A Wordless Wednesday post that is actually virtually … WORDLESS! Miracles do happen….

Dandelions

The most shocking part is…. this photo was taken using my iPhone 4s.

As you all know, I love to scrapbook and since we have just entered a new year, it’s definitely time to be thinking about making sure all of 2011′s memories are ready to share. So when I was asked to review My Memories Suite, a software just for scrapbooking I was very excited.

Deal Alert! For an amazing deal on this software, just visit MyMemories.com and enter the code: STMMMS65638 to get $10 off the My Memories Suite Software or $10 off in the store! Also check out the end of this post for a great giveaway!

If you have been looking for a digital scrapbooking software whether you’re a beginner or have been doing it for awhile you’ll definitely want to check out the features My Memories Suite has to offer! A software that is completely created just for scrapbooking and that allows you to create beautiful pages with just a few clicks of a button.

The pre-installed albums are great for those who really just want a pretty page without having to build it from scratch. The photo templates are amazing for those who want to build the elements portions but want a great layout. Or, if you just want to build a page from the ground up, you can totally do that too.

Purchasing the kits, templates and other items offered in their store is definitely the easiest way to go! From calendar templates and quickpages, to albums and digital scrapbooking kits you are totally covered and they are extremely affordable. There’s even a lot of freebies and great sales and dollar items.

If you have digi-scrap kits already on hand that you’d like to use with the program, you can totally do that too. Although the process takes a few more steps to have the kits at your fingertips, if you love working with this program it will totally be worth it.

Who should buy it? I recommend this software for beginner to intermediate digi-scrappers! I recommend advanced users to check out the software before buying as you may find your collection of kits bogs the program down a little too much and the inability to switch out elements on the fly may be frustrating.

Win it!

That’s right, My Memories is offering you the chance to win My Memories Suite software right here at A Frog In My Soup (value $39.97)! 

How to Enter: There are many ways to enter (and we couldn’t have made it more simple, just check out the bar at the bottom of your screen to do most of the entry options without even leaving the site)! Just make sure you leave a NEW comment for each new entry!

• Tell me why you would like to win My Memories Suite for yourself!
• Visit MyMemories.com and tell me what kit is your favorite.
• Fan Us: Become a Facebook Fan of A Frog In My Soup!!!
• Follow A Frog In My Soup on Twitter
• Tweet It: Just tweet this giveaway with a link to this post and make sure your comment has your twitter handle in it.
• Blog It: Write a post about this giveaway (with a link to this post of course) on your own blog, make sure your comment has a link to your post.
• Share it: Stumble It, Kirtsy It, Digg It, Submit to Mommy Blips: Submit this giveaway to any of these sites and earn an extra entry for each one…and make sure your comment has your Username.
• Follow My Memories Blog
• Follow My Memories on Twitter
• Follow My Memories on Facebook

It is void where prohibited, be sure to read my giveaway policies here. Giveaway ends at noon on Thursday January 26, 2012. This giveaway is open to US addresses only.
Disclosure: I always give honest and forthright reviews and will not present something that poses a conflict of interest &/or that I do not like. My Memories provided me with a copy of My Memories Suite Scrapbooking software to try out and present this review to you. You can read our full disclosure policy here.

Winter has descended upon us turning our average rainy Pacific Northwest into a Winter Wonderland complete with snow plowed piles along the side of the road and a power outage for a few hours tonight as well!

We had the most amazing beautiful chilly, clear day on Friday with a sunset that lit up the world all pink (I was in Heaven)! That quickly turned to snow and ice on Saturday. The contrast was incredible so I had to share it with all of you! Just click each picture to see it larger and I hope all is well and beautiful in your part of the world!

Today was officially the first day of school (for all but CJ who starts tomorrow) and wow the excitement was at insane levels this morning. All of the kiddos (again, except for CJ) were up by 5am…yes, I am sure right about now you are totally wishing you were me (LOL). The ruckus was undeniably excitement and lots of it.

