I've been developing my “workflow” in Photoshop Elements, and thought I'd share in case anyone is interested.  Before I jump in, let me just say that I highly recommend Scott Kelby's The Photoshop Elements Book for Digital Photographers.  It's a fanstatic step-by-step book that cuts through all of the theory and goes right to the heart of showing you how to do what you want to do.  If you want to learn the in's and out's of Elements, this not the book for you.  But if you want to immediately be productive in Elements and learn by doing, you can't go wrong.

Now for my workflow ..

1. Layer | New Adjustment Layer | Levels ...
1. Adjust the left and right sliders to the left and right edges of the histogram, respectively
2. Layer | New Adjustment Layer | Brightness/Contrast ...
1. Brightness -3, Contrast +7
3. Filter | Sharpen | Unsharp Mask
1. Amount 65%, Radius 4, Threshold 3

Some may say that my Unsharp Mask is a little aggressive, but this is what I developed when shooting up-close portraits of my kids and I tend to not get the focus exactly on the eyes.