Day after Thanksgiving!  Does this mean I'm finally allowed to think about Christmas officially?  Methinks yes... although yesterday we put the finishing touches on the last of the Christmas decorations in Pleasantville.  We spent the morning and afternoon decorating the Montoyas' house and filming a lot of scenes for the movie.  Then we had a nice, quiet little Thanksgiving dinner and continued on with decorating the Parkingtons' mansion.

We have ten hours of footage for the movie already.  It is going to be so fun to put it all together, I can't tell you how excited I am to see it!  I keep wondering how to describe it.  I guess you could say it will look like one of our Christmas photo stories coming to life.  It is very visual and colorful.  I'm enjoying the process of planning and filming it as well, and we're plotting about ways to write the soundtrack and possibly perform it ourself beneath the video.  We shall see!

Anyway, I have to go see an orchestra concert of Solana's, but I will be back again soon, never fear.
Enjoy your black friday and don't get too trampled trying to get to the holiday sales!  (As soon as the concert is over I will be hunkering down and staying safe at home, personally, but if you are going shopping today - best of luck to you!)

:-)
Greta

Snow!
Now Playing: The fountain in the corner.
It snowed in downtown Pleasantville last week!  Solana worked really hard and got all the snow set up at the Larsons' house and around town square, so now there is snow on every ledge and in every nook and cranny down there and looks really pretty!

It also snowed at the Merriman's and it won't at the Parkington's until Solana is done with her secret project inside there.  It won't snow at the Montoyas' rancho for a while though because it is so hot up there.  They hardly ever get much snow during the winter.  ;)

And now the weather report for OUR area is saying that it is going to snow here tonight!   Wow, what perfect timing.  I must say that I prefer pretend snow though because if it snows here then we will have a hard time getting around.  (Not very good at driving in snow, lol!)

So... rumors of a new movie have been circulating.  And it's true... we're working on a new movie project right now.  But I can't say any more about it.  I'm so excited because we haven't made a movie since the Kitty Kapers in 2005 and that was nearly four years ago so Pleasantville has changed and improved dramatically since then.  The Nutcracker is still really good though, we just watched it again (and all the features) and it makes me feel like I'm there again.  So if you haven't gotten the Nutcracker DVD yet, you should.  That's all I'm sayin'.  hehehe ;)
Anyway....stay tuned for more information on this new project.  There will be pictures and trailers and other spoilers coming soon.  

Time to get started on the projects of the day!
:-)
Greta

Now Playing: More Scottish Christmas music
Things have finally gotten active in Pleasantville again after a long period of playing here and there, we are actually able to play more now.

Yesterday John enforced all of his laws and inspections of houses, and five people got sent to the jail for various things like not walking or feeding their pets, not eating, or not having laundry boxes.

Kaya, Suzanna, Mei Mei, Antonio and Heather Heaven all had to stay in jail for  a night and then pick a chore from the chore box that they had to do.  Suzi got "walking the Parkington's pets" which is the most dreaded of the chores to do, so she had to drag all the cats around the town and then put up with Snowball, who is like the Houdini of dogs and always manages to wiggle out of his leash somehow and make a beeline to Kaya's cave, which his favorite place to hang out!

The Parkingtons have torn apart their upper floor in order to do some wallpaper work in Rebecca's bedroom and Samantha's room before they take everything down to start putting up their Christmas decorations.  I just had Rebecca's wallpaper push-pinned to the walls until now, and I want to glue it and put in some wood and new curtains like we did to the green parlour and the music room.

Our house is starting to be secretive.  lol  because all the dolls are starting their Christmas presents for each other, there is a lot of "don't come in here!" and "you can't look over here!" going on, as well as a lot of whispering between present conspirators.

We're watching the Nutcracker DVD again and I wish we could do the Nutcracker again.  I'm so glad we taped it and got it on DVD though, since we don't have enough time to do the full production anymore.  And I forgot about all the behind-the-scenes features that are so funny!  Especially the blooper reel.  It helps me remember what it was like to put that on every year, which was really fun.  

There is frost at the Larsons' cabin right now.  Pretty soon they are going to get their first snowfall.  And from there -  here we go!!

:-)
Have a great day!
Greta

Now Playing: Irish tunes in my head ;)
HI!

