That’s right, it happened again. You swore that you wouldn’t let it happen this year, but then there was the kids’ thing, and mom was in the hospital, then the thing with the PTO, and now it’s only a couple days until Christmas and you still have half your shopping list to go. And, while you…

The beginning of a new year always gives you a feeling of eagerness and renewal and 2017 is exactly that for McDonald Niklaus. This New Year is a little more special since it is our 25th! As we continue to find new creative ideas and techniques to better serve our wonderful customers we feel we…

That’s right, it happened again. You swore that you wouldn’t let it happen this year, but then there was the kids’ thing, and mom was in the hospital, then the thing with the PTO, and now it’s only a couple days until Christmas and you still have half your shopping list to go. And, while you…

I know, I know, it’s October and we’re talking Christmas. It’s a big no-no and we want to enjoy fall, Halloween and Thanksgiving as much as anyone. But here’s why we’re bringing it up now. Invariably, every year people come to up with ideas for custom gifts they’d like to give someone, but they come…

Most of us have some sort of a collection of family memorabilia. It might be in a cigar box or a hat box stored in the master bedroom closet. It almost certainly contains a stack of pictures either from a time before pictures were digital or those that you printed out because they were especially…

Back in the day everyone had a box of photographs and snapshots that they kept in a shoebox or hatbox in the closet somewhere. The advent of digital photography has wreaked havoc with these age old systems. Now we have digital copies of pictures spread out on cell phones, thumb drives, Facebook posts and computer…

Hopefully by this point in the summer you’re either on a great vacation or you’ve recently returned. And we hope that you got to enjoy this special time with some loved ones, maybe your kids or grandkids or your spouse. Whether you went hiking in the Smoky Mountains, walking on the Outer Banks, relaxed on…

In the good old days of photography, which some of us remember as most of our lives, pictures were a whole different ball game than they are today. Each picture had to be considered and shot with some forethought because there wasn’t a whole lot we could do after we took it. And each roll…

What kind of impact can you make with custom framing? Every now and then we have a new client come into the shop who’s never used any custom framing before. All they’ve every experienced is buying a frame from a big box store and sticking their picture in it. Sometimes they assume that what we…

Being a framing shop, there’s no doubt that at McDonald Niklaus we love photos. And we really love family portraits. There’s something about taking the time to purposely freeze a moment in your family’s life that just speaks to those of us that preserve memories for a living. But at the same time we know…

One of my favorite parts of being a custom picture framer is that each job is unique in its own right. Some require more creative design than others. That was the case when a client came into the shop the other day with an animal skin. Her husband is an avid hunter, which is something…