Lovin' Spring!

Our bird feeders are busy with hungry birds these days.  To my chagrin, we have alot of invasive species -- common grackles and starlings always seem to be bullying the smaller birds.  But we discovered a kind that I had never seen before, so I took my camera out and sat very still to try to get a pic of this shy little bird:

Well, OK, I guess it's still hard to see what it is, but we identified it as a white-crowned sparrow, and his little striped head is very striking.  I'll see if I can get a better shot, or maybe play with one that I have to make him stand out a little more.  I'd better hurry, the bird book says they will be heading north very soon.

Here's another fave from my watch this morning:

A cardinal and a "common" sparrow!

Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday challange this week is to use Photoshop to enhance a photograph containing a tea cup or coffee mug.  I played around and came up with this one:

I added some fallen magnolia blossoms, and used one of Kim's textures (I think "silence") and then brushed away some of the extra texture from the teacups so they would be nice and shiny.  Makes me want to have a cup of tea!

New Opportunities

I've been playing around with the look of my blog lately, mostly by trial and error and not having the slightest idea what I am doing.  But I did recently learn how to make a blog banner, and I think this one turned out OK for a first try.  The inspiration for this banner came from Kim Klassen's Photoshop Skinny-Mini eCourse.  It's a free 10-day class, but jam-packed with so much information and inspiration.  If you have Photoshop or Photoshop Elements and want to learn more, be sure to check it out!  You can get to her site with the button on the right (and down a little).  She also has a Photoshop Essentials class which begins the end of this month, and I can't wait to get started with it!

A couple more examples of what I have done as a result of her class are here:

Here's the before shot:

Another one that I cropped and added layers to:

The "before" of this one:

I have to get busy -- I'm participating in a craft show at our church in a couple of weeks.  More about that in a future post.  In the meantime, I hope spring is arriving soon in your corner of the world!