Lurv cats ... of death

So I got a new phone a few months ago. It's awesome by the way. One of the features on the phone allows you to edit photos by cropping, changing from color to black and white, and drawing over a picture. I've had a lot of fun with the drawing feature. Natalie sent me a picture of Yetti with her favorite toy rat (we call him Raton) sitting at her food dish. I was waiting for a project to come back to me at work so I had a few minutes to kill. What resulted was a love story gone terribly wrong. I sent these as picture messages to Natalie and she thought it was pretty funny. And now for your viewing pleasure I present "The Rat, the cat, and the end: A story of feline fatalism."

Post #92

I just checked and we are almost to 100 posts! I thought that was exciting. As I was reading everyone elses blog I realized we really needed to update. So here is an update.

Life is good right now. I'm so happy about the weather. I love 75 degrees with a breeze. I know It won't last long here so I'm savoring it for the time being. We are learning many things about owning a home. Its a lot of work (if you don't want to be "that" house on the street). We have gone through 3 lawn mowers (don't ask) so far. Josh has been good about mowing the lawn. For last Mondays Family Home Evening we did yard work. I pulled weeds while Josh mowed the lawn. This past weekend we took our weekly trip to Lowes and purchased a hose and a spray nozzle and a push broom. No one tells you how much money you have to spend on yard maintenance! I actually don't mind yard work too much. I love a pretty green yard. We are lucky to have beautiful trees and plants which came with the house. The apricots are starting to grow and I can't wait to eat them! Hopefully the deers will stay in the mountains in the summer. I will post photos soon of our progress.

Our calling at Church is teaching the primary children 7 year olds. We had 11 kids, but they split the class last Sunday and now we have 6! 11 seven year olds were out of control to teach. It is much more manageable to have 6 kids. We really enjoy our calling. Kids are really comical. It always amazes me how much they know about the Gospel.

Work is going great for both of us. Josh has been assigned to write on a few projects these last 2 weeks and is really happy to finally write!

For a summer concert update, Blink-182, Weezer and Fall Out Boy are touring together this summer!!! They haven't released any dates yet, but we are so there!

Hey Jude—let's dance!

Some months back T-Mobile commissioned an ad to promote its "Life's for sharing" campaign. Saatchi & Saatchi London (T-Mobile's ad agency) came up with one of those simple, clean, huge ideas to accomplish the task. They decided to plant a group of dancers in a busy London underground station and on que have them perform a routine to a few songs. The idea was that people would join in, share the experience with their camera phones, and generally enjoy the spectacle. They were right on all accounts. The first video is the result of the T-Mobile underground dance party.

The second video is a continuation of the campaign. This one happened just a few days ago in London and, in my opinion is the more successful of the two spots. Saatchi & Saatchi didn't use planted performers this time. Instead, they sent out a text message blast to T-Mobile subscribers inviting them to the event. 13,000 people showed up to have a giant karaoke party and sing "Hey Jude." Now I've never seen the Beatles, but I would imagine this rendition of the song would please John Lennon very much—even if it is technically promoting a consumer product.

Advertising doesn't have to be just about product selling points. Good advertising should make people feel something. That's what makes the Sony spot so good, and that's what makes these spots so good as well. I'm not going to change my service to T-Mobile anytime soon, but my perception of the company has certainly changed. Take a look for yourself and leave a comment of your thoughts about the spots. Do you think they are effective advertisements, or just good entertainment?

The perfect TV commercial

This is an old commercial from around 2006 I think. Mostly I just want to post it so I have it to look at whenever I want. It's beautiful. Natalie showed this to me when we were still in school and I watched it at least ten times in a row. Fallon London is the agency responsible for the spot, and they won all kinds of awards for it in 2006. This spot has become a landmark in advertising for the new aesthetic of simple, clean, huge ideas. Sony wanted a spot that highlighted their emphasis on color in their tvs. So Fallon came up with a simple idea—get a bunch of bouncy balls and let them loose down a hill. From there they exploded it to huge proportions—get 200,000 plus bouncy balls and throw them down a hill in San Fransisco with 24 high speed cameras capturing every bouncy, ricochet , and roll. The result was this amazing and arresting commerical. Every time I watch it I'm captivated. You can't help but feel good about the world after seeing this spot. The first video is the actual spot that ran on television, and the next is a behind the scenes, making of video produced by Fallon. This is a piece of advertising that makes me proud to be part of the industry. I want to do advertising like this when I grow up.

