Learning New Skills

While my mom was here to provide some much needed (and VERY appreciated) help around the house when my belly was on the verge of exploding out a baby and my two- and three-year-old were running amuck, I was looking for newborn photo ideas to freeze the first moments of baby Ivy's life.

In my many hours of searching, I found dreamy photos of fat little sleeping babies in crocheted stork pouches, and scrunched up sleeping in snug little crocheted baby bowls and cocoons. The more sweet photos I saw, the more I wanted those photo accessories.

Since I had my mom at my disposal and she is an avid crocheter, especially of fabulously fancy and adorable baby things (seriously, wow!), I naturally asked her how to make them. I saw her eyes twinkle so bright it was like seeing Venus on a clear winter night. She couldn't resist teaching me to crochet. So I made a stork pouch and a baby bowl.

And since we're poor, and we have an amazing Sony DSLR we got for Christmas last year, we opted to take newborn photos ourselves instead of dropping the money for a mid-quality Sears or JCP photo shoot. This meant I needed to learn how to photo edit for real. So I did some searching and found an immensely helpful post at it'salwaysautumn.

{{Plus it's unfathomably hard to pack up three small kids, myself, and my husband, take them to said photo outlet, and try to keep track of them all while directing a photographer who has no creative ability or autonomy. Harsh, I know, but when you get 5 or 6 good digital photos back that aren't even 1MB in size and are grainy when printed, it kind of doesn't equal the work you put into just getting there. At least at home I can be miserable and tired in comfort, lol.}}

I took Autumn's advice and used the many PhotoShop actions generously offered by The CoffeeShop to get some glorious results.And so then I edited our sweet dreamy photos (including the ones above) and came out with a few favorites: 

I love to learn to do new things! Have you learned any new skills lately??