Fix-It Friday #44

There is an adorable "fix-it" over on iHeartFaces today!
Check out this sweet before:

And here's what I did with it:
After cropping, I adjusted brightness/contrast until I liked the effect, then used the dodge tool to brighten up her face. I then ran Pioneer Woman's "Funky" action and adjusted the opacity of some of the layers. Finally, my edge burn action wasn't working well, so I manually burned the edges myself. And Voila!

Photoshop Tutorial - Lens Flare

One of the very best things about iheartfaces is all the tutorials they provide!! Today they have one by Rita from CoffeeShop photo-editing blog about how to create a lens flare during editing if you can't quite capture it SOOC. As an added bonus, they included a FREE action to download! Honestly, whenever I see the free action, I normally take the easy way out, download the action, and just skim over the tutorial. But this time I gave th manual editing a try! Here are my results:

The original picture I used:

My manual fix:


And the lens flare action (with adjusting the opacity on just a couple layers):

Banana Ginger Ale Pancakes

So this morning I made up a new recipe for banana pancakes. I used whole wheat flour, and have been searching for a way to make whole wheat pancakes and waffles not so heavy and "wheaty," for a lack of a better word. My friend Anita, an amazing cook who makes the healthiest, yet delicious treats, had heard that you can use club soda in the batter to counteract the heaviness. Well I didn't have any club soda at the house, but I mean, ginger ale is just as fizzy, right?! Well it worked! I made a test round without the ginger ale, and then the rest with it, and it really did make them lighter! Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all purpose flour
2 Tbs granulated sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 ripe banana
1 beaten egg
1 cup skim milk
1/8 cup ginger ale
1 Tbs canola oil
1 tsp vanilla

Sift together all dry ingredients (flour through cinnamon). In a separate bowl, mash banana with fork until pretty smooth. Add to the banana all the wet ingredients (egg through vanilla) and mix together. Add flour mixture in, and stir until blended, but still slightly lumpy. Pour batter onto hot griddle coated with cooking spray. Flip when bubbly and the edges are dry.

Enjoy with pure maple syrup or banana slices and chopped pecans!