Follower submitted comic!

We had one comic submitted from our follower 'EditingAmy.'  It's a pretty good one!  It's from www.gocomics.com.

This one is pretty funny, but we're still waiting for one to bring tears to our eyes.  That's a challenge, people. Keep the submissions coming!  Again, comment the url below, or email it to us at w.frozen.sunshine@gmail.com.  And keep on laughing!

We Need Your Help!

We need your help... again. 


This week's resolution is to laugh everyday.  We are happy people and have been laughing.  However, we wanted to achieve this by reading the lost art of comics.  The problem is, we haven't found a comic yet that has been hilarious, or that has made us LOL.  


Jill has turned to the genius of garfield, and that has gotten her the closest.  She enjoys Garfield, because of the short, sweet, and silly punch-lines.  Eric has searched for free funny comics, and hasn't gotten anything too funny.  The MAD magazine has not really worked either.  


Don't get us wrong, we've smiled, and maybe even te-he'd at something.  But the good laughs just aren't there.  Has TV, internet, and video games finally desensitized us?  Nah, we just need new and/or funny content.


So in comes you: our faithful readers.  We need you to send us your favorite cartoons.  Comment the link below, so that everyone can enjoy them.  Or send us an email (w.frozen.sunshine@gmail.com) with the comic in it, and we'll share it for everyone.  Please help us complete this resolution!

End of the Holidays and Next Week's Resolution!

Saturday's Holiday was supposed to be Cherries Jubilee Day.  However, we were making our own holiday, and making it 'Celebrate Weddings' day. 

The first thing we did was to finally enjoy our Anniversary Cake.  You know, the top layer of cake from your wedding cake that is then frozen to be eaten on your one-year anniversary.  The problem with that plan for us, was that we moved across the country.  It's hard to keep a cake frozen on a long road trip.  So it stayed with Eric's parents, frozen in their freezer. 

The other problem with the "one-year plan," is that we weren't able to come home right on our anniversary.  So since we were coming back east this weekend for Eric's cousin's wedding, we figured that it was a perfect time.  So we thawed it out, and ate it.  IT WAS GOOD. (Jill may or may not have had a total of 5 slices this weekend, small slices she will add)  But we shared what we could get away from Jill with both sides of the family, and everyone agreed that there's no way you could have told that it was over a year old.

The other way we celebrated weddings on that day, was to actually go to a wedding!  It was Eric's cousin's wedding.  It was an overcast day, but the rain hed out, and it turned out to be good weather.  It was such a beautiful ceremony, and had one of the best mother-groom dances we've seen.   (And we've been to a LOT of weddings)  They did a lively swing-type dance together.

Since we kind of missed the odd/wacky holiday for Saturday, we decided to make up for it by celebrating Sunday's odd holiday which entails reading a comic.  We picked up a MAD magazine, as they have a couple small comics inside.  Which leads us to our next resolution. 

In the spirit of positive-thinking, we're going to try and laugh everyday.  While we usually do laugh everyday (as we are fun-loving people), we are going to try to achieve laughter via comics.  You can all help, either be sending us comics at w.frozen.sunshine@gmail.com, or leaving a URL in the comment section.  This way we can re-post them, and the laughter shall spread!

Wacky and not so Wacky

As you likely know, we are celebrating wacky/odd holidays this week. (P.S. we have really been enjoying this week so far.)

For starters we celebrated the not so odd holiday of The First Day of Autumn.  How did we celebrate?  By making and enjoying caramel apples.

YUM!

We also played checkers to celebrate the odd holiday of Checkers Day.  Similar to Punch Day, we think you can celebrate this in a variety of ways, but playing checkers seemed most fitting for us.

Can you guess who won the game based on these photos that were taken before we started playing?

Yeah, the individual who was apparently contemplating a strategy won!

Here's the final result....

If you haven't played checkers in a while (or any board game for that matter) we highly recommend it.  It's fun to bring out those old games and enjoy some good old fashion fun!

Happy Checkers Day to you!

Elephant Appreciation Day!

Sorry we're a little late on this post, but we were traveling all of yesterday. 

For elephant appreciation day, we actually did a couple things, and have something that you can do too!  If you are a regular follower, you'll know that we do love elephants, and even have elephant decoration in our house. (click here)

Since we were travelling, we didn't get to "spread the word" as we'd have hoped to do.  (Although Eric did talk about it loudly so that other people would over-hear that it was Elephant Appreciation Day.)  However, Jill wore her elephant shirt all day long!  Yes that is neon green.

