Ranger Rick's Geocache Trails comes to South Florida

Ranger Rick, the National Wildlife Federation's ambassador to kids who want to learn about wildlife and nature, is the host of a new adventure -- geocaching! Ranger Rick Geocache Trails is a fun way to get families outside, learning about the outdoors and exploring the world!

Geocaching has become a popular outdoor activity. Using a GPS device or app, people find caches that others have hidden by using the latitude and longitude coordinates and special clues. Some caches are small (like a pill bottle or film canister), but others are watertight boxes filled with fun treasures that you can collect or swap! It's like being a modern-day treasure hunter. Some caches contain trackable items called travel bugs that people pass along from cache to cache -- some going around the world! When you find a cache, sign your name in the log book inside, then put the cache box back where it was to keep it hidden for the next geocacher. You can also log your visit at the Geocaching site (an account is free). If you really love geocaching, you can even hide your own caches for others to find.

That's what I have done with my sons. We have hidden eight Ranger Rick Geocache Trails caches around the area where we live in South Florida. All of the caches include fun Ranger Rick activities for kids. Some of the caches also contain fun surprises! The parks where the caches are hiding are kid-friendly -- most with playgrounds. And we've tried to make the caches easy to find.

To get started finding a Ranger Rick Geocache Trails cache, start by downloading your special passport. This makes finding the caches more fun, as you can take the stamp inside each cache to mark your passport (and learn about wildlife in the process!). Find all the caches in the trail to fill up your passport with wildlife stamps. It's fun!

There are Ranger Rick Geocache Trails in several states, so if you don't live in South Florida, check for others near you. If you don't find one, maybe you'll want to become a trail host like me so kids in your area will have fun outdoors with their families.

Geocaching is a fun outdoors activity that is now more fun for kids with the Ranger Rick Geocache Trails. You and your kids just might get hooked.

Blog towel

Target is having a sale this week on beach towels -- and it looks like the store is really getting into social media!

Speaking of tech stuff, check out the Target app. It has the weekly flyer and allows you to create a shopping list with a drag-and-drop function. Which, as many Target lovers know, just might help you stay on track and buy only the things on your list. In theory....

5 ways to edit digital photos and create beautiful projects

I heart Photoshop.

A magazine friend showed me how to use it back in 2000, and 10 years later, it has gotten better and better! I still rely on Photoshop for everything from simply resizing images for my blog to creating blog headers to cropping pictures to creating digital photo layouts like this one of my Man-cub (two years ago).

Fortunately, you don't have to work at a magazine to use Photoshop and get great results for the everyday pictures you take. Here are some ways I use Photoshop Elements to make fun photo projects!

1. Basic editing. Photoshop Elements is a great entry-level, anyone-can-use-it program to fix pictures. See this picture?



I used Photoshop's "healing brush" to quickly and easily erase some of the bruises from my son's legs (he's a klutz like me!) and get rid of stray crumbs off the floor from that cookie he fell asleep with! Can you tell the difference?



I also may or may not use the healing brush and clone stamp to erase a few wrinkles of my own....

2. Fun changes. If you took a color photo with your camera but want to change it to black and white, it's easy to do with a couple of clicks. I wanted black and white photos for this layout of my preschooler, from around the time of his second birthday:



The images stand out more in black and white here, and the overall layout looks more polished without lots of colors competing against the blue color theme.

3. Creating digital scrapbooking layouts. As you've seen, I have used Photoshop to create layouts on my computer, which I later upload to photo sites and have photo books made. I love it! When it comes to paper and glue, I'm kind of all thumbs, but doing a digital layout to me is easy! Plus, there's no mess to clean up later. I can save my layouts and go back and change them later if I want to improve upon them. I can even e-mail a thumbnail to relatives. It's great! There are lots
of digital scrapbooking sites that sell or even give away kits to get you started.

4. More advanced photo editing. Last year, a photographer friend introduced me to photo actions. These are sort of like mini programs that run within Photoshop to change your image. There are actions of all kinds that sites sell or give as freebies. You can give your photo the retro, aged treatment, give your subject creamy skin or brighten up someone's eyes, as I did for my son in this layout from last year:



It really brings out his eyes! Actions are so much fun to play with, and once you try them, you'll be addicted!

5. Keeping it all organized. I know there is software out there to help organize all your photos, but I have found a file system that works for me. I create a folder on my hard drive for each month. I delete any images that are mistakes (thanks, preschooler!), or blurry, or even those pictures that are just not as good but similar to other images. If/when I have time, I rename the images something that I can later search by, like "babybirth," or "fathersday." Organization is important so that when you are ready to create a layout or find a picture to upload and use on a photo site, you can easily find the picture you're looking for.

I use Photoshop so much that I would be stricken without it. I can't imagine blogging without it. I've used Photoshop to create my sons' birth announcements and birthday invitations and even fun prank photos of friends (in front of backgrounds of places where they have never been! Heh, they are lucky I don't post those pictures here!). When a picture is worth a thousand words, you need Photoshop to really make those pictures speak!

I wrote this blog post while participating in the TwitterMoms and Adobe blogging program, making me eligible to receive a $50 gift card. For more information on how you can participate, click here.

iPod apps my kids love

Some awesome friends gave me an iPod Touch a year and a half ago for helping to take care of their son, and since then my love affair with my iPod has been going strong. I love to check my e-mail and use Twitter and Facebook in the palm of my hand. Once I found out there were iPhone apps for kids, well, I definitely fell even harder for my iPod Touch.

I've downloaded several apps for my preschooler (my baby is intrigued, but more interested in chewing on my iPod) -- some free, some fee -- but these are the ones he enjoys the most:

Itsy Bitsy Spider. This app tells the story of the spider in the famous nursery ryhme/song, but with a twist here and there -- and kids have to touch elements on the screen (like the spider) to advance the story. Cute and fun.

Preschool Music. There are four games here, with birds, sheep, sea creatures and other animals to entertain little ones with rhythm and tunes.

Preschool Adventure. This app is made by the same company as Preschool Music, so the graphics are in the same style. There are six games here for kids to teach colors, numbers, shapes, matching and farm animal sounds, and a game where kids put a monkey's body parts in the right places.

Cat Piano Jr. I admit, this was the first app I downloaded -- for myself! It's only a piano keyboard, but in addition to hearing a piano, you can choose a variety of kitty voices to "sing" the notes. The results can be hysterical.

I love my iPod Touch, but there's room in my heart for the new iPad. It would be great to win one, and I’m participating in a contest at Best Kids Apps, a blog about iPhone apps for kids, for a chance to win an iPad. Which would totally make me an uber cool mom! Or at least feel like one...