My First Photo Manipulation

Well as many of you know I have been busy as a bee learning Photoshop this year with the help of Lynda.com and other online tutorials and I just finished my first photo manipulation. I started with a photo Monica T did of my DD when she was about 4-5 years old. First let me say that Monica's photos are so perfect and stunning in the own right it makes a photo manipulation easy because the subject (my DD) is already complete.
I have had a few people ask what I did to this photo, so here is a run down of the layers and steps involved with this photo manipulation. In total I added about 15 layers and it took about 6 hours. first I just changed the background in the window to a photo of Prague in winter, and to made the window have a slight ripple effect like old glass would have. After that I added the window dividers and created a beveled glass effect.The window needed a light source so I could show where the light source in the composition was coming from. I think this adds so much to the photo. Then I added the trees, and gave them some highlights and shadows. I layered the stair with real stone stairs to depth and realism, changed the flowers, added some more length to my DD's hair, and added a warm filter to lots of  highlights and shadows.

So here is the final results!

and here was the original!

Like I said the original was already stunning a just had a bit of fun with it!