LMac's Catered Crops

Caitlin's Shot through the Heart

I think one of my favorite moments of 2008 came in the twilight of the year. If you know me, you know my favorite thing in the world is to create with my favorite people (yes, I'm easily entertained). So, my little piece of heaven was having my beautiful daughter in my cozy Crop Crib, my new James Taylor CD playing and little Pillow Pup sleeping at our feet while we created Valentine boxes.

Caitlin and I both had some ideas to embellish the Target Dollar Spot mailboxes. Caitlin wanted to make the flag of the Target mail box shoot through a heart on the side of the box. She loves bold, bright colors, so I'm really glad she helped me break in the new Raspberry Tart paper. Here's her masterpiece with the flag up.

   

And . . . here's her shot-through-the-heart Valentine.

 

Caitlin used the Fine Cosmo Glitterwith the Two-Way glue to outline her heart and arrow. I love that she made this without the influence of bloggers or other scrapbookers - just her own creativity. You know me - I have to go check out what everyone else is doing with a new stamp set or paper before I'm brave enough to even open the package.

The new Spring/Summer catalog is just days away, now (January 18), so here's a peak at the rest of the Raspberry Tart paper you'll find in the new catalog. Yummers!

I wish I could have bottled up that precious time with Caitlin before she goes back to school with little Pillow. Yeah, you know it, I gotta show you little Pillow - seemingly growing inches every day. Here she is at 9 weeks in her favorite nap spot - just under the couch.

 

Pam Downs' Happy, Happy Heart

I enjoy Pam Downs' work so much. The details are so stunning. I've wanted to share these last two cards with you for a couple of months, but they're so great for Valentines, that I didn't want them to get lost in the Christmas shuffle. Yes, I still have my Christmas decorations to put up, but I just don't think I can sit on these beautiful cards any more - they deserve to be shared!

   

To get the recipe for Pam's first card, you can visit it at her Splitcoast Stamper's gallery, here.

Pam made these cards to showcase the stamp set, A Happy Heart,from the Holiday Mini catalog. With so many things going on right now at Stampin' Up!, the retirement list, new catalog release in January, Love You Much Promotion, etc., it's easy to forget we can still order from the beautiful Holiday Mini catalog (at least through January 18).

 

The recipe for this card is also at Pam's Splitcoast Gallery, here. Be sure to stay awhile and browse around Pam's gallery. I'm sure you'll see lots of beautiful inspiration.

A Heartfelt Note to All of You

A friend of mine (whaz up Laurie?!) sent me this rhyme. As I read it I thought of how appropriate it is for all the dear people I've met through my computer. I hope you have time to read it during this hectic week.

I have a list of people I know, all logged in my notebook, 
And now at Christmas I have gone to take a look.

That is when I realized that these names are a part, 
Not of the computer they're stored in, but of my heart.

For each name stands for someone who has crossed my path sometime,
And in that meeting they've become the rhythm in each rhyme.

While it sounds fantastic for me to make this claim, 
I feel that I'm composed of each remembered name. 

While you may not be aware of any special link, 
Just meeting you has changed my life, a lot more than you think!
 
For when I do a Christmas E-mail that is addressed to you, 
It's because you're on the list of people I'm indebted to.

Whether I have known you for many years or few, 
In some way you have been a part of shaping things I do.

Now that Christmas has come, I realize anew, 
The best gift life can offer is meeting friends like you.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas full of family, friends, good eats, and some unexpected treats. Thank you for being part of my fun this past year! 

Love to you all, Linda (and Tom) McClain

   

Counting the Days

I just have to share with you one of the gifts my friend and hostess club member, Danene Polson, made for me.

 

Isn't that amazing? She used a large piece of canvas as the base. To make the numbers on the Wilton favor tins, she used her Cricket with raw vinyl. She told me the first one she made took her over 16 hours to put together. When my two children saw this, they were just amazed. We will have a ton of fun counting the days to Christmas for a lot of years to come. Thank you Danene!

p.s., Lynn Scales gave me a beautiful gift last week, too, but I ate it! It was freakin' delicious!

Naughty or Nice?

Well, there's no debate that I'm on Santa's naughty list, so we won't even go there. My Grandpuppy, Pillow, on the other hand is oh so naughty with her little puppy ways, but also . . .  

 

oh so nice with her little puppy ways.

 

That's her with my Tom . . . here she is in another one of her "nice" poses.

 

I found this fun little Umbra photo ball at my Archiver's store and embellished it with Stampin' Up! rub-ons and ribbon. This is my "baby's first Christmas" ornament for Caitlin's puppy.

Yes, I'm the proud Granny Mac, so you have to see yet another picture of Pillow.

Puppy Naps

Pillow says . . .

I like this place. That nice Grandpa Tom bought me some cool toys. He bought some things for that big red dog, too. That Mailey dog thinks she's the boss of me. That's okay, I think I'm cuter. Granny Mac's house is so full of fun places to explore, but I just gotta sit for a second.

 

Okay, maybe I'll just lay my head down for a minute. But just for a minute. Then I gotta chase Mailey's tail some more.

 

Oops, this left eye is getting a little heavy.

