Photo edges and blurring background

Hi, I have Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 that came with a scanner I purchased.  To date I have not used the software and the main reason I wanted to learn how to use it was because I make hand made cards, and I take a photo of each card and place it on my blog.  I would like to know how to soften the edges of the card and make the background blurry so you only see the card and not the other things in the background.  To see an example of what I am talking about here is the link to my blog:
http://simplyhavingfunwithstamps5.blogspot.com/
I would like to know if photoshop elements 3 is able to achieve this task, and if so what it is called.
Where I live we don't have a bookstore, so I have been searching online (in Australia) for text and came across one called Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 in a Snap by Jennifer Fulton.  This text seems straight to the point type of text.  I wondered if anyone had any reviews on this text or if there is any that people could recommend.  I am not into jargon based text, but something simply written with pictures.  I have previously used visual text which I found to be also very good.
Thank you.

To blur the background:
Select the card using the various selection tools, invert the selection, and apply a Gaussian blur as in this example from your blog:
Since the card has straight sides I used the Polygonal Lasso to make the selection.
To soften the edges of selection, feather the selection 1 or 2 pixels. You can enter the feather value either in the Feather box on the tools options bar before making the selection, or via Select > Feather after making the selection (I prefer the latter).
If you want a solid background instead of a blur, there are severals ways to do this. Perhaps the most versatile is with a Solid Color fill layer. After you have made the inverted selection, click the "Create new fill or adjustment layer" icon in the Layers Palette, and choose Solid Color. This brings up the Color Picker where you click on the color you want. You can also create the fill layer via Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color.  The advantage of the fill layer is that you can easily change the color later: double-click the Layer thumbnail in the Layers Palette to bring up the Color Picker again and click your new color.

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