I am looking into buying a Cricut machine, but am wondering in the mini is fine, or if I'd be wishing I bought the full size. What are your thoughts on it? Thank you!

Buy the bigger one. I bought a smaller one and ended up buying a bigger one a few years later. I did get a real good price at the Thanksgiving sale.

I bought the cricut mini for $99 at Joanne's Fabric. I love it because I already have the expression which takes up a lot of space. I do a lot of paper cutting on the expression so I did not want to multi-task it to cake stuff due to grease getting on my paper.
The cricut mini is easy to use and is only limited by the smaller mat (no big deal).
I'm presently using SCAL 2 (bought it on disc so when Provocraft takes them down, hopefully I can still use the software on the disc).