Learning how to use photoshop

For Christmas I got photoshop and have been playing around figuring out how to use it.  Here are a few tricks I learned.

Blurring around a portrait to make the face stand out.

Basic photo editing.

Skin smoothing...not that Meg needed it, but because that was the picture I had.

And using a layer mask to selectively make things color vs. b/w.  Again, not that this picture really needed it, but because I was trying to figure it out. :)