Stamps & Life

This is one of the many cute stamps from Paperwink. I love vintage meets modern girly design and these are just it! They are so cute and I'm pretty positive I'm going to buy one.

I have been LOVING the weather lately (Josh not so much). Today it was 60F and last week it was 60F (in February!) The weather here is such a welcomed change from Rexburg. If I were in Rexburg I would have been wearing a long sleeve shirt, sweatshirt, snowboarding Jacket, jeans, wool socks, boots, gloves and possibly a hat. But not in UT! You can wear cute flats and a normal jacket and be fine. Its pretty awesome. Not as awesome as SD but much better then the old burg.

Yetti and Gnarly are getting so big. They are so cute and so much fun. The perfect pet combination.

Josh and I have been doing good. We have been hanging out with friends lately which is always fun. We have some great friends. Last weekend we went to the Macaroni Grill downtown which turns out, is actually the older gay and lesbian hangout. No one told us. I at first thought is was where older people went to have "girls/guys night out" type things. But then we noticed it wasn't. There were still a lot of couples, families and groups but mostly not. It was funny to be thrown off. We also saw Coraline. It was really cool. All handmade and stop animation. I was impressed.

We are thankful everyday for having great jobs and basically just having a job. The world is a hot mess right now. The economy makes anything seem sketchy. But i try not to think about it and just pretend everything is ok. It helps to laugh. Which is something Josh and I are good at. On a fun note we are excited for spring. I can't wait to do some painting! Finally no one (but maybe Josh) can force me to live with white walls (or maybe a wall color that looks like a soft fleshy pink color intended to look like beige)!!! And I think Josh is a little excited to do yard work. But probably more about his future half pipe. He was researching today city ordinance laws for half pipe allowance.

Other news Josh and I both wear glasses. I'll have to post a picture. We are both near-sided. I only wear them for driving and it has made a world of a difference. I can actually read the road signs clearly and see all the details in the mtns. I had no idea my sharp vision was failing until I put my glasses on for the first time. I was blown away at what I was missing! Everything is so much brighter now too. Weird.

More animal fun—or horror

I don't know what it is about animals and advertising—it's the fire and forget weapon of the ad world. The previous Samsung spot still makes me laugh till I cry and it got me thinking about other great animal-centric ads. I'm going to start with one from 1997. TBWA Chiat/Day is the agency responsible. I can remember watching this as a kid and thinking it was the funniest thing I had ever seen. And look twelve years later I still remember the spot. That's pretty powerful brand recall. After seeing this as a kid I actually wrote a comic strip based on this commercial (if I find that I'll try to post it). There are many examples of good ads using animals, and there are defiantly a lot of terrible ads with animals. The next three are newer. I believe they ran in 2007 and I can't remember what agency produced these. They are so creepy though. Guaranteed to give you nightmares. Pay attention to the voice over acting. Haunting. Anyway, enjoy the spots—I sure have.

As a side note: is it weird that I get this jacked up about television commercials? You'd tell me right? At least I picked the right profession.

Animals make me laugh...a lot.

I don't know why, but this ad for Samsung made me laugh till I cried. My favorite is the hamsters or the chickens. It's a toss up.

Summer Hopes and Dreams

BIG news....that you probably know if you watched the Grammys or if you LOVE Blink-182. The band is gettin' back together ya'll(quote from p-diddy. . . i can't come up with that type of material)! I am so sos os sososososo excited. They are one of my favorite bands. I played them through my teen years and the start of college. Their CD's are kind of like anthems to me. Perfect classics. I love them. I love Toms whinny beautiful voice, Travis' amazing drumming and Marks not so whinny voice. The other part of this good news is that I have never seen them in concert. I am a bad San Diegan for this. It was just never good timing. I saw Travis at Warped Tour one year drumming for the Transplants and it was amazing to watch him. So this means that my summer concert dreams may just come through. I will probably tear up when I see them. Sorry that was a little embarrassing, but i will because I LOVE them. and I love rock. and I love their amazing beginning punk rock to their most recent (5 years ago) grown up punk rock. This news makes me oh so giddy!




Other great band news Fall Out Boy is coming this April and we are so there! I love them too. Its too bad Patrick is going through a fat stage. But he still sounds awesome and their new CD is really fun to listen to.

Happy V-day!!!

Precious

The other day I was sitting in our office and i heard tapping noises from the bathroom. I ignored them for a while and then I decided that I better go see what was going on. I went in and saw 2 pleased kittens playing with the cord from the blinds which then resulted with the toilet paper being played with and Joshes towel.




Kitties and Toilet Paper from Natalie Ormond on Vimeo.

Its so hard to get mad at them because they are just so cute!

The tool at the bottom of the pool.

The Summer Olympics were quite the spectacle. The world watched in awe as thousands of Chinese performers exclaimed “We welcome you friends” in a vaguely totalitarian tone. We chuckled when we learned the cute little girl that sang during the opening ceremony was actually lip syncing. She was the replacement because the little girl with the voice wasn’t “cute enough.” And we watched in nationalistic pride when American darling Michael Phelps destroyed everything that swam. He cut through the water like a cold war area torpedo all but inscribed with the moniker “If it ain’t blue it’s red.” Phelps was the hero of the Olympics.
I have to be honest; my tool radar began to light up as soon as I saw Phelps. There was just something about him that said to me, “This guy puts his baseball hats on backwards and goes to football games for the sole purpose of getting drunk and yelling obscenities at the opposing team.” And then the media began falling all over him. Every story was about Phelps and how awesome he was. Bob Costus was having a full on media love affair with Michael Phelps. When I voiced my opinion that Michael Phelps was indeed a tool of the first degree, many people thought I was attempting to tear down a hero.
Well my day of vindication has arrived. Pictures of Michael Phelps taking hits off a bong have recently surfaced (with his baseball hat backwards might I add. He’s a tool!). Mr. 8-gold-medals-million-dollar-endorsement-deal-Phelps released a statement saying he regretted his actions and was looking forward to dedicating his time to training for the next Summer Olympics. His sponsors gave him a slap on the wrist and offered words of encouragement. Go get em’ Mikey! Might I add a prediction? Michael Phelps won’t win a single gold medal at the next Summer Olympics. How can I make this prediction? Simple, tools don’t float—they sink.