I have had my Cricut since Thanksgiving 2008 and can't imagine scrapping without it. You'll never have to buy letters anymore for titles or die cuts. I scrap with a group from church and we all share cartridges and ideas. It takes your scrapbooking to another level. They had the Expression at Walmart on sale for $179 at Thanksgiving this year. You can go onto Cricut.com and check out the message boards and get more opinions.

Thanks for the reply, sboxx. I've been doing some looking around on the internet and think the deal at Costco is the way I'm going to go. You mentioned a good price from Walmart on the Expression, but I have to think that's for the machine only. At Costco, I would also be getting 3 cartridges, which I'd have to purchase anyway because what good would the machine be without cartridges?

Also, in looking around and reading reviews on several sites on many of the different Cricut products, I found out about a site that seems to have the best prices on cartridges. It's cricut-central.com.

The Walmart price was only for the Thanksgiving Black Friday time period. Remember that next time if you want to pick up any cartridges--they always run good deals on Cricut items during that weekend. Another place to pick up Cricut cartridges is on Ebay. I look for the sellers offering free shipping and can pick them up for $30-35.

If you like to scrapbook, you are going to love the Cricut. It also comes in handy when your child has school projects to do. It's nice to be able to cut out any size letters for their trifold boards.

My daycare uses it all of the time. My 12yr dd is going to daycare twice a week as a volunteer and doing crafts with the preschoolers- is that cool or what? She says they use the thing to make all the stuff the babies need for their projects. It saves time and makes the projects come out really nice.

Personally, I don't use diecuts for scrapbooking but know thing is great if you really like to use them.