That Elizabeth Cole
Hello everyone!

It has been a long time since I wrote a blog.  How did I skip so many Fridays?  That's just not fair.  Anyway, here I am now, hopefully some people still read this blog.  ;)

Elizabeth Cole is a really funny character. I didn't used to know exactly what she was like, but I've realized that she is just a grump.  She likes just being herself and doesn't listen to anyone else's opinions or orders.  Right now she is sitting on her bed with her head stuck in the bell of her Victrola (Rebecca's music player from AG) and listening to "Take me out to the ball game" nonstop.

Elizabeth actually has had quite a lot of influence on Nafy over the years.  In fact, I think it is probably safe to say that Elizabeth is one of the only people that Nafy listens to and takes advice from.  The two of them are the crazier two of the four kitties, and they don't care what people think of them.  Nafy has to try and fit into her time period though, so she has to use manners and wear the right kinds of clothes.  Through reasons and means unknown, Elizabeth has managed to bend the time period rules of the Parkingtons' house just enough that she can wear the fashions of about 10 years ahead of them and listen to more modern music than they do.  Needless to say, it drives them all crazy because she is such a radical.

hehehe!  On Easter Elizabeth spent the whole afternoon after finding her Easter jelly bean eggs putting them on top of the spinning record on her Victrola one by one and letting them fly off as it circled around, then laughing at where the jelly bean landed.  Soon there were jelly beans all over her bedroom!  The maids didn't really enjoy that too much, lol!

Hopefully you all have been well and enjoyed hearing a little bit more about Elizabeth, she's quite the character.

:-)
Greta

The Parkingtons' house is finally decorated for Spring instead of Christmas - that took long enough!  Heather got out all of the boxes from the attic and replaced their winter clothing with Spring dresses that have been packed away for the last six months.  It was so refreshing to fill up their closets with pastels and white lace after the months of dark plaid and long sleeves.

The Larson family is trying hard to get going on a planned schedule, even though none of them are really that type of person.  Anna is the only one who continues to successfully do their chores.

Lisa and Suzanna had a race at the clothes boutique the other day to see who could come up with the best reason to buy a bolt of blue satin.  They both wanted to have Cristal make it into a ballgown, so they fought hard.  In the end, Lisa won because she thought her red hair and blue eyes would look better in it than Suzi's blonde.  So Suzi settled on a different bolt of fabric to be HER new ballgown, and they both submitted their orders to Cristal forthwith.  They have also been gathering sewing projects together to make fashionable modern clothing at sewing circles.

Mei Mei and Vera are VERY happy with their new home in the new bank roof, and have decorated it with carpets and hanging silks.  They don't bother Lisa too much unless they feel like things are getting boring, and they spend most of their time hanging out of the roof and looking around town square.

Laura and Paul went rock climbing by the river, which was a great idea until Paul let go of the line because he "saw a fish."  Laura slipped sideways and was soon hanging by her harness out over the river, yelling at Paul, who was a little sheepish.

So town square is having a good 'ol time, and around here in Pleasantville the dolls could not be happier that Spring is coming at last!
:-)
Greta

Hello all.

We finished another long-awaited movie scene yesterday, and now there are only a few left.  We might be able to finish by next week if we work hard enough, and then I'll get to start editing, yay!  I hope the movie isn't too long, lol!  I have no idea how long it is right now, actually.

I've been getting all of your Valentine's day entries in the last few days and they are great!  I love how creative you are with doll-sized decorations and different combinations of pink, white and red with hearts.  All of your dolls look so cute, too! 
It makes me wish that we had time to actually do something Valentine's-ish with the dolls in Pleasantville, since they are still so wrapped up in this movie.  Oh well, things like that happen every once in a while.  They'll just have to really decorate a lot for St. Patrick's day!

We played in the Montoyas' house the other day and it was really fun to clean it up and get the family organized.  Mrs. Montoya worked on making some big "jumbo recipes" that would make large amounts of food for all of the eleven people she has to feed at the rancho now, and made a few dishes (one of which was the Mexican rice that Clara and Nan successfully knocked over in Nan's 7th video blog, unfortunately.)
I also sewed together some of their weavings on some cardboard to make a large "lunch box" and lined it with some nice ivory fabric inside so the boys can take a hot lunch to the fields with some plates and napkins.  It is really cute, even though some of the girls got mad that so many of their weavings got used up.  But that's what weavings are for, right?

Anyway, big day today!  Lots of practicing and filming and list-making to be done.

See ya later!
:-)
Greta

Whew!  Just got back from a jog and I'm all refreshed and ready for a day of dolls!  I'm really lucky as far as blog days go, because I always get to write a blog on doll day.  I have no idea what we're going to do today (with the dolls), but I think it is going to be at the Merriman's or Montoya's houses and it may just be a day full of getting things back to normal and re-organizing things like each of their chores and all of their jobs and duties like the laundry and making Nafy's jammies and fun stuff like that!

Blogging from the set :)
Now Playing: the Waltz of the Flowers
Well-

I have a theater in my house.
Now Playing: Taking Chances
Hey guys!

Well today is another big filming day since we're on the final stretch of the movie here.  I can't WAIT to show you the movie though, some of the shots were getting now at the end are so adorable... but I cannot say too much.  We've been filming things in the living room for a Nutcracker section of the movie, but I'll say no more.

