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!!!