Catered Crop » Christmas

The McClain Christmas (and an MDS Toot)

Linda — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:02:17 +0000

Okay, yes, I'm still posting about our Christmas . . . can you believe it? If you know me, well, you're not surprised. I move slow. But, hey, January is kicking my butt at work, so, you know, a girl just does what she can. Any hay . . . I got an e-mail from a fan (whaz up, Melissa) asking about how to save projects from Stampin' up!'s My Digital Studio (MDS) into .jpg files, so here goes.

After you finish designing your gorgeous project, you go up to the top tool bar and select "Share Project."

That will get you a drop-down menu. From the drop down menu, select "Export to JPEG."

MDS will pop up a screen that will walk you through the rest . . . It's pretty straight forward after that.

Here's the final product. This is one of the pages I did for Erika Martin's on-line Journaling 101 Scrapbooking class. The journaling text (yes, I actually journaled) says

A McClain Family Christmas
    A snowman ornament for Ben and a Santa ornament for Caitlin
    Christmas Dinner
    Grandma’s Santa collection
    The Pickle Gift
    24 Hours of The Christmas Story
    A book for Grandpa
    Christmas Cookies
    The Christmas Star

And, just for giggles and grins . . . here's just a quickie slide show of our quirky Christmas 2009. As you can tell from my scrapbook page and maybe even a little from the slide show, our Christmas celebrations are all about our traditions – we have quite a few we honor each year. It's not built for variety, but it soothes our sentimental souls.

Thanks for letting me recap my Christmas 2009, it was definitely a fun one. Now, onward and forward to 2010 . . .

The Stockings Were Hung

Linda — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 03:54:04 +0000

We had a fabulous Christmas – full of time with each other, yum eats and fun treats.
I hope you all enjoyed the same.

Our Christmas was full of traditions we've collected over the years: Christmas Eve dinner, the pickle gift, breakfast quiche, games and puzzles, and, of course, stockings, which are always filled with some hot chocolate mix for Christmas morning, a Santa ornament for Ben and a Snowman ornament for Caitlin.

The day after Christmas I got hit like a ton of bricks with some gnarly upper respiratory crud. My sparkly new Copic markers are calling my name, but I can barely get off the couch. So, I thought I'd share something I made for my son years ago, a stocking using one of the beautiful Shephard's Bush cross stitch patterns.

Shephard's Bush was featured in one of my favorite TV shows just before Christmas, Ace of Cakes. Seems a woman had stitched over fifty of these stockings for her family, and her husband commissioned the folks at Ace of Cakes to make a cake like her stockings. I missed the episode, but here's a picture of the finished cake: Stocking Cake.

If you live in the Central Texas area you can find a collection of Shephard's Bush patterns at the lovely store, Ginger's Needlearts, Quilts and Framing, (5322 Cameron Road, Austin).

Merry Christmas Deer Friends

Linda — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 01:57:34 +0000

Stampin' Up! Deer Friends stamp set will probably always be one of my favorites. I found these great peppermint tea spoons at World Market – such a fun place to shop for Christmas treats. I just stapled the ribbon to the envelope of my Christmas card and got a little crazy embellishing the tea spoons. (Doodlebug Design, Inc. crushed velvet brads make an adorable Rudolph nose.)

I had fun passing these out to my fellow nursing home surveyors today. I am so blessed to work with such a wonderful and dedicated group of nurses, social workers and nutritionists. We are on the road so much together that they really are family. We've been through a lot together! Since none of them are really crafters, they're easily entertained by my little trysts with ink and paper.

If I don't get a chance to speak, write, Facebook, Twitter, or blog to you again this holiday, here's hoping all of you have a wonderful Christmas. Thank you all for putting up with all the silliness of my little blog. Here's looking forward to a wonderful 2010, with all the fullness of hope a new year brings.

Merry Christmas from Tom and Linda

Linda — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:44:06 +0000

Whoa Nellie – It's only October and you're already getting a Christmas card from the McClains? Well, you know, Christmas cards are too much fun to just make in December.

This card may look familiar – it's my twist on a card on the cover of the Stampin' Up! holiday mini catalog. I thought it would be fun to turn the ornament into a photo card and to hang the ornament from tree branches. I used one of the pictures from our glorious trip to the Grand Tetons last August. Splitcoast Stampers is one of my favorite hangouts for all things related to stamping, especially today and yesterday where all kinds of craziness is going on for World Card Making Day.

I whipped this together today for two challenges, WCMD09E and WCMD09F. For the Verve Stamps Challenge, WCMD09E, we had to choose a flag from all the world's nations and make a card using the colors of that flag. I chose Azerbaijan's colors of red, soft blue and green. Those colors worked well with our picture, and I also learned a little about the country of Azerbaijan. The Magnolia-licious challenge, WCMD09F asked us to include a Christmas ornament in our card. Snap – no problem!

All Stampin' Up! unless otherwise specified:

Stamp Sets: Sweet Centers, Teeny Tiny Wishes, Peaceful Wishes (retired)
Cardstock: Real Red Textured, Bashful Blue, Old Olive, Whisper White
Ink: Real Red Classic Ink, Encore Silver, VersaMark
Fibers: Jersey Ribbon Originals, Silver Cord
Miscellaneous: On Board Originals, Martha White Snow Glitter, Button Latte Designer Buttons, Sweet Treat Cups, clear embossing powder
Tools: EK Success Edger Punch, 1-3/4" Circle Punch

Tip: Stamp your ornament top first, then punch out the circle and attach the Sweet Treat cups. You'll be able to line everything up better that way.