Giveaway: My Memories Suite

Guys, this is the first giveaway I've ever hosted. Eep!

So, I like to scrapbook. I see it as a good way to preserve memories. It's family history, people! And I like that it gives me a better way to tell a story than a regular photo album would.

I started out with regular ol' scrapbooking, then looked into digital scrapbooking a bit. Digital scrapbooking is pretty awesome, because there's no mess. And I don't have to worry about gluing something down and regretting it. Drag and drop! But I've never been able to afford digital scrapbooking software.

So! Imagine my excitement when I was contacted to do a giveaway for MyMemories.com. "Heck, yes!" I said (in my head, not out loud). They let me download their My Memories Suite software so I could try it out, tell y'all about it, and then give a free copy to one of you lucky readers.

I've never used any fancy-pants scrapbooking or photo editing software. So it took me a little while to figure out what I was doing with My Memories Suite. But once I got the hang of it, it was fun and easy to use. Check out this page I made:

My Memories Suite comes with lots of templates that you can use, or you can start from a blank page. It also comes with several backgrounds and embellishments to use in your projects. (I made the page up there just with elements that came with the software.) Then, if you're interested, you can visit MyMemories.com to download more backgrounds and embellishments--a few are free, and the rest are reasonably priced.

The fine people at My Memories also told me that you can use this My Memories Suite to make things like cards and calendars. Fun, right?

How to enter the giveaway:

Comment on this post. You don't have to be a blogger--just make sure you leave a name and e-mail address so I can contact you if you win.

For one additional entry:

After you've entered the giveaway once, you can enter once more by visiting MyMemories.com, looking around a bit, and then coming back and commenting with your favorite thing that you saw there.

This giveaway will be open until next Friday, June 3rd. I'll announce a winner on Saturday, June 4th. The winner will receive a promo code to get My Memories Suite for free (a $39.97 value).

If you just can't wait, MyMemories is also offering My Memories Suite at a $10 limited discount for you guys. Just use the code STMMMS86818. This code expires Monday, June 6th.

Life Is De Bubbles!

Go ahead and sing along. I did. Happy Friday!

P.S. I'll be doing my VERY FIRST giveaway soon. Like, really soon. Keep your eyes peeled.

Sites I Like: Kind Over Matter

So, there's this site that I really like. (This is not a paid advertisement, I promise. They have no idea who I am.) I've been visiting Kind Over Matter for a long time, although I don't go there as often anymore--I guess because they've been putting up longer posts and fewer pictures. They're still awesome, but the uplifting photos and quotes were the reason I started visiting.

Anyway, I still like to head over there once in awhile for a little mood-lift.

(Yeah, I stole this from them. It's my desktop background right now.)

What Matters Most

"Often we assume that they must know how much we love them. But we should never assume. We should let them know."

Me and My Wii

So, we have a Wii. It looks kind of like this:

only with more fingerprints and whatnot. My brother-in-law was buying and selling used Wiis for awhile, and he gave us one of them for Christmas. He's kind of awesome like that.

Anyway, I was thinking about our Wii the other day (yeah, weird, but stick with me here). And I was thinking about how, just based on the fact that we have one, a person could think that we could afford a Wii. How much does a Wii even go for these days? I have no idea.

Well, however much a Wii costs, I'll tell you right now that we can't afford to buy one. Not even a used one. We can't really afford anything but basics right now. And we won't be able to for a long time--Isaac will be in school for a couple more years, at least. So for now we manage our money as well as we can, and we have an EBT card (that's fancy-talk for food stamps), and we're on Medicaid. That's just how things are for now, and I've accepted that.

So I guess there are a couple of points here--one that I wasn't really trying to make, and one that I was. The one I wasn't trying to make, but probably should anyway, is:

1) We're grateful for the frillions of things we have that we could never pay for on our own. Anyone see a gospel analogy there? Ummm...I didn't really mean to make a connection between a Wii and the Atonement, but there ya go. You have my permission to use that one in sacrament meeting.

But my REAL point is:

2) I see people, all the time, who have things that we can't afford. I wouldn't really say that I'm jealous of them, because I'm pretty content with what we have, but I do usually assume that they're better off than we are. Not in a good or bad way, just...as a fact, I guess.

But really, I shouldn't assume that about anyone. Because maybe they saved up forever to buy whatever-it-is. Or maybe they went way into debt to get it (hey, it happens). Or maybe they found it on the side of the road. Or maybe it was given to them. Or maybe they really can afford it, in which case, good for them. It doesn't really matter.

So my real, real, REAL point is:

3) I can't judge a person's situation by what they have. Because we're flat broke...and we have a Wii.

Guess What Came in the Mail Yesterday!

...on second thought, don't bother. You won't guess.

 
 It was a box...

 
 ...and in the box was this...cube. Two black garbage bags and a whole lotta packing tape wrapped around something...

 
 Bobo! Bobo's been living in Utah for awhile. (Not really living. Bobo's not real.)

