hi
i still hop2 you get something nice for your birthday
must agree with the other ladeis that either photo shop or paintshop pro are good programs to create your layouts from scratch.
im a total psp addict, but recently found that trying to edit a 300 dpi layout bigger then 8x8 inch is frustrating. paintshop pro takes a while to render and takes up a lot of pc resource
i find myself switching between both PS and PSP(9) now so i would advice either of them