As I was taking photos of the younger boys this morning, celebrating the Twinkies’ first day of kindergarten and the big world of school, I realized that a lot of the tricks to taking good back to school photos boil down to just a few simple tecniques.

Honestly, taking a lot of pictures (mostly un-posed) is the best way to guarantee you’ll end up with at least a few amazing photos of each child.

Where to take the photo.

I like to really focus on taking a few pictures of each child individually – in front of a tree, nice bush, a bus, nice fence, etc. Pick something that’s appealing with good light and of course somewhere your child isn’t likely to end up messy.

What about the bus?

Getting pictures of them boarding the bus can be a lot more challenging. Not wanting to slow down theprocess, sometimes just calling out their name with the camera ready to snap the picture is enough, other times (like my experience today), it’s a photo you may have to resign yourself to not having that year. Of course, the beauty of it is there are plenty more days of boarding the bus ahead so who says you’re limited to taking a photo of only the first day?

Editing

Where your photos can really shine, or take on a very unique appeal is in the editing. There’s some great photo editing tools out there, one of my all-time faves is definitely Adobe’s Photoshop Elements. It’s affordable, fairly simple to use and creates amazing photo pages. That said though, although it is my basic-editing and scrapbook-page-creating software of choice, I use something entirely different for the really nice photo effects.

Picnik.com has been my go-to place for sooooo much to do with photos, especially the ones you see here on AFIMS. I do subscribe to their annual premium plan (and highly recommend it), but there are plenty of free options as well to keep you happy with the simpler editing projects.

Here’s a perfect example featuring Monkey, who bonked his forehead on his brother’s bike last weekend (just in time for school of course). And while some people would be perfectly happy having that lovely scratch show, I personally wanted it to be about the first day of school, and not about the bonked forehead (because trust me, there are still plenty of those to go around lol).

I realize this is a lot more editing than most people will even want to do, but the possibilities are so fun! Here’s a few more (click on each thumbnail to see the full image) and until next time..happy snapping .

Happy International Scrapbook Day! I meant to get my list of stops and sales up a few nights ago, but I had no internet so here we are on the actual day and I’m finally posting.

What have you been up to already? Any special activities or stops?

I got a little jumpstart on it and created a few pages yesterday using some very fun kits by SAS Designs!

Today I’m working with several kits by SAS: Seeing Rainbows (coming to her shop on May 13th), Fresh Feeling (a freebie just for iNSD), her May Grab Bag (filled with kits and templates it’s a must have at $3.50, value $23)!

More shop stops…

Right now I’m headed over to The Digi Chick (where everything is 30% off store wide) to check out all the great designers and sales going on over there. After that I’m going to head over to Sweet Shoppe ( again, save 30% store-wide), then to Scrapbookgraphics.com (look for the bargain shops for the $1, $2 & $3 products) to see what all the Studio Girls have cooked up for today. Along the way I’m going to make stops at Pickleberrypop (30% off their entire store), Divine Digital, Gotta Pixel, Faith Sisters and a few others.

Don’t forget the festivities and challenges for the day by stopping in at the various forums to participate! If you haven’t participated in challenges before, pick one site and stick with them today as they host the fun!!! Here’s a list of some of my fave forums…oh and you’re likely to get even more savings by participating in their iNSD activities:

• Scrapbookgraphics
• Gotta Pixel
• DivineDigital

It’s time once again for a layout featuring my beautiful niece, Little Miss. It’s been awhile (or maybe it just feels like it has) since I have shown a layout featuring this pretty little girl and unbelievably she is turning two this month… how time flies! I remember her birth as if it was yesterday.

This is really a simple layout featuring one of the beautiful kits from SAS Designs’  March PU grab bag (grab it now, it includes two full brand new kits, 1 template set that I’ll be featuring next week and a paper set for only $3.50 – regularly $10.50).

Of course you all know I love SAS Designs and feature her most frequently but her kits are simple, beautiful and so fun to work with.

Just for fun I have created a free Quick Page using this kit from her grab bag, feel free to download it and use it for your personal scrapbooking pages.