 
 Bobo* was given to us when Little Boy visited the hospital last December. (He's fine now. He had a stomach virus and got super dehydrated. We were only there for a day and a half.) It was almost Christmas, so I guess people were being extra generous?

Anyway, we were in Utah, visiting Little Boy's grandparents. And we couldn't bring Bobo back home on the plane. So The Grandparents let Bobo stay over for a bit.

Bobo also inspired the stuffed-animal drive that my mom and I had for the local hospital last month. Bobo's big, and probably pretty expensive. I wanted to pay it forward. We'll be having another drive in a few months.

 
Welcome home, Bobes.

*We named Bobo after King Juan el Bobo, who was a character on an episode of Dora that was on at the hospital. Isaac, who speaks better Spanish than I do, says that "bobo" means "silly."

Something We Should All Think About

I just posted on my homeschool blog, which means that I wouldn't ordinarily make a post here tonight. But something came up over there that I think I should mention here, too.

This is important to me, and it's something that I take very seriously. Some of you guys are my friends, and I want us all to be safe. Some of you are people that I don't know but are probably lovely people. I know that there are several people who read this blog that I don't know. My site stats show that.

And the thing is, some of you (sorry) might not be lovely people. That's why I'm careful about what I post here--for example, why I don't use Little Boy's real name.

Microsoft has some good, straightforward information on blog safety. Scroll down to "Basic Guidelines for Bloggers." It's information that you're supposed to tell your kids, but these tips really go for everyone.

And here's a more personal take from a fellow blogger. Scary, but worth reading.

A Crisis of Textbook Proportions

So...I've mentioned a few (or a million) times that I'm finishing my bachelor's degree through BYU Independent Study. I'm sorry if you guys are getting tired of me blabbering about this all the time (unless you're not tired of it...in which case, you haven't been reading my blog often enough. ;)

Anyway, I just finished up a class on the New Testament and registered for a class on Creative Writing. Super excited about this one, because I'm a nerd like that. (I may have mentioned that nerd thing, too.) And I was also super excited to order the textbooks.

I needed three books for this class. Two of them showed up at my house within a week. One did not:

Isn't that cover gross? Just sayin'.

Anyways, I checked the mail every stinkin' day. I had to have that book to start my classwork--it's used right from lesson 1. One week went by, two weeks went by...

...and then I lost track of how long I'd been waiting. But it felt like fooooreeeeveeerrrr.

So then last Saturday, I woke up, sat up in bed, looked across the room at the bookshelf opposite my bed, AND THE EXACT SAME BOOK WAS ALREADY SITTING ON MY SHELF.

Well, not exactly the same. It was an earlier edition. I'd bought it when it was new, in 2003, for some class or other. And then I saved it, just in case I needed it for another class. Turns out that I DID NEED IT. Eight years later. After I'd forgotten that I had it.

I flipped through the course manual to see if my edition was close enough that I could get started with my classwork--and it was. So I did a happy dance and got started.

(Nerd.)

So yeah, that was Saturday. The book I'd bought arrived in the mail on Monday. Heh. And I really am going to need that one; it has some stuff in it that my moldy-oldy 2003 edition doesn't have.

So here I go, writing creatively...and it looks like this class might not interfere with my blogging time. More on that later. Because school is really all I ever talk about anymore.

The Women in Our Lives

I just want to take a minute to celebrate all of the women in our lives--I know so many women who, whether they are mothers or not, are so strong and faithful. We all nurture, and we all mother in some way.

Sweepin' the Clouds Away

Play time! We had a sunny-ish day (not today--this was a couple weeks ago), so Little Boy and I headed to the playground.

 

He's obsessed with slides. They're not as scary as swings.

 

 So Little Boy got some energy out...

 

 ...and I got to chill out. Good day.

Our Easter Eggs

I didn't take very many pictures of Easter this year. But I have a million pictures of the Easter eggs that we dyed, so...I'm inflicting them on you. Ha ha!

Anyways, every year I try to do something different with our Easter eggs. One year we did rubber bands, and we've done crayons...stuff like that. So this year, the first thing I came up with was natural dyes*--and, being the lazy girl that I am, I just went with it. Good thing it worked out, huh?

This isn't the greatest photo, but it's decent enough to show the colors that we ended up with. (I was kind of afraid we'd just end up with different shades of brown.) The orange-y colors were a bit orangier in real life, and the spinach eggs were a nice gray-green that doesn't really come out in the photo. Oh, and the egg in the upper right corner says "dandelion petals." Kinda hard to read that one.



Pretty, right? We got a way wider range of color than I thought we would. They were a bit more work than regular Easter eggs, and I don't think I'll do them again for a few years, but I loved how they turned out.

* I don't have anything against regular Easter egg or food dyes. Well, maybe a little. But really, I just wanted to do something different this year.

A Little Linkiness

So, I was gallivanting across the blogosphere this evening when I came across this post: Be a Force of Good I highly recommend it.