My Memories Review and Giveaway

The nice people at My Memories gave me a review copy of their software and a free copy to give away! How cool is that? I have been pecking away at using the software in-between learning Rhino and it's powerful simplicity is refreshing. Contest details are below the image.

One category that has frequently fallen flat is card making and scrapbooking software, so I was delighted to give My Memories Suite a go. I have been there and done that so many times, with a pile of CDs from the past 15 years, which have all disappointed in some way. Either it's too complicated to get something done quickly, or too simple to be creative enough. Or they come with bargain bin clip art and a mix of different features and I end up fixing things in CorelDraw later. MS Publisher and Avery's DesignPro software are pretty much only good for label making :D Why can't there be one program that does it all?

My Memories Suite seems to do that and more. I was able to quickly make some 12x12" pages and get my photos in there fast with the pre-designed templates. Of course, you can create your own designs or go with a "digital kit" that contains all the co-ordinating materials to create a cohesive theme. One thing that really gets me hung up with real scrapbooking is not having colours that co-ordinate or missing some little element. Or I get too hung up on the layout and never get anything done. This way I can quickly change things up without getting precious about using the good materials. I like the digital work area that lets me see everything at a glance, as you can see below (click for a larger image). Trim guides are pretty handy and warnings pop up when it looks like the pages may be trimmed when bound in a book. There are options for multimedia scrapbooks as well, and you can add music and video. Whew! I could really go on all day about all the features they packed into this program. If you can use Microsoft Word, you can definitely use this program right away without reading the manual (although it helps :-))



Give away time!

I like to keep give aways simple, so everyone who leaves a comment will have a chance to win. I'll write everyone's name on a piece of paper and Muffin will randomly pick one :-) Contest will close at 9pm MTN on February 25. One entry per individual person.

Be Mine?

It is so nice to be able to do normal people things today - thanks to the long weekend here in Alberta, I don't have class, which means I have time to catch up on things (it doesn't mean no homework though, woe!)

A couple of weeks ago I had a great idea - send Valentine's to my friends! But like most of my great ideas, the turnaround time was a little short, so I didn't send as many as I would have liked. It was just so nice to be able to make something. I was in a hurry to get them out the door, so I only had time to take cell phone photos. I made two of each of the following from the crafty stash:

A budgiegram, with a little note :-)


"You're the purr-fect friend!"


My favourite - "It's so tweet...that you like me!" with a Facebook thumbs up on the inside :-)

2013 New Year's Cards

I just have to get this up with a January date stamp on it :-) For the second time, I have sent out New Year's cards instead of Christmas cards...mostly because I fail miserably at doing Christmas cards. I figure it's always nice to get something in the new year anyway. Now that I'm checking the blog archive, I realized I didn't post pictures of the 2012 cards. Gee! That's what I get for putting Muffin in charge of things. Here's what they looked like:

I have a Pazzles craft cutter, and after fiddling around with the text for about an hour, I found a font that I liked. The tricky part was cutting them out of the glitter cardstock. It took a while to find the right pressure - the cardstock was actually heavyweight cardboard and the chipboard setting was too light. But once that was done, it was just a little bit of glue before they were off to friends and family. If you have a Pazzles, I have posted the cutting file for sale on Artfire. Just $2 gets you cutting right away.

The pink one is the only one that was glittered on plain paper. Glittering took a surprising long time, so I quickly abandoned that. Not that the glitter cardstock was much better - glitter still got everywhere :-D

How I Spend My Tuesday Nights

Certainly not league bowling :). This English class is all about graphic novels and we're looking at a bunch of them - it helps that I own most of them too. I'm just missing Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan:

The first one we're looking at is Alan Moore's Watchmen, which is one of the most influential graphic novels of all time. It's an extremely well planned book and it would be possible to vastly under read it. There are a lot of repeating themes and motifs, and even though I have read it a few times now, there was still a lot of things I missed, including some atrocious puns. It is a violent book, but the themes of nostalgia, comics history and pastiche are very interesting. It's funny to be able to put something usually considered "low culture" into such elevated terms as "post-modern narrative of multiple voices". I better stop before I sound more like an essay instead of a blog post :-) Stay tuned for some notes on my other class!