QP TOU: Quick Pages are created with permission from the designer who’s kit I use. They are available for PERSONAL USE only and not for use in creating pages for others. My Quick Pages are free and you may not take credit for my work.)

Today my parents had all of us over for a birthday lunch for my sisters.

I had so much fun taking pictures of my nieces and baby nephew… serious scrappy page fodder for sure!!!

Here’s my princess holding baby Peanut! Aren’t they so yummy cute?

I know!

Wednesday promises to be a very full and exciting day… but I’ll tell you all about that later .

Kit: Joyful by SAS Designs

Font: SP Inspired

It’s Wednesday and I have a brand new layout (wooo) happy Wordless Wednesday my friends. Today though we are taking a leap back in time… to 2004 to be exact! This layout features Quietness (a kit by SAS Designs of course) and the photo was taken of J-Man and I on Easter of that year.

font: PeaValerie

It’s been a while, too long in fact, since I have let my creative juices flow. Today I had the delight to work with a very pretty and simple kit by none other than SAS Designs called Quietness. I love the name and it really does reflect the simplicity of the colors and elements in the kit.

As I was working with this kit, it really lent itself to using a color overlay in the background as a main focal feature. I love the way it turned out, mostly because of the gorgeous princesses that I love so much.

First the scrapbook layout…

Creating an overlay in the background:

If you use a program like Photoshop Elements the process could not be simpler.

1. Simply drag the photo you want to use as an overlay onto the paper.
2. Click on the blending mode button at the top of the layers tray and choose overlay.
3. Make the photo as large as you’d like it to be then use a “fuzzy” eraser (lol) to get rid of the photo edges.

If you do not have Photoshop Elements never fear! The process for you is actually much the same as above. After you drag your photo onto the layout’s background paper (#1 above),  you will need to adjust the photo’s opacity (that function should be found in all programs rather simply in the editing tools) to about 25% to 30% depending on how faded you would like it to be. Make sure it is opaque enough to be visible but not overly so. Then proceed with step #3 above.

Honestly that’s pretty much all there is to it! Feel free to leave a comment with any questions or with your own suggestions .

One last thing…

If you love scrapbooking but need a little inspiration from time to time, feel free to visit my Quick Page freebies! They are yours to freely download and use for your own personal scrapbook pages. I’m adding more frequently and will try to remember to start posting notices when I put a new one up. I hope you enjoy them.

note: font used in layout is Pea Hannah Vanilla

For the lovely lady on your list who loves to scrapbook, consider a gift certificate to one of the many local or online scrapbooking shops. If she’s a digi-scrapper like me, there are so many fantastic sites with fabulous artists and tools.
For the Digi-Scrapper

There are so many sites out there, how on earth do you choose where to purchase a gift certificate from? Well you can just “wing it” and choose a site with a great variety of artists, or you can take a peek at the kind of art she uses anyway to see her style and/or fave artists.

Here’s my recommendations:

* After 5 Designs: be sure to check out my two very favoritest artists – Kristin Aagard and Kay Miller – who both happen to be artists there.
* Sweet Shoppe Designs: Great designers and products. My fave designers there are Libby and Misty Cato.
* The Digichick: Again, amazing products and artists! Faves here for me are Sugarplum Paperie (yeah I love the name but Nicole is amazing!) and Danielle Engebretsen.
* Studio Girls Scrapbookgraphics: I love this site! Funky, whimsical, traditional, simple they have pretty much anything you’re looking for. I love so many of the artists there it’s actually almost impossible to point out just a few!!! I definitely find that I am especially drawn to Flergs’ kits, beautiful functional and …well I used her kits for my design here so need I say more? There’s something that pulls me again and again to Studio Baers Garten, so many of the graphics in her kits remind me of cards I received as a young child. Oh and if you’re looking for storybook style you can’t go wrong with Lorie Davison!
* The Shabby Shoppe: All I can say is Wow!
* Gotta Pixel: so many artists and options there.

There are so many more great shops out there, but this is an amazing start for some of the most beautiful digi products to be found.