Also, we brought along a little stuffed elephant, and took pictures while waiting for bags.  Yes, these are some great pictures, but it's something that we wouldn't have done without knowing that it was Elephant Appreciation Day, which is what the one-a-week resolution idea is all about: New Experiences!

Now for how you can enjoy Elephant Appreciation Day (one day late).  Below is a video of an elephant painting a picture.  YES! AN ELEPHANT PAINTING WITH ITS TRUNK!  At first you might think that they are exploiting these elephants.  However, it seems they enjoy painting (kind of like Bolo loves doing tricks) and these people are working to save elephants. They sell prints of their artwork online, and all the proceeds go to paying for the elephant's care and habitat.  It's a pretty ingenious way to raise money for the elephants.  There are many different prints, some are rather expensive, but the one that the elephant is making in this video sells for $15 dollars.  So if you'd like to really appreciate some elephants, I know that this is a good way of doing so.  Here is the website to see all of the work and more videos. http://www.ExoticWorldGifts.com

Giving thanks isn't just for Thanksgiving

Today is World Gratitude Day.  Showing your gratitude is important to do everyday and we really hope the people around us know how thankful we are for their presence in our lives.

We actually had a week this year where we specifically gave thanks for something each day.  You can read about the beginning of the week on this post and read about the end of the week on this post.  Jill also posted a list a while ago about the things she was most thankful for in our new Laramie, WY home.  You can read that post here.

To officially celebrate today, we decided to write messages to some of our favorite companies and organizations and simply thank them for doing a great job.  

All too often we fear companies only receive negative messages, so we thought it would be very fitting for us to officially thank them today to celebrate World Gratitude Day.

We should have you guess which companies we were going to thank.  If you have been following our blog or know us personally, we have a feeling none of these companies will surprise you.

Any guesses????

Well we wrote to four companies/organizations.

Have you guessed any yet?

Ok, wait for it.

No, wait, first we will give you a hint.

One of these places recognizes us when we walk in.

Got it????

Another one of these places pretty much has the best food ever.

Did you get that one?

The third company just knows what they are doing.

Any guesses for that one?

And the fourth company is really actually better described as an organization and has helped make our lives even more exciting.

Who could that be?

Did you see what we are doing here? 

We were just trying to ensure that you actually spend some time guessing and didn’t just jump to the answers right away. 

Did it work, or are you one of those folks who reads the last page of a book first?

DRUMROLL PLEASE………….

We wrote to Ace Hardware, Chipotle, Lands End, and Black Dog Rescue (we actually recently sent a thank you note to the York SPCA where we rescued Bolo, otherwise it is very likely they would have made the list here too)

Here are the letters (actually emails) that we sent: 

  

Dear ACE,

Hi!  We are Jill&Eric.  We are the blog owners of Frozen Sunshine: http://wwwfrozensunshine.blogspot.com/.  Our blog tracks our little project of implementing a different resolution for each week of 2011. This week we are celebrating odd/wacky holidays. 

Well, that is where you come in, today is World Gratitude Day.  We just wanted to write and thank you for being such a wonderful company!!!  Let us count the ways why we love ACE:

FIRST: We purchased our first home this spring in Laramie, WY and somehow ended up painting every single room in the house.  So basically we LOVE your rewards program and all of the amazing paint deals you happened to be running this spring.  AWESOME!

SECOND: Your employees are everything you promote them to be; starting with unbelievably helpful!  We have never walked into the Laramie ACE Hardware store without being greeted by someone who seemed to genuinely want to help us out.  And help out they have!  Your employees are extremely knowledgeable.  We have learned more than a person probably needs to know about painting. ;)  Aside from being knowledgeable, your employees are also very patient and willing to answer even the stupidest of questions.  It’s true, Jill has been known to come into an ACE with a serious list of questions.

THIRD: Your store in Laramie, WY is always so very clean and doesn’t have that weird hardware smell to it.   Let’s just say this has not been our experience at every hardware store in the area…..

So in honor of WORLD GRATITUDE DAY, we just wanted to say thanks.  We truly believe in telling someone that they have done something great.  It’s true; we are a little ashamed that we are kind of hiding behind World Gratitude Day to thank you.  But a real thanks was definitely in order!

Thanks again ACE, you kind of rock!

