurred out the worst of it.

This week was back to school week for T. She was dreading going back because for the last few weeks she was the victim of what I am calling "Facebook Bullying".

One girl, who is supposed to be one of T's best friends and has spent many, many weekends at our house, started spreading nasty, untrue rumors about T. We have no clue what brought on the attack. Because I am undecided whether FB is a good or bad idea for my daughter, I make sure I know her log in ID and password. I randomly log in on her profile and read her messages, check out what's on her wall & check out her friend's profiles as well. (All you other mom's who are tisk-tisking me right now for invading her privacy - get over it - she knows that this is the condition on her having a FB page at all!) You can imagine my surprise when I read the cruel and hurtful things her "friend" was saying about her! The worst was the amount of foul language that was typed out, right there for all the world to see!

What I didn't see was any retaliation from T. None. Not one word. Oh, there was lots of retaliation alright - from T's other friends. I was glad to see that she had so many friends that were sticking up for her & supporting her. I was even more proud that not one of them had stooped to the level of the "Facebook Bully". No swearing, no name calling, just comments on how great T was and for her to "take back" what she had said (I love that they are still at the age where as long as you "take it back" it's all good!). I was most proud of T though. She never said a word. She cried herself to sleep a few times and we had some heart to heart talks and a sleepover, but she never said one negative remark to that "friend". She even went so far as to call the "friend" and invite her to come to town with us when we went back to school shopping (with no success - but at least she tried!).

When T came home after her first day back to school, I asked her how her day went. She was in such a great mood! All of her friends (except the FB Bully) were happy to see her & they all sat together just like always. She told me that nobody brought up the FB drama at all, and everybody was polite to the FB Bully all day. (Although she is glad that they don't have any classes together!)

I leave you with a page I made this morning. The layout is roughly scraplifted from a page I saw in Creating Keepsakes December 2007 issue. The papers and bow element are from the "Shine On" kits (from the blog train blog). The journalling/title is an excerpt from the song, "Brand New Day" by Joshua Radin.