I love it when we get to do a big project like a movie.  I don't know how many of you know this, but we actually made about four feature-length stop-frame movies before Kitty Kapers over the course of about 2 years... the first one was about the dolls going to school, doing chores, doing soccer, swim team, drama class, all that good stuff.  It was called "A Day in Pleasantville."  The second one was about the Larsons, and it was called "Anna and the Barn Dance."  The third one was "Our Dolls and the Great Outdoors," which I've got the first ten minutes of up on youtube right now (the full movie is actually about two hours long..I'm hoping to get the rest of it up on youtube eventually, don't worry.) And the fourth one was the last Christmas-themed movie we made, "Pumpkins and Candy Canes." (that's where the ballet class and skater's waltz clips are from.)

Every time we did one of those projects we would be forced to make things a little better and a little more realistic, so our whole town would start looking better.  We'd notice what was in the background of a shot and replace it with something doll-sized that made sense in the room.

It wasn't until we moved to this house (around 2002) that we really started changing the dolls' houses around to look more and more realistic.  Then Kitty Kapers stepped it up in 2005, followed by all of the photo stories we made whenever we hosted a traveling doll.  So now it has been four years since we made a movie, two years since we stopped doing the Nutcracker, even.   And this new movie is bumping each house and the detail level up another notch.  That's all I'm sayin'!  heehee!

I'm hoping to share those first four movies with you all eventually, I just want to fix them up a little bit.  Great Outdoors is lots of fun with huge mountain and river sets and stuff, and Anna and the Barn Dance has some fun dancing sequences.  We shall see!

And then you will get to see this latest movie, which I love watching, even all cut up and boring the way it is when you have to watch 15 takes of the same shot in a row.  lol!

OK, have a great Friday, everybuggy!  (As Nan would say.)
:-)
Greta

Back in Pleasantville!
Now Playing: Soldier's Dream - Mark O'Connor, Edgar Myer, Yo-Yo Ma

Howdy, everybody!

Well, today is the long-awaited "doll day" in our schedule that we've been waiting for for quite a while.  I don't know what's on the list, but it is sure to be fun. Solana has been working intensely on all the schoolwork she normally misses when we're gone for all our shows, and now she is taking a day off and we're going to play dolls all day.  ;)

I'm also busy printing, but this time it isn't a new CD or a new piece of promo material for the trio- it's a special item or two for the website!  So expect some cool new things to be added to the store in the next few days.

I've also discovered youtube recently.  lol.  Not that I didn't use it before, and we have lots of videos up on there already, but I just didn't know how to use it very well before.  Now I'm finding all these great people and their videos and adding them as friends and all that good stuff.  I guess I just didn't realize that people treat youtube as a fourth wing of the myspace-facebook-twitter trio.  :P

I hope everyone is going to join us for the group chat this afternoon?  There are going to be some fun contests and prizes as well.... like, good prizes from the doll store and other goodies!  So make sure you're doing some research and remembering all your ourdolls.net trivia before you come, because it'll help!  That's all I'm sayin'.

We are just about finished watching all the dailies from the movie, so the first leg of post-production is just about finished.  There are a few scenes that we want to do over again, plus a few that we haven't even shot yet, so we'll do those and then it's time to start the editing process!  You are going to love this movie, it is the cutest thing.... I love it.
I can't wait until we can share it with you, but there's a long road to go down before we can get there. 

Alrighty, take it easy everybody and I'll see you next week!
:-)
Greta

Looking ahead
Now Playing: general talking
Hello everybody-

This is a really fun time of year.  You can finally wrap up everything you've been working on through the Christmas and Holiday season and look ahead to what you're going to do in the New Year.

We've been writing lists.  Lots of lists.  Lists about everything I can think of.  We've got so many far-reaching plans, I don't know how we'll ever do all of it, but hopefully we'll get some of it done pretty soon here.  ;-)

I've got lists and lists and lists of things for the website... so there should be a lot of new updates coming soon, I just have to have a little bit more time to get it all put together.
I've also been really enjoying all the emails you've sent with the kind of thing you would like to see more of on the site.  Everything from LOTS more Nafy stuff to more crafts, remedies and recipes.  There are some new section ideas I have brewing in my head as well.    Completely new stuff.  Hmmmm..... tease!

Well, anyway I'm just rambling now but I just thought I'd give you a heads up about the updates we've got planned.  It's going to be the best year YET on ourdolls.net. 

:-)
Greta

Putting together a Photo Story
Now Playing: Marie's Wedding

Hey guys!

Today's I thought I would share a little behind-the-scenes thing with you about how we put together the Gala Ball photo story.  Since Pleasantville is set up year-round, it is usually very easy to snap a few pictures and put together a photo story of something that is already going on in our day-to-day dollplay, but the Gala Ball was difficult because we had to put the whole thing together in one day outside on our back porch.

This is a picture of our permanent doll setup in the rec room - known to everyone as town square and the Larsons' farm:

So this is what it is usually like during the year. Now here are some photos of us setting up the Gala Ball photo story on our back porch:

It took an entire day to set up and then we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening taking pictures as it slowly got dark enough outside for the porch to transform itself into a ballroom.

heeheehee....

Anyway, that's a little human-sized peek at the Gala Ball. I hope you enjoyed the photo story!

:-)
Greta

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