I know Willow already talked about this in HER blog on Wednesday, but I am already looking forward to Christmastime right now.  We finished the Masked Ball, got everyone home and made them go to sleep.  It's very unusual that we make the dolls go to sleep, because they are always so busy doing things.  I love slowly making everyone change into their nightgowns and do "before bed" things like drinking tea or sitting by the fireplaces, (the Montoyas always have to roll out their bedrolls, which are stored in the wall during the day so they have more floor space) and brushing out whatever hairstyle they have in their hair.

It provides a fresh start for us the next time we start playing, because we can make them start in the morning...do their chores and go to their jobs.

There was a time (during middle school, I think) that we got so into playing with the dolls that we actually slept in their houses so we could make them get up and make them do things in real time.  It worked for about.... a day... until we had to go and do some other things, but it was a fun concept!  There's something very cool about making the dolls wake up when it is still dark outside and get themselves breakfast.  Like Christmas morning when you wake up early and see the tree with the lights on in the dark morning with presents under it for the first time.
There I go about Christmas again!  It must be on the brain!
I've started  carrying a little black notebook around with me while we're playing in the dollhouses so I can write down all the present ideas I get.  It's about time to start making everyone's presents and wrapping them up.

We're sitting in a hotel right now before some shows at an Irish festival here, and it's a lot of fun so far.
Anyway, see you all later... and Happy Halloween!
:-)
Greta

Here we go again!
WOW it's already time to get ready for the Masked Ball again.  That really flew by.  So now Mrs. Wickon is freaking out because she decided to cook 52 dishes (last year she only made 35) and she has to get started now so it'll all be ready to eat by next week.

Everyone else is scrambling to sew themselves gowns (Felicity, Lily, Suzanne, Cristal, Samantha and Lisa are all getting new ones this year) and find matching masks and/or make new ones that match their new dresses.  

Poor Juan Valasquez fell off the rancho wall and broke both of his legs AND his back, so he's lying around moaning and wailing and no one will listen to him except Josefina because they are all busy trying to pull together their outfits for the ball.  His mother, Ana, is planning to dress up as a bride and wear her wedding dress since she doesn't have a ballgown yet, and that's the fanciest gown she has.

Nafy is also working on the details for her next video blog while trying to keep up with all her assignments from Mammy, and Lily Merriman is on a roll in the sewing room.  She already finished her ballgown for the Masked Ball, and now she's starting on another one just in case.

I love this time of year.  I really like how all the doll houses look with all their autumn decorations, and playing dolls inside with a cup of coffee, cozy music and rain pouring down outside like I'm in the bottom of a swimming pool all makes this very enjoyable.

I'll see everyone on the chat this afternoon!  4:00 PST on the message board.  And don't forget to send in your contest entries.  ;)

:-)
Greta

We played an entire day in the Merriman's the other day, to try and do everything they need to do between waking up and going to bed.  There was so much to do!
All he servants had to do all the nitty gritty chores stuff like groceries, firewood, dishes, etc. and all the children had to do all their chores, write back to their letters, exercise outside, practice dance, go to singing and piano lessons, and do their proper school homework.
Mrs. Merriman doesn't usually do any of that work since she has fragile nerves, so she just sat in the dining room and worked on some sewing projects and complained about how tired she was.

Mammy, the governess, had a fine time keeping the children in control until she had to force Nan to go to her singing lesson with Mrs. Wickon, which never works out very well because Nan hates her singing lessons.  So she kept trying to escape, and even had Elizabeth, Clara and Anna plotting diversions and escape plans for her while she was about to start her lesson, but it didn't matter because Mrs. Wickon doesn't enjoy the lessons either, so she told Nan to go away and that she would "never teach you again!"

So we'll see how that goes, but Mrs. Merriman is determined that Nan be able to sing as well as play the piano, so there'll have to be a solution somewhere!

Toodles,
:-)
Greta

Now Playing: All the show videos I'm uploading
Last week we finally got a chance to work on Pleasantville a little bit (as you can probably tell by the sudden release of both a Nafy video blog AND a NafyCast in the same week) which was really fun!

the Gala ball
I just posted the Mrs. Fox's Gala Ball photo story, which we've been working on for a long time.  I really liked putting this whole thing together because we did it all in one day but left on tour right afterwards so we worked on the photos and captions between our shows on tour to take a little bit of Pleasantville with us.  :)

Another Mess
Why does it always seem like every time we create an open space in this house we have to then make a really big mess just to fill up the space?

The walls are finished the walls are finished!
Well we got home the other day to find the Montoya's walls completely finished and all fixed up with the lights in the right places and everything.