The following steps are what I generally do in editing my images.  These things obviously depend on the original photo, so my steps vary.  Some of these commands are not in Photoshop Elements, so I will use the terminology of Photoshop CS.  When any non-trivial adjustment is performed, I generally use an Adjustment Layer.
 

• I shoot an 8MP Nikon 8700 digital camera in RAW file format (not JPG or TIFF), and each image requires about 13 MBytes of memory.  I shoot in Aperture Priority mode with the ISO at 50 whenever possible.  I adjust the Aperture so that I can get the greatest depth of field at an appropriate speed.  In tough lighting conditions, I set the EV exposure to -0.3 or -0.7 because the negative EV will cause a slight under-exposure to avoid washing out the whites.  Under-exposures are easy to correct, while over-exposures are usually bad news.
• Late addition!  I now shoot an 8MP Canon 20D digital SLR, also in RAW format in much the same way as the Nikon noted above.  I shoot in RAW mode with the Parameter 2 setting, which uses low contrast and no sharpening.  I capture the image using Adobe RGB color space, I convert it to Photoshop CS 16 bit, also using Adobe RGB color space.  I print it on a Canon I9900 printer, also using Adobe RGB color space.  In other words, I stay with Adobe RGB color space all the time for editing and printing.  The only time I change color space is for creating an image for the web or for some other software that will display the image that requires sRGB color space.  In that case, I duplicate or SAVE AS the image to a different file and convert that color space to sRGB color space.
• I convert the RAW image file to a 16 bit Photoshop file.  I find that Nikon Capture 4.0 does a better job on this conversion that Photoshop CS's RAW converter for Nikon RAW images.  I use the latest version of Canon's Digital Professional software for converting my Canon RAW images.  Check their web site for updates.  I make sure that no sharpening takes place in the conversion.
• 16 bits for each of the three colors is used in order to obtain the best results.  The files sizes are large, about 50 MBytes each.
• I usually select the sky and save the selection for later.  I usually select other very light (near white) colors using the Magic Wand and I save the selection for later use.
• If a Levels adjustment is needed, I do this early on, but I usually am a little conservative on stretching out the histogram completely so that I have some room to move if I add some contrast.  Depending on the image, I may do the levels selectively, and I might use separate color channels in some cases.
• For the non-Sky selection, I sometimes use the Shadow/Highlight... in the Image > Adjustment menu.  This is not available in Elements, and it is used to bring detail out of dark shadow areas.  In the Shadows section, I change the Amount setting to the 20% to 30% range (the default of 50% is usually too much).  In the Adjustment settings, I increase the Midtone Contrast to 10% to 20%.  The net result is that shadow or areas are lightened up a little and some contrast is added to the midtones.
• I deselect the sky, the real light areas, and real dark areas, and then I apply a little contrast and/or add a little color saturation.
• For the sky, I might apply a cooling photo filter if the sky is a boring off-white color.  If the sky has some nice clouds, I use Curves to darken only the darks.  This is accomplished by pulling down the curve on the low/dark left end.
• Before sharpening the image, I usually duplicate the image first and often flatten the image at this time so that I now have a second file.  I apply sharpening selectively.  The sky should have minimal or no sharpening at all.  Avoid sharpening an area that has significant digital noise because the noise will become much more visible.
• For printing, I use a Canon I9900 printer.  Before making a large print, I duplicate or SAVE AS my 16 bit per channel image to a separate file, flatten the image, and then I resize it so that it will be at least 300 pixels per inch.  I do this by repeatedly resizing it up by about 110% using a macro (an "action").  After the resizing, I convert it to 8 bits per color channel because the printer has that many colors and because the file size would be excessive.
• I generally end up with at least 3 different files and i back them up on an external hard drive because my hard drive can't store all this stuff.

If the image is shot in very low light, I may reduce the amount of digital noise early on in the editing process, and definitely before any contrast, saturation, or sharpening is added.  Quite often, only the sky will have much noise, so that should be done selectively.   I use third party software, Neat Image, in 16 bit mode as a plug-in with Photoshop CS.