Carification - For the Love of Detail

Hello again! I have recently learned that I am obsessed with art. Yeah, you would have thought that in my 33 years of constantly drawing, painting, and creating I would have figured that out. I even minored in art in college, but it has only been the past couple of months when my life was turned on it's head that I realized how important art is to me. After my religion and my family, art is my only real passion. I just can't get enough of it.
It's gotten to the point that I see past the obvious and focus just on the small details. Case in point, JM is 2 years old. He is love with what he calls "beep-beeps" which are cars, trucks, planes, etc. I, being a girly-girl, never paid that much attention to cars. In the past 8 months JM has pointed out every shirt, toy, picture, tv show, and movie that has a car in it. Trust me, they are everywhere. His favorite movies are Disney Pixar's Cars and Cars 2. Once he receives Cars 3 on blu-ray that will also become a favorite. He watches them once, sometimes twice, a day. Everything in his life seems to revolve around Lightning McQueen.

I don't know if it's mother's love, the brilliant work of Pixar, or a combination of both but I have yet to "tire" of Cars. I feel like it should drive me crazy, but it hasn't happened yet. In fact, I have fallen in love with the amount of detail that was put into creating the world of cars. As I was looking up some of the fabulous details to share with you I learned even more.
When it comes to creating a believable world that mimics the real world, it takes a lot of focus and attention to details. They couldn't just place them in a cartoon world exactly like ours, it wouldn't make any sense. Believablity is all in the tiny, tiny details. As the creators went through each detail to make it more automotive in style and shape, they called it "Carification." Let me show you just a few of gems that are found in Cars 2.
The most noticeable elements are the buildings they carified. The details for Notre Dame in Paris is exquisite when you realize that it only used as a background building for a couple of minutes.

Radiator covers at the bell towers, pipes for the flying buttresses, and antennas, gauges and headlights as the sculptural decorations! Applause! Applause!
Check out the little details in how the buildings were constructed in the Japanese pagodas.

Let's take a moment to look at the casino. Again, the structural details are automobile related.

Statues, both inside and out, have been carified which just makes me wonder about the possible backstories associated with them.

One of my absolute favorite things in this movie are the background frescoes in the casino. The translation of classical art into modern pop culture with such attention to detail and respect to the original style shows how dedicated the creators were to making a quality movie that could be appreciated by young and old alike.

True, I am just pointing out some of the amazing details without offering much in the way of commentary or insight. However, sometimes all we need is someone to point out the details in order for us to truly appreciate them.
I will end with a few of the "Easter eggs" that can be found in Cars 2.
Here, at "Ye Left Turn Inn," we have a carified tapistry of Merida and her parents from the movie, Brave.

In the wholesale market there is a poster in one of the stalls giving nod to "The Incredibles."

In the background of this scene we can see a movie poster for "A Bugs Life." I love the tongue-in-cheek with this one.

And, of course, it wouldn't be a true Pixar movie without some type of nod to the original, "Toy Story."

16 Weeks until Baby Girl!

I am 23 ½ weeks pregnant! Yea! We are so excited to be having a little girl. Compared to my last pregnancy this one has been a breeze (apart from the emotional imbalance). When I was 24 weeks along with JM I had severe muscle spasms in my back that, unfortunately, could not be relieved. They couldn’t give me any shots because it might affect the baby. They wouldn’t give me any pain pills because it would affect the baby. I was basically bed ridden because I was in so much pain. When the pain finally started to ease I found out I had preeclampsia and was placed on official bed-rest until the baby was born 4 weeks later. He was 6 weeks early and because I had been unable to do anything for the past 2 months we were far from ready for him at home. My wonderful family set up the crib, changing table, made sure we had preemie clothes and diapers for him. I still felt very unprepared.

This time, even though this have been going so much smoother (I’m comparing trimester to trimester, not overall because I’m not done yet) I still worry that something might happen again and I really want to be more prepared this time. This morning I went through all of the baby clothes I saved from JM and all of the clothes we have been given for baby girl. Without me having added anything that I have already purchased (not much) we already have twice the amount of clothing for baby girl than we did for JM. We were given a lot for JM, and I still had to buy about 1/3 of the clothes we needed.

