Thursday, April 19, 2012

Beautiful Things

There's a challenge over on the MyMemories blog this week that required the following quote to be incorporated on the page:

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched.
They must be felt with the heart.”
~ Helen Keller 
I thought using a photo from my my friend's January wedding in Key West was perfect for this page.


Jenn from Dancing Princess Designs is hosting this week's challenge and I have a chance to win a gift certificate for purchases from her MyMemories store. Even if I don't win, I had fun making the page!

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Patrick's Pantry Party

My pantry has been a favorite place for my grandson's to play and explore since Dylan first discovered what was behind that door. He was two, just as Patrick is now. Patrick LOVES the pantry. He visits on a regular basis. It might be long enough to grab the animal cookie jar that used to be bigger than him when he first started carrying it around or he might sit and stay a while. Today he stayed a while. Dylan, Pappy and I were invited to join Patrick in his 'house' for a party. Patrick's hospitality was warm and welcoming! We enjoyed animal crackers and Spiderman and Phineas and Ferb fruit snacks and Patrick rattled off other possibilities like syrup, cereal and rice. I can't wait until I get another invitation! There was a speed scrap on the My Memories Facebook page so I took the opportunity to make a page for Patrick's book with a few of the photos that I snagged of the event. Enjoy!

Friday, April 13, 2012

Sharing is Fun!

Many of you know tht I make a digital scrapbook for my grandson's every year and give it to them on their birthday. Right now I am working on a book called "So Much To Do When You Were Two" for Patrick and "Four is Fun" for Dylan. When I first made Dylan's first book "One Wonderful Year" almost five years ago that told the story from his birth to his first birthday I used one of the online photobook sites and simply dropped photos into premade layouts and selected the background colors of the pages. It was a pretty simple affair and I was pretty impressed with myself. By the time I was working on the third book it was becoming a little frustrating that there weren't many ways to make the Halloween pages look spooky or the Christmas pages express the special warmth and love that surrounds the season. 

I started looking around to see how I could make my books more personal. I wanted them to tell a story and capture the essence of our family traditions, special times and memories...the joy of simple summer days and extraordinary moments. I found some digital programs that I thought about trying but they seemed too complicated or too simple or too limited - just not right. Then one day I noticed a photo posted on a friend's Facebook wall that included journaling and embellishments and layers of different colored papers and it was beautiful. I had to find out just how she made it and that is how I discovered My Memories Suite!

I bought the software online, downloaded it right away and started what has become one of my favorite pastimes - documenting and preserving magical memories through digital scrapbooking. Speaking of magical, I think the 88 pages I made for our family trip to The Magic Kingdom in September are pretty magical and so do my grandsons!

 I am completely and totally hooked. The software is easy to use and I can find kits to fit any page I could ever want to create! As a matter of fact, it's so easy to use that shortly after I started using the software I entered one of my pages in a contest on the MyMemories blog and I won! Not only do I love the software, I love the community I have become part of on the MyMemories Facebook page. We share our creations, give encouragement, borrow ideas and learn from one another.

I just finished up this Christmas cookie baking page from last Christmas for Patrick's book. I love the cutout cookies and the background paper that looks like rolled cookie dough! I also like the font that I was able to find that looks like scattered flour and matches the flour on the corners of the photo frames! One of the featues I love best is that My Memories uses any font that you have installed on your computer and I've found some really cute free fonts.

I actually use the software to make all kinds of things. Sometimes I make pages for my friends and I made a scrapbook page for my daughter for Valentine's Day that I exported as a jpeg file, had it printed and then I framed it in a 12x12 frame that I bought at Michael's Craft Store. She really liked it a lot and I am thinking about making similar gifts for people for Christmas.

I think the software is so wonderful that I want to help one of you get started on creating memories and making presents too so I am giving away a free copy of the software to one lucky person. It's at $37.99 value and someone can have it for FREE!

For your chance to win just do the following:
  • Visit and 'Like' the MyMemories Facebook page
  • Visit the My Memories store and find a kit that you like
  • Leave a comment here letting me know which kit you chose and what you think your first 'Suite' My Memories project might be if you win. 
I will pick a random winner of a free copy of My Memories Suite digital scrapbooking software on Monday, May 1. Good luck!!!