Playing with Nostalgia

So sorry to have been gone so long, but my brain has just been completely fried this pregnancy.  I wasn't able to finish the portraits for the giveaway and I have been struggling the few times I have attempted writing something.

But I did a little something today!  With the impending arrival of our second child, I've found myself needing to return to the images of the arrival of our first child.  I started playing around with some images from that time and thought I'd share what I came up with.

I miss film, and the soft nostalgia that film grain imparts.  Although I'm kind of against 'faking' things like film looks and film grain, I still do go there at times.  And I've been forever dissatisfied with options that Photoshop Elements offers for adding grain.  So I looked online and found a random grainy photo to model my grain after.  And after much playing and tweaking, I turned this photo my husband took of me holding my son at 2 days old...

...into this:

I'm pretty pleased with it.  It's not perfect, and this experiment makes me want to just return to film to get the real beauty back.  Ahhh... film is just so beautiful.  But still, I kind of like what I achieved here.

[EDIT] I'm a little frustrated with the sharpening that I think Flickr did here.  It's softer in the version I made.  Looks better if you click through and view it larger.