Boys clothes preemie through 3-6 months. I bought 1/3 of these.

Girls clothes preemie through 3-6 months. All have been given to us.

I have an entire diaper box full of clothes that were given to us for baby girl that I don’t want because of style or stains. My husband says we should keep it just in case, but I think that even if she never wore the same outfit twice she still wouldn’t be able to wear all of the clothes we have for her. And she’s not even here yet! I also have a friend giving me a baby shower so I know we will receive even more clothes. What am I going to do? I usually win when I want to downsize the amount of stuff we have, but sometimes MD is sneaky and will hide a box of things he thinks I shouldn’t give away. He’s done it before when I’ve tried to get rid of old clothes…

Rock My World!

This morning we were celebrating Michael’s completion of his 3^rd class this month which meant that he would meet the deadline for student teaching in January. He has been working like crazy for the past few months in order to get it all done and his school counselors didn’t think it was possible. But he proved them wrong with the help of God and we are so excited for him!

We were sitting on the couch and he was working on his student teaching resume when there was a loud crash and the entire house shook. We were startled and looked at each other and around the room (even James) to see if it was something inside that caused the commotion. The city has been doing road work outside so we just figured it was something to do with that. Michael just shrugged it off and James went back to playing. I just didn’t feel easy and tried to peek out the windows. I couldn’t see anything on the road and was about to shrug it off as well when I heard more loud, metallic clanging and an engine revving.

I opened the front door and that’s when I saw it. Our neighbor’s teenage son’s red sports car was in our yard with the chain link fence caught over the top. He was trying to reverse the car back under the fence, uphill and not scratch the paint any more than it already had been.  Michael and I ran out to find out what had happened and to help the poor kid.

It turns out that the night before our neighbor had moved his son’s car to get his out of the driveway and when he parked it he left it in gear (it’s a manual transmission). The son was unaware it was in gear and this morning while getting ready for school he used his remote start. He was in his house at the time and was just as confused at the loud crash as we were.

The car had gone perfectly between the posts in our fence and hit the corner of our house. As far as we know right now there is only cosmetic damage to the vinyl siding, but we will know for sure tomorrow. Their insurance is paying for a professional to inspect the structural integrity of the house since the entire house shook and it is a modular home (it’s just resting and attached to the foundation unlike a stick built which is built in to the foundation.)

After everything Michael turned to me and said, “I feel like I should be very upset and angry, but all I really want to do is laugh!” I nodded in agreement. I might have said more to him but I haven’t had a voice in a week. (I hate being sick. :P)

p.s. we weren't able to get the insurance company on the phone this morning so we drove down to their office and on the way we saw 5 red gas containers fly off the trailer of a yard work truck in the middle of an intersection. Fortunately, they all slide into the gutter and a couple of other cars stopped to pick them up and put them on the sidewalk. It was an eventful day to say the least...

Update- Our neighbor came over this evening to let us know that his friend, Dennis, was going to come over tomorrow to look at the damage to our house. I asked if he had my husband’s cell number and he said, “No, I don’t but Dennis already has it.” I was very confused. I know Michael hadn’t talked to anyone named Dennis so how could he possibly have his number? I asked what company Dennis worked for, he didn’t know but he was very confident in his friend. Michael and I have been a little nervous about it because if your neighbor had his way they would just replace the siding and not report it to the insurance. So for an unknown friend from an unknown company to come over to inspect the house made us understandable nervous.

A little while later I got a phone call from an unknown number. Since I have no voice and didn’t know who it was, I didn’t answer. I listened to the message later and it was our ward Bishop. Our neighbor, who is not LDS, had gone over to see him about the accident and asked if he would look at the damage. It was then that it dawned on me, our Bishop’s first name is Dennis, he lives across the street, his job is to inspect buildings for damage that have been reported to insurance companies. Our neighbor asked him to check things out for us. Once I realized all of that, I called Michael and we are infinitely more comfortable whatever the outcome. Huge Blessing!