{3rd} Anniversary

Josh totally surprised me and rented the Oscar Mayer Wiener truck!!!! It was so random, but totally something he would do. How romantic! Ok so i'm totally messing with you. We actually just saw it on the way to the restaurant and we (meaning I) had to take some photos by it. You just don't pass up an opportunity like this!






We went to the Melting Pot for dinner. It was sooo good. I highly recomend this for a romantic evening. We loved the fondue. We got a 4 course fondue meal and it was awesome. 1st course was a really good cheese fondue blend. We got breads, vegs, and fruit to dip in the cheese. 2nd course Salad. I got a huge tomatoe salad with motsarella cheese slices. So good! Josh thinks tomatoes are devil food so he opted for the ceasar. Then the 3rd cousre we had, lobster, shrimp, pork(gross) fliget minon, shrip, streak and vegtables. You cooked those and then choose a bunch of sauces to dip the food in.



4th course was dessert and it was soooo delicious! We had the "Flaming Turtle" (kind of an awkward name). It was a chocolate sauce with pecans and caramel. We got to dip: marshmallows, brownies, rice crispy treats, strawberries, bananas, pound cake and cheesecake.

It was so romantic and fun. I love Josh. Its hard to believe 3 years of marriage has passed! Time has flown by. It has been a total of 5 years of dating and marriage. Which is a long time. So far we have experienced 5 years of happiness. Life is pretty awesome being married to Josh.



This is what I gave Josh. Its a Music Snob print which is perfect for Josh. He said, "I was the coolest for giving him it."

My Hand Modeling

Incase being a designer doesn't pan out I now have hand modeling to fall back on. Its almost as hard as designing. Its diffcult to acheive the look sometimes, but totally worth it when it just happens. I really need to work on getting a portfolio together. he he

So seriously this really is my hand. We have a new site called cropchocolate which features MM products for a hugely discounted price. I got asked to handmodel because I have small girly hands. Plus I usually have nice nails. I find it funny/weird that I have been hand modeling. Who knew I had this hidden talent!!! Josh thinks its awesome because he can tell people he's married to a model.

Fall Out Boy!!!!!!!!!!

There is NO denying that WE LOVE FOB a lot. And when we LOVE a band we have to see them in concert whenever they come and we can go. As much fun fun as it is to listen to a CD over and over again its so much better to see them LIVE! The photos are blurry (they are from my phone) because of all the rock they were doing. Plus I might have not been standing stll.





To say the least the concert was amazing. They rocked it. Patricks voice is AMAZINGLY awesome. It was great live. Pete has a good live scream and rocks the bass. Joe plays a mean guitar. Andy beats those drums so well! There is nothing like a great concert. Its been a week and I'm still remembering how great they were. The only downfall was the weird artsy polital message. Josh and I like less talkin' and more rockin'.



They played all of the favorites. It was a good mix of songs off of the new album as well as the old tunes. Everything from "Dead on Arrival" to "Grand Theft Autumn" to "Thanks for the Memories" to "This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race" to "Dance, Dance" to "Sugar We're Going Down" to"America's Suitehearts" to "I Don't Care" to "(Coffee's For Closers)" and their version of Thriller. It was really fun to go with our Friends Mauni and Scott. We jumped, we danced and we sang along to the music. It was so much fun.



They played at the Saltair. We got to go on the balcony with the other of age people. its always nice to not have to be down with the smelly, sweaty, moshing, crowdsurfing, dancefighting teens. When we got up to the balcony it was aldready lined with people. We did spot a girl who was drinking it up and fading fast. She held strong until right before FOB came on. Needles to say we were voultures on her prime spot and swooped in as she wobbled away. I'm so glad we don't drink. How can you enjoy a concert when your all drunk and out of it? The spot was prime. We could see the whole stage and Pete was especially close to us. It was fantastic. I can't wait to see them again.