Graphics+Activity+1

Okay, so this is my first foray into Photoshop. I have done light touch up work on pictures before, but I have never tried to manipulate one. I hate taking pictures of myself, so my first problem was finding a picture of me. After I picked one, I did the following:

I cropped out the sides and part of the top of the photo. I guess I should have used layers, but I am still a little lost on using them. So I dove right in with the lasso tool set to magnetic to create a selection around my face. I chose the fill tool and opened the color swatches selection. I went to town picking colors and combinations. Next, just to see what would happen, I used the blur tool and drug it first horizontally and then vertically over the entire photo. I resized the photo by going to Image - Resize - Image Size. I kept the constrain properties checked and changed the image to 150 x 178 pixels.