I'm a rotten blogger!

Holy cow--I sure didn't realize it had been so very long since we posted on our blog. Pretty sad, really. Our life has been going crazy (as per usual, I suppose). Tom and I are both trying to work more on our writing. Tom is getting to write full time from home--mostly copywriting for companies trying to get their websites up--which has been fantastic. We're enjoying seeing more of each other and spending less on gas. Good time for it, lol. We're both working on some freelance short stories and also novels. It's been really fun to make writing a higher priority in our lives, although I admit I still have a hard time just seriously writing when we're in the same room together. I'm too much of a talker I guess, *blush*. We'll try to keep you updated as these projects progress.

Ash has been pretty sick. We had to change her dogfood from what she was on for awhile. She's lost a lot of weight and is shedding like never before. This is saying something, since she has always been a crazy shedder.





It's like she has a litter of puppies every couple of days. Pretty gross, huh? Hopefully this will slow down to normal shedding soon :P

Well, I'll really try to be better at this. Have a great day!

Ella's Birthday party

Okay, for now I'm just going to put up a bunch of photos we took at Ella's birthday party last weekend. I'll come by and talk about them all later, but I figure if I put them on here I'm more likely to get it done. Enjoy!!

Amy's Birthday Party

Okay, we're getting the super cheesy pictures over with first. Here are Tom and myself posing as we were getting ready for our company to come over. I took most of the pictures, so this is the only one I'm actually in, lol. Tom was a really good sport and decorated and really got the house cleaned up. It was nice, because I had a Relief Society lesson I needed to work on.






Now this was the coolest cake I have ever had. My friend Kelsey made it for me, and if you have ever played games with us, you probably recognize the theme she's got going here. It was great! There's no better theme for me than board games, and as Settlers of Catan is one of my favorites, it was perfect for me. You can't see it well in this picture, but there are even little number tokens and settlements and roads all around the cake. Way to go, Kelsey! I was totally impressed. All of the hexes are hand-painted with food coloring on fondant (rolled out icing).



Here are Jeff and Crystal with their kids. Jeff looks like a demon with his red eye. I tried to fix it but because they're so very red it just kept blacking out half of the photo. What a cute family, though!



More Leo and Ella huggy pictures. They were so cute all night, going from lap to lap getting their loves and hugging everyone. Here they are with Uncle Devin.



Here is Rosa. Didn't get much of a smile there :S. Not sure what Leo is trying to get into here, but he was constantly intrigued by everything around him that he wasn't supposed to have. He kept stealing Doritos off of people's plates because he likes them so much, but he can't have some of the ingredients in them so we kept having to take them away. At least we had some special ice cream there he could have, and that distracted him most of the time.



How could anyone resist this face? I don't think I could say no if she asked me anything!



We played Harry Potter Scene It and Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit. Devin was kind enough to lend us his movie projector, so we had a huge-sized screen to watch it all on. We all enjoyed ourselves, and the teams were neck and neck the whole time.



There's Summer's cute head in the foreground here and Tom in the back having a drink.



Ella wrapping Grandpa around her little finger. There are Kelsey and Sam eating in the background.



These are the nice flowers Tom picked out for me. I think he did a good job :D



--Amy

Amy's Birthday

I really had a nice birthday this year (though I guess the partying isn't over yet). Tom took the day off today, and I only worked a few hours. We got to sleep in, and then after I got off of work and he finished some errands (which included picking up a really nice vase of flowers and balloons from a local flower shop--way to go, Tom!), we went out to lunch at Marie Calendars. After that, Tom let me drag him around town to do some shopping I wanted to do. Thank goodness he had his MP3 player with him, he was able to listen to his favorite talk radio podcasts while I looked through scrapbook supplies at a craft store. Not his favorite place to be--I think he likes me ;D

After all of the shopping, Tom took me to a movie called Penelope. If you haven't seen it, I would recommend it. Very cute--it's definitely acceptable for families, and it had a good theme. It was very much a make you feel good sort of movie. On the way home we stopped at the grocery store for some snack foods (had to be well stocked for my party tomorrow).

Okay, I don't really know why I just gave you an intensive travel log. I think I must be tired.
I just thought I'd put up a quickie post to thank you all for being in our lives. We love your friendships and look forward to many more years of the same. Thanks for all of your calls and messages, it's always nice to hear from you. I'll put up some photos of the party we're having tomorrow night (I guess it's tonight now since it's past midnight already).

--Amy

Tom's Toon of the Month April 08

This month we take a look at the Haunted House starring your favorite character and mine, Mickey Mouse.

This particular toon is a great example of Mickey's early inspiration from Charlie Chaplain. Disney worshiped Chaplain and I suspect Ub Iwerks admired him too. For good reason. Chaplain was a genious. He embodied comedy in Hollywood's halcyon days. He could be a foil for a gag, but you still liked him. You still rooted for him, even if he looked foolish sometimes. Mickey is here in this role. His roundness, his diminuitive size, and his vulnerability make him easy to identify with.

