Finally going digital

So, this fall I decided I wanted to try my hand at digital scrap booking.  I have never been a very good regular scrap booker.  I mean, I keep books for my kids and all but I just don't have the patience to cut and paste dozens of cutesy bits and pieces on paper to spice up my pages.  Our scrapbooks are mostly just pictures on colorful sheets of paper with printed captions glued nearby.  I do have cute photo books from Snapfish printed for our family every year (sign up for their emails and you get great deals if you are patient), but kids need school papers and pictures and ticket stubs in their memories which don't really translate to a photo book. 

I want to have cute books full of memories for my tykes, I really do, but it just has not really been in me to manage that. 

Until now...

My fabulous sister-in-law, Jenny (I really do have the best bonus sisters in the world) gave me this wonderful scrap booking program and I am completely addicted. As an added bonus you can google search "free digital scrap booking" and find TONS of free pictures and brads and buttons and whatever else that you can download and use.

 I started by making 12 x 12 Halloween pages to go in a spooky project I put together this year.  I printed them at Costco and slid them into plastic sheets and BOOM, done.  No cutting, no pasting, no headache and WOW, the time savings.  I love it. 

But why stop there.  I have always made my own greeting cards mostly because I am too cheap to pay for cute cards and I hate sending dorky packaged ones (why do they always look so ridiculous?).  So, now I have started making them on my fancy new program (which has much cuter stuff than any creative desktop publisher I've had before and is a piece of cake to maneuver).  I still make some cards but often I print up things and then just add buttons or clips or a bit of 3D effect without having to do as much to dress it up.

I've also found the program handy for a couple things in our house.  Following general conference and Elder Holland's awesome priesthood session talk about missionary work (perfect for a quartet or more of future missionaries), we had a family home evening lesson on preparing to be a missionary and sharing the gospel in every day life now.  We committed our kids to be part of that goal and printed up this page for everyone to sign and then hang in our house. 

 Last, but not least, I had the kids help me design some ornaments for our Christmas tree.  We love to add an ornament with a picture of our family every year and every year those are the kids favorite ornaments to hang because there is so much to remember and it's sooo much fun to look back.  We used our scrapbook software to design a couple ornaments, mounted them on chipboard and then laminated them.  They will be fun for us and we'll share some with our Grandma's (close your eyes, moms) to start the holiday season. 

Anyway, I know I'm slow to get on board with this (it is pretty old news), but it has been a great discovery for me.  Any other hold outs out there, just give in, digital scrap booking is FaBuLoUs!!

P.S. Thanks, Jenny!