Chicago's finest

Went to visit my BF and hubby in Chicago this weekend.  Had a lovely time and totally messed up the kids' schedules.  Late nights, crazy car rides, no naps... when we got home last night I don't think bug knew what to do with himself.  He woke up 8 times in a 5 hour period.  Traveling with kids is awesome.  BUT, it was lots of fun, and too short and I kind of wanted to stay there for a while.  We went to the Museum of Science and Industry and most of these pictures were taken there.

1. Self-Portrait

crazy mirrors in the "imaging" exhibit at the museum

2. Handmade

the fall wreath I made

3. Orange

"This baby is so good looking... Muwah!"  (the museum had some CA-RAZY lighting to work with on the photography front... this lighting made everything look orange and red.)

4. Candle

this photo was actually an accident.  But it fits the theme!

5. Traffic light/sign

this is as good as it gets on I-94 traveling at light speed.

The theme at iheartfaces is "silhouettes."  

This is one of my favorite silhouette shots EVER.

(But I really like this one, too.)

Trendy Treehouse started "fix my photo Fridays" a little while ago.  

Here's the photo this week:

Here's my fix:

I don't have photoshop - although I would love it, it's not in the budget at the moment.  I usually use picnik and I LOVE it.  But for some reason picnik wasn't working for me last night, so I used PHIXR online.

1.  I adjusted the brightness, exposure and contrast.

2.  I used an advanced effect called "magic halo" - I lowered the preset to 3 and lowered the opacity quite a bit.

3.  I used the normalize in color options, decreasing the opacity.

4.  I cropped manually.