 

Oooo, now they're both getting so heavy.

 

Must  . . . chase . . . Mailey . . .

 

Guess I'll just dream about chasing Mailey. She won't mind.

   

Yep, you guessed it. No new stamping projects today. We're just enjoying Caitlin's puppy so much. Wait till you see the video I took with the new Flip camera my Ben gave me! Oh, it's dangerous - me with a new puppy and a new camera. Don't say I didn't warn you . . .

I'm a Grandma!

to an adorable Golden Retriever puppy! My Caitlin just adopted this precious doll today.

   

Reflection - so serious!

 

Okay - not so serious - Let's play!

And nap time - I'm a puppy after all. 

Oh, it's going to be a Golden Christmas with puppy breath and fat little puppy bellies.

Show us your Homemade Ornaments

I have a very eclectic Christmas tree - just the way I like it. It's full of the simple ornaments we had when we were first married, "baby's first Christmas" for our now-adult children, beautiful ones given to us as gifts, the annual snowman ornament for Caitlin and Santa ornament for Ben, the heirlooms from our parents, and the best ornaments, the homemade ones. Here's my contribution to this year's tree.

   

I'm afraid the picture doesn't do justice to all the glittery goodness. I think it took me all of about 15 minutes to make this out of a plain glass ornament. Denise Rolak's fantastic video made the task incredibly easy. Okay, it was little messy for me because I didn't have a funnel, but I love the results. You can find Denise's video here.  

Here's a whole gallery of ideas for embellishing glass ornaments at Splitcoast Stampers: Glass Ornaments.

If you make or have made some ornaments this year, be sure to leave us a comment and a link so we can see your creations - I love show and tell!

Christmas Cooking Recipe

Here's my recipe for my ideal Christmas dinner (kind of a sequel to our cookbook below and at least one of the recipes I promised earlier).

#1. A wonderful host. Here's the picture I put inside my dauther's Christmas cookbook so you can see it better. It was Christmas Eve 2005 and Caitlin just gave her Grandma a fake fur cooking apron. Grandma loved it!

No one hosts a better Christmas Eve than my Mom McClain. She loved everything Christmas.

    

#2 Ingredient - A lovely set table. Mom McClain always bought an ornament or figurine for each plate and we loved her little individual salt and pepper shakers. It was more the special care she put into the meal than the plates and silver that made it so beautiful.

 

#3 Ingredient. Cookies! Okay, I know that's not the main course, or even an appetizer, but it's my favorite Christmas food. So, here's one our favorite cookies, given to me by, of course, Mom McClain.

Surprise Meringues

Ingredients:

• 2 egg whites
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/8 tsp cream of tarter
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 6 ounce package of chocolate chips

Beat the egg whites, salt, cream of tarter and vanilla to a soft peak. Add sugar gradually, beating until the mixture is stiff. Fold in the chocolate chips. Cover a cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Drop mixture by teaspoon. (It will not expand as it cooks, this will be the finished size.) Bake for 25 minutes at 300 degrees.

FYI - These cookies don't ship well because they're too delicate. Mom McClain tried to mail them to us one year and we got just a pile of sugar with some chocolate chips.

Well, that's all I need for good Christmas eats. Forget the turkey . . . just bring on the cookies and hugs all around!

Goldilocks and the Holiday Lineup

Shew . . . I've been putting together final touches for my hostess club meeting on Saturday. I've spent a lot of time on projects that I ended up scratching. I felt like Goldilocks - this project is too messy, this is too hard, this just doesn't look right . . . oooo, this is is just right. I have such a special group of stampers and I really want to make the Christmas meeting worth taking time out of an already crazy-busy month. I settled on this project which, I adore. Yay! Time for porridge.

 

Isn't that just stinkin' cute?! I can say that because I didn't actually come up with the overall concept. I just put my spin on Lisa Sommerville's original card, here.  

The base is 5-1/4" by 5-1/4" textured Whisper White card stock. The center panel is from the Ski Slope paper, framed by Basic Black. The stamp set is that adorable Holiday Lineup, stamped on watercolor paper and colored with Baja Breeze, Pink Pirouette, Basic Grey, and Going Gray, with a Pumpkin Pie carrot nose. I used the 1-3/4" circle punch on the snowman lineup and made a 2" circle from Basic Black card stock with my Cricket. I applied some Dazzling Diamonds on the snowmen with two-way glue, and I used a little Liquid Applique on the caps.

The centerpiece is the Snowflake #2 die, lathered up with some Towbow liquid glue, sprinkled with Martha Stewart's snow glitter (Michaels), and topped off with Button Bouquet and black gingham ribbon.

I'm pretty bad about not designing an inside, but, really, I out did myself this time. (Well, okay, maybe my picture-taking ability is lacking, but check out how cute this is.)

 

The inside is a Pink Pirouette snowflake made with a Sizzix Sizzlits Snowflake Set #2, the Snow Blossom punch with the Ski Slope paper and a rhinestone brad. The sentiment is from Best Wishes & More stamp set.

Okay, ready for a break. Ooo, this chair is too hard, this one's too soft . . .