Hi Pat. The CNC use is great for repeated items of precision. For carving, its not worth the cost to upgrade the MF 70. Its cutting area is to small for a lot of work. ( ie instead of making several items in one job, you would have to run lots of little jobs with very small bits). The effort to set each up is not insignificant. Money spent here would be better served on a scroll saw & Dremel bits / Tools for caving.
There is lots of free software, for cutting, layout etc, but the learning curve is not short. No trying to put you off, but Personally I believe that hand carving would be more productive for small items.