2013...

So...how has that first week of 2013 gone? Still mulling some new years resolutions. Of course, some people don't believe in them, but I found myself thinking "less is more" mostly. Perhaps it was because I finally had a chance to chuck a lot of stuff during Christmas break. But, when you think about it, most resolutions centre around doing more.

I quickly found so many ways to get on this mantra. This is the time of year where everyone is emailing special offers. Unsubscribe from a lot of those puppies! Less email, less temptation, w00t!

It's also a good time to look at other things you may subscribe too, but these things actually cost money. I cancelled a few website subscriptions, because like those gym memberships, you find they're not being used. However, the gym membership is not something I'm giving up on. There's a World Health near ACAD and I plan on hitting the treadmill after class on Saturdays.

This might be a little difficult, but I'm going to try and stay out of Michaels too! I spend a lot there :) My husband is skeptical and so are my guy friends. It's an expensive love affair. But I have so much stash, and I'm with Craftymoose in finding more ways to use it up.

Lastly, there are those small fees that divert nickels and dimes from your savings. The bonus of this time of year is having the peace to sit down and examine a new budget. I was shocked to discover that we were paying way too much in banking fees the other night. Not just a little shock, but a big shock. We were on the wrong plan where every extra transaction over the limit was costing $1. Sometimes when thinking up the big goals, we forget about the little goals. Ah well! Back on track now. Wishing all the best for 2013...

Temple Run Review - Fun!

Happy New Year! It was a great sunny day here in Calgary to kick off 2013.

Last night though we wound down the year with friends. Each year I like to buy them a new board game, and this year it was Temple Run. If it sounds familiar, it's because it's just one of the many smartphone games that have made the jump offline.

I couldn't find many reviews for it online, so I hemmed and hawed about purchasing it, especially since it was $25. The good news is that it is a fun speed based game for four people. It's essentially a dice game. Players roll six dice and can re-roll before the tiki timer runs out. The player not only moves his pawn, but the demon monkey as well.

The game board is made of five square panels that get flipped and moved to create a continuous path - very clever!

We played it on easy mode and found it a little tough at first. The trouble is, it's too easy to die. If the monkey doesn't catch up to you, chances are you'll run into an obstacle. Each game we played lasted less than 10 minutes. I think a longer play time would be far more satisfying - there's lots of room for house rules here!

Oh, December!

December has really been a weird and wacky month. It's like 2012 saved up the best (and worst) for last.

Calgary finally got a chinook yesterday - a warm wind that changes the temperature drastically. It went from -23C to -1 in the course of a day. Snowy streets turned to slush *like that*.

It has been plain cold here for most of the month. I really wanted to check out the opening celebrations of the West LRT leg, but it was very cold that day! A ten minute walk to the bus stop froze my legs and I just couldn't go on. It was a real bummer, as that day was also $1.43 admission to the zoo! Brrr!

And speaking of brrr, the flame sensor wasn't working right in our furnace. The repairmen from Fagnan's Furnace noticed that the igniter had also bubbled and was on its way out. Thank goodness we got this fixed! I had to throw comforters over the bird cages while the furnace was off. I really like Fagnan's - we get them to clean our furnace and they're always great.

Then it looked like we weren't going to have a white Christmas - but Old Man Winter didn't forget. The trouble was that the temperature dropped again to a bone chilling -25-27C. With the extra wind, it felt even colder - just running to the super mailbox seemed like an ordeal.

I had lots of good times visiting with old co-workers, friends and family too. I would show you some of these good times, but my smartphone died on December 24th! I was so bummed - I suspect the battery died - and the solutions I found online just didn't work. Poor little smartphone! I had some serious anxiety without it.

"What's the temperature?" my husband asked as we waited for the car to warm up.

"I don't know, I don't have a smartphone!" I wailed.

"What time is it?" he asked another time.

"I don't know, I don't have a smartphone!" I wailed.

And so forth. It's hard to believe how much one can depend on these little devices. Fortunately the Bell store was open on Boxing Day and now I have a sweet Samsung Galaxy 3. It's so big and fast! And everything is at my fingertips again :-)