From South of Mickey's Home...

Well, in spite of all the boxes in our home, we left to visit family in South FL...right after Ernesto gave them a TON of rain! And you know, for being the "Sunshine State" we sure have seen our fair share of rain...everyday of our trip! That's ok though. The girls and their daddy managed to have a blast at a local county water park and basically had it all to themselves because everyone else is in school!

Now, a while back I told you I got the Memory Mixer software from Lasting Impressions and told you I would write a review once I had a chance to play with it. I have to tell you that my mind has been spinning with all the possibilities of this software!

First of all, I LOVE the variety and selection of digital embellishments that come with the program. You have the option to buy more, but it sure would take a while to go through everything they already have loaded into the program. One nice thing is that you can stretch and turn the embellishments without the image getting distorted. VERY impressive!

Now, the things that really got my creative juices flowing have to do with the special options like adding movies and music. Imagine having a digital prom album for your daughter that includes the prom theme song!! Or a wedding album with photos of the bride and groom taking their first dance WITH the music of the song playing in the background! Or, better yet, include a video of them dancing from the wedding! Is this AWESOME or what??

I think the thing about this program is that it is very obvious that the designers either did a TON of research on scrapbooking or they're scrapbookers themselves. I did two pages with photos of my three year old in just a few minutes...much less time that it would have taken me to get all my scrapbook gear out, find the photos, coordinate all the embellishments, and put the page together.

Am I going to stop scrapbooking the traditional way now? Not likely, but I will definitely be doing much more videos now that I have a great way to incorporate them into a form I might actually use!

So...I give the Memory Mixer (full version) software a hearty 2 Thumbs Up, WAY UP!! This was my first attempt at digital scrapbooking and I must say it is GREAT for a beginner, but has enough "extras" to please a more advanced user. You have GOT to check it out.

Ok, enough about that. I guess I get a little chatty when I haven't posted in 2 weeks! My question of the week has to do with vacations. I wanted to know if you have ever taken a scrapbook vacation. Have you ever gone on one of those scrapbooking cruises? What about those retreats that seem so wonderful? Let us all know what you've done and give us some pointers!

Well, I better sign off now! In case you didn't know, September is National Sewing Month, so dust off your sewing machine and try stitching on some layouts this month! Hope you had a great Labor Day weekend!

Susan W.