What stands out to me about this cartoon is that deep down inside, I find it genuinely scary. When I was a little kid I used to have nightmares that played out a lot like this cartoon does. The intimidating hooded figure, the horrifying revelation of walking dead, the nature of Mickey's predicament trapped and enslaved all add up to my worst childhood fears. This is all juxtaposed with goofy gags with dancing skeletons. There aren't a lot of belly laughs in this one, but there's the usual attention to quality and detail. The movements are fluid, weighty, and dimensional. I especially enjoy watching Mickey pump the pedals on that organ. The lighting effects are awesome. The scene where Mickey lights a match in the hallway is breath-taking to me.

For all this, Roy's cost-cutting measures are also evident. Some of the animation of the skeleton dances are directly recycled from a Silly Symphony entitled "The Skeleton Dance," a title I'll be featuring at a later date.

In classic Disney fashion, the nightmare ends and Mickey not only survives, but gets away. Mickey's fear seems to walk a line between the comic and the sympathetic. Whether we laugh at his fear, or share in it, we identify with it. That's the genius of Mickey Mouse as a character.

-Tom

Spring update

Things are going much the same here at the Gunn household. I feel bad we haven't been very good at updating the blog, so mostly I'm writing to let you know we really are still alive. We got to go to Tom's mission reunion last weekend, and of course we forgot to bring along our camera. Really smart, that... We had a really nice time. Tom got to see people he hasn't seen since his mission, and we finally caught up with friends we've had the good intention of inviting over but never do. Tom's phone died about the time we moved up here to Midvale, so he didn't have any phone numbers or contact information for many of these people. We're looking forward to spending time with these friends in the near future (and already have dates set, or it wouldn't happen, lol).

We've had a long, harsh winter here in Utah, as a lot of you would attest. For awhile there, it seemed like Spring would never decide to grace us with her presence. It seems however, that she is finally here to stay (Okay, I realize that means it could snow tomorrow, but I'm finding the silver lining here!). We just had the most beautiful weather this weekend, it was in the 60's and 70's the whole time, and we actually had our windows open all day Sunday.

Ash was sick during the week, so she needed us to run her down our three flights of stairs about every hour for a full day so she could do her business outside. I'm so grateful she's so well-trained! This could have meant some pretty serious scrubbing, but she never once in her illness had an accident. She's feeling much better now, and is back to her old antics of begging for any scrap of food she thinks she has a chance at getting. We love having her around, and I'm enjoying taking longer walks with her now that the weather is getting nicer. She loves any excuse to be outside, especially if it involves being with us, her pack.

We love you all and wish you the best! We'll at least be posting more photos for my birthday soon, and I'll try to be better at updates.

-Amy

Tom's 'Toon of the Month March 08

Disney Silly Symphony - Flowers And Trees

My apologies to those who loyally read TTOTM for my complete no-show last month! I hope you enjoy this month’s toon twice as much.


Flowers and Trees was the first Technicolor cartoon ever produced. Color films had been created before, and even a few using the patented Technicolor process, but this was the first cartoon. Flowers and Trees started life as another in the long series of Walt Disney Studios Cartoons under the banner of Silly Symphonies. It wasn’t until very late in production that Walt decided to make Flowers and Trees a Technicolor picture. The ink and paint girls had to clean the black and white paint from the back of the cells and completely repaint them.


Few films had been produced using the new Technicolor process because it was so expensive. Much to the chagrin of his brother, and business partner Roy, Walt signed a long-term contract with Technicolor to have shorts filmed using this new, expensive process years and years into the future. The studio, though nationally known and successful at this time, was always strapped for cash. Throughout both of their careers in show business, Walt seemed to come up with new ways to spend money in the name of quality pictures as easily as Roy found ways to cut costs in the name of keeping the studio financially solvent. To put it another way, it was often said that Walt dreamed things up, and Roy dreamed up ways to pay for them. It wasn’t just the filming and developing process that was expensive. The studio had to completely re-tool, replacing their black, white, and gray paints with a whole spectrum of colors. In spite of all this, Walt believed in the future of color in movies generally, and was convinced that the Technicolor process resulted in the best colors. Walt aspired to be the King of Animation, and believed his pictures deserved nothing but the best.


This short is the forerunner of the celebrated Disney features in several ways. This early experiment in Technicolor was an essential achievement to the production of a first-class color feature, Snow White. The Disney animators also learned lessons in combining artistic excellence with crowd-pleasing gags; a cocktail that remains the signature of Disney features. In the case of Flowers and Trees, the whole tone of the film is akin to an ancient myth or fable. It feels like it could be based on the work of Virgil, Aesop, or Homer. Yet, the gags are frankly expressed and elegantly executed. My personal favorite is the flower dragging himself up to perch on the chest of the defeated villain-tree. The emotion is unmistakable. Every plant or animal in this short is alive somehow. Nothing is used merely as a moving prop. The details pass quickly, but the care, devotion, and attention are on every frame, right down to the leafy “hair styles” of the tree protagonists.


Walt was right about the future of color in motion pictures. His perfectionism also paid off. Flowers and Trees won the Oscar for Best Animated Short that year. In fact, Flowers and Trees invented the category.

--Tom