My Birthday in Pictures

I had a really lovely birthday last week, here are a few photos:

I got these flowers from my boss at work, so sweet of her!

James and I went to a fabulous restaurant called The Lobster Pot. We had a surprise tasting menu with 8 courses!

James was wearing his snazzy new shoes!

James gave me this watch as a birthday pressie, I love it!

This was one of our favourites: perch with the most delicious basil sauce and carrot puré.

The inside of the restaurant is decorated as if you were on a boat, very charming!

Lobster with mushrooms and a sauce with Pernod, mmm!


Crépe with crème brûlée inside, it was like two delicious desserts in one!

Here are some other cute things I got from my friends Josefine and Lauren:

A beautifully packaged soap...

typewriter stamp set...

and super cute chopsticks!

Introducing: Chloe of "A Day in My Wheels"

Hi lovelies!

Today I would like you to meet my fabulous sponsor Chloe! Chloe writes the blog 'A Day in My Wheels'. She's an awesome lady and I'd love it if you'd check her blog out and say hi!

Hi all!

I’m Chloe, 20, Northern and lover of all things lovely! At 16 I had an accident that left me paralysed. I decided from day 1, once the drugs wore off, that I wouldn’t let it stop me doing anything. My blog is about life on wheels, my love of family, food and film, with some added extra’s (keep it clean). I share my ups & downs, my loves & hates and maybe learn something new along the way...

Join in for a weekly round up of tv, film, news, music & pics, yummy recipies and the fun and dramas of my life!

Photoshop Tutorial: Learn Basic Photo Editing to Enhance Colours/Light/Contrast

Hi everyone!

Here is a tutorial I've been working on for anyone that is new to photo editing. I wanted to show you two very easy ways to dramatically enhance the colours, contrast and light balance in your photos. I work in Photoshop, but I think that the methods I show would be fairly similar in other photo editing software.

So, if you look at the image above, you can see how much you can improve photos that come out a bit dull and dark, but this is also a great way to make good shots stand out even more!

I am going to use this photo to show you the technique.

The first thing I always do with a new photo is to adjust the Levels. You can find the levels under Image/Adjustments/Levels, or press ctrl+L, or apple+L on macs.

When you have opened the Levels window you'll see this black "mountain". Drag the little black marker and the little white marker so that they are right at the start and the end of the "mountain". Like this:

Click OK. Now you have adjusted the light/dark balance and contrast of the photo!

Now we are going to enhance the contrast further and make the colours really pop. This will be done in the Layers panel, it's usually situated at the bottom right corner of your screen, if not go to Windows/Layers.

Now you're gonna copy the Background layer, do that by grabbing hold of it and dragging it to the "Create a new layer" icon (bottom right of your layers panel).

When you have your new layer, click on the menu where it says "Normal" and change it to "Screen".

Copy another layer by doing the same thing - drag the Background layer to the same icon again - and change this one to "Soft Light".

Now adjust the opacity of your two layers. I usually set the Screen one to about 30% and the Soft Light to 80%. But this is up to you to decide when the photo looks best. Sometimes if a photo is very dark I put the Screen layer's opacity up.

Lastly, merge all the layers by going to Layers/Flatten Image.

Below you can see the photo before and after editing.

Here are some other before and afters using these techniques:

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial!

The Rest of My Week in Sweden

Thanks for the birthday wishes sweethearts! I had a very nice relaxing birthday, on Saturday James and I are going to a restaurant called The Lobster Pot, it's a French restaurant that mainly do seafood. We have been there once before, it was fabulous so we've been wanting to go back ever since, really looking forward!

Here are some pics from the rest of our week in Sweden. In addition to looking at wedding venues we also had time for two parties...

The first one was my brother's (actual) birthday. Peter had made lots of yummy food.

Peter's friend Annelie.

It was a lovely chilled out summer party.

I gave Peter my best recipe for NY blueberry cheesecake, it was sooo good!

Candy "cactus"

And of course I had to make a face cake! I will soon post a tutorial on how to make one, I promise!

The next party was on our last night in Sweden, it was a traditional crayfish party at my friend (and bridesmaid!) Tove's summer house. Tove has been organising these parties for four years now, t's so much fun! Both James and I love crayfish, it was the perfect way to end our stay!

Their place is beautiful, the view over a lake is amazing!

Lovely Sofia (also one of my bridesmaids!) was there.

It was the first time James had been to a crayfish party, he loved it!

The hosts Jonas and Tove.

I didn't take too many photos this year but if you'd like to see some from last year's crayfish party click here.

It's My Birthday Today!

I'm 28, how did this happen? :)