Advice/help needed from Digi / Hybrid Scrappers

I'm currently sitting on a lot of photos from the Edinburgh Wolves (that would be the team in the red on my blog header). To be precise it's 6 years worth of photos, on average times 10 games, plus a combine day, a rookie day, a team photo page, a coaches page, a staff page, awards nights, the odd training sessions, not to mention the approx. 3 x 4 tournaments from the Juniors (x 3 or 4 games each).

For the last 3 years I've been promising the guys I'll get the photos scrapped, do the album ... but somehow I am stumped...

Now I am thinking about doing some digi scrapping or at least Hybrid ... but I've never really done much digi scrapping apart from the awards for the last 2 years.

So... how should I start? I had a look at Designer Digitals and found several brushes and stamps etc that I am most likely going to purchase.

I'm not going to give up on traditional scrapping, but it's really a time issue now.. ;) The photos from the Stirling Clansmen (green jerseys on blog entries) I'll scrap traditionally I think... or maybe Hybrid. I bought card stock for the games already, so don't need to go all Digi. :)

a) What program is best? I currently only have the registration key for CS3 (but did a trial on CS4 and LOVED it!)

b) Where/how do you get 12x12 pages printed (I'm in the UK)? How do dark background colours as "page colour" work out? The team colours are cardinal red, silver and black, and the main "card stock" is usually the red in the traditional scrapping.

I hope I'll get some pointers from the lovely ladies out there who are now reading my blog through Shimelle's Blogging for Scrapbookers class... :)