Jill&Eric

  

Dear Chiptole,

Ok, let’s just get it out on the table….you complete us.

Sorry.  Did we just take that too far?

So, here’s the deal, today is World Gratitude Day and we have decided to celebrate.  We are the happy owners of a blog called Frozen Sunshine: http://wwwfrozensunshine.blogspot.com/.  Our goal is to execute a different resolution each week for the year of 2011.  This week we are celebrating odd/wacky holidays.

In honor of World Gratitude Day we just wanted to thank you for being so amazing.  Shall we count the ways?
1- You offer fast food that isn’t “fast food.”
2- Your employees (in particular in Fort Collins, CO) are unbelievably friendly and personable.
3- Your food is fresh and free of hormones.
4- You make veggies taste better than we could even begin to image (this is amazing as Eric pretty much dislikes all veggies)
5- Oh and we have never really had a bad experience at any of your restaurants and let’s just say….we have eaten at more than a few of your restaurants.

We are sure the list goes on, but these are definitely our top 5 reasons why we love you and just wanted to say thanks!

Now, honestly we want to get down to business:

As we just mentioned we love you, but actually hate you for one single stinky reason…..there isn’t a Chipotle in Laramie, WY.  Yes, yes we know we are a small town and its really windy in the winter, but there are at least two Chipotle loving fanatics in town (hi, we are Jill&Eric by the way) PLUS an entire campus full of hungry university students (enter WY’s only university- U-Dub).  We are just sayin’ we highly recommend you strongly consider developing an establishment in Laramie.

Also….we were just wondering if you had plans to hold your Halloween-dress-like-“Scary” -food celebration.  It’s true, we were those fanatics that dressed up like pigs in a blanket and surprisingly won a burrito party for our friends.  We actually blogged about it here: http://wwwfrozensunshine.blogspot.com/2011/01/trip-part-2.html.  We are hoping that you do have plans to hold a similar event, we have a couple ideas brewing in our heads and can’t wait to have an excuse to drive down to Fort Collins to get a booo-ruitto!

Alright, enough of that business stuff. 

Just wanted to again thank you for completing us. ;)

Jill&Eric

Dear Land’sEnd,

Howdy!  We are Jill&Eric.  We are the blog owners of Frozen Sunshine: http://wwwfrozensunshine.blogspot.com/.  Our blog tracks our experiences as we attempt to implement a different resolution each week.  This week we are celebrating odd/wacky holidays.  Today is World Gratitude Day and we just wanted to say THANK YOU.

We live in Laramie, WY.  If you do a single google search we are certain you will quickly learn that Laramie’s weather is not everyone’s favorite aspect of the town.  Our winters are long and it gets to be very, very windy.  (Just because we love turning everything into a positive…we do have amazing views of the mountains and the sun shines almost every day).  But let’s keep it real and be honest; it still does get very cold.

Last year when we were planning to move to the frozen (thankfully sunny) tundra, Jill purchased a down jacket.  She immediately considered Land’s End because you make high quality products for a reasonable price.  You make high quality in a low quality world and we thank you for that.  Jill loves her down jacket (actually her Mom bought one too for her trip out this past winter).  It keeps her warm and doesn’t make her look like a burnt marshmallow (as many down jackets seem to very successfully accomplish).  Probably the best feature is that the pockets are lined with fleece.  Ahh extra warmth!

We know that when Mother Nature decides it is time for the temperatures to drop to negative 10 and below, Jill will be extra toasty warm with her down jacket.

Aside from offering great products, we also have experienced your stellar customer service.  We talk to a lot of people on the phone each day, but still recall a very lovely conversation we had with a Land’s End customer service representative while placing an order.

Please keep up the great work!  We always want to consider Land’s End as a company providing high quality products at reasonable prices!

Thank you!

Jill&Eric

Dear Black Dog Animal Rescue,

Hello, we’re Jill and Eric, and we’re the writers behind the blog Frozen Sunshine: http://wwwfrozensunshine.blogspot.com/.  Our blog is about fulfilling a different resolution every week of the year, instead of a new years resolution.  This week, we are celebrating a wacky, odd, or unique holidays.  Today’s holiday (September 21^st) is World Gratitude Day.  

We decided to write to various businesses or organizations that we are grateful for.  We choose to write to you, because we just recently adopted our second dog from your organization.  He was named Xavier, but we have renamed him Zeppelin.