Rural Mama's Sandbox: Projects

Showing posts with label Projects. Show all posts

Since the day Big Sister was born, my fingers have been glued to a camera button. I wanted to capture every precious moment; however, now I'm stuck with tons and tons of photos, most in the digital form, and no way of displaying them. I do have a facebook page for family and friends to keep up with the kids as they grow, but I need something I could show to friends and family in my home, minus all the technology involved with digital photos.

I was recently introduced to My Memories Suite, a Digital Scrapbooking Software. I have fallen in LOVE with this user friendly scrapbook software! For a busy and frugal Mom, this software is a LIFESAVER! I can make awesome scrapbook pages in less time and less money than the normal scrapbooking methods. I don't have to organize or dedicate a separate room in my house for papers, stickers, scissors, cutouts, and all that is involved in hard core scrapbooking.

With the holidays drawing near, I decided to put My Memories Suite to the test by designing a Christmas Card to send to family and friends! I'm not one for reading directions or instructions very closely so as soon as I opened the program I just dove right in. This software is super easy to figure out, it took me no time at all to search through the backgrounds and embellishments and decide on a plan for the Christmas card.

My Christmas card, a work in progress!

There are several options that I absolutely LOVE about this software!

1) There are several paper dimension options as well as an option to set your own dimensions. This was AWESOME for me because I bought a set of 50 blank note cards that happened to be the oddest dimensions I have ever seen, 9.5 inches long by 6.5 inches wide.

2) There is a grey area around your project that will tell you where your printer margin is going to be. So, I can put everything together and have it print beautifully with out accidentally having half a word or photo chopped off by the margin!

3) You can edit your photo in the program! There is NO need for other editing programs to achieve red eye reductions, cropping, or photo effects like changing the color to sepia. This software does it all in one place!

4) You are NOT limited to your own imagination, hehe! There are several beautiful templates and designs that allow you to plop photos right in without designing or decorating a single page.

5) The My Memories Suite website has FREE kits as well as kits to purchase that you can download and add to your software! So, if you are looking for somethings extra special for a particular page, you are not limited to the embellishments and paper designs that come with the software. I think I have already downloaded at least 10 FREE kits myself, just because I thought they were cute and I "might" use them in the future.

My only warning is to beware of how fun and addicting this digital scrapbook software can become! I could easily spend far too many hours putting together scrapbook pages now!

As you can tell, I have been incredibly impressed with My Memories Suite! I recommend it to everyone for all their scrapbooking needs! You don't have to be a computer wiz to use the software or a design expert to make a beautiful scrapbook.

My Rating: A+ $$$

Click here to see what My Rating means!

Cost: My Memories Suite v3 Normal Price $39.97 or Use Code STMMMS86739 at check out for $10 OFF!

Where to Buy: Online at the My Memories Suite Website!

Like My Memories Suite on Facebook
Follow @MyMemoriesSuite on Twitter

Check out the My Memories Suite Blog
My Memories Suite YouTube Channel

My Memories would like to give one of my lucky readers a FREE copy of the My Memories Suite v3 Digital Scrapbook Software!

Where to start... I love sweet potatoes. I didn't always like them, but as an adult I love them. I had two in the fridge and was afraid they were going to go bad before I could do something with them, so I cut up and fried one with butter and brown sugar for lunch and decided I wanted to try something new with the other one. Even though I love sweet potatoes I don't really know much about different ways to prepare them so I decided to search for recipes. I came across a recipe for Sweet Potato Pie, which sounded so yummy, so I decided to give it a whirl. Reading through the recipe pages I learned a couple things about Sweet Potatoes that I never knew, one of the BIG things being "Don't refrigerate raw sweet potatoes, or they will develop a hard core and their flavor will deteriorate." GO figure, I never knew this and always put mine in the fridge!
I found this information as well as the recipe on Allrecipes.com
Ok, on to the actual recipe:

Ingredients

1 (1 pound) sweet potato
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 (9 inch) unbaked pie crust

Directions

Boil sweet potato whole in skin for 40 to 50 minutes, or until done. Run cold water over the sweet potato, and remove the skin.
Break apart sweet potato in a bowl. Add butter, and mix well with mixer. Stir in sugar, milk, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla. Beat on medium speed until mixture is smooth. Pour filling into an unbaked pie crust.
Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 55 to 60 minutes, or until knife inserted in center comes out clean. Pie will puff up like a souffle, and then will sink down as it cools.

My Sweet Potato Pie BEFORE baking

A couple things to note... I had never boiled a whole Sweet Potato, skin included, before so I had NO idea that the skin would actually peel off after you boil it and rinse with cold water... it literally peels right off in big chunks, which I found SO cool and kind of fun! Something I forgot while I was getting my crust ready... I had a box of two Pilsbury unbaked pie crusts in the fridge that I decided to use, however, I forgot that they need to be room temperature BEFORE you try to unroll them, ended up murdering the first one trying to unroll it into my pie pan, so I threw the pieces out and waited for the second one to get to room temperature BEFORE I tried to unroll it into my pie pan. The second one turned out much more successful however when I poured the Sweet Potato filling in it went right up to the edge so was HOPING that it didn't overflow..

Halfway done in the oven and no overflowing.

As if making something for the first time isn't an adventure enough in itself, I'm pregnant and I have a 19 month old running around as well. So, my daughter was taking a nap through the boiling process, but woke up just before I got to the part where I needed to take the Sweet Potato out of the water, rinse, and pull the peel off. I get the peel off, break it apart, get the butter in and start the mixer. Along comes my baby girl asking for some "Goo" which is juice in her baby language. So, I stop the mixer, get her a cup of juice... normally I pay attention a little better, but I grabbed one of her sippy cups that isn't "spill proof" BIG mistake. Sometimes she is good with them, most times not. So, while I'm getting the other ingredients together and then starting to beat them with the mixer, my sweet angel is walking around the house shaking her juice upside down all over the floor. When she rushes past me in the kitchen I see her in the corner of my eye and instantly stop the mixer and dash to grab her cup. I picked her up and noticed her bum was soaked. She had made a nice little puddle in front of the TV and sat in it... fun! So, off to her room we went to strip down, wipe off, and get a new diaper on. I grabbed a towel from the bathroom really fast and walked it around the kitchen and living room to get the juice up off the floor. SO glad I don't have carpet! After I get my girl cleaned up and the floor dry I decided to finish up the pie really fast before anything else happened... which luckily it hasn't, yet... but I still have to mop up the floor, its a little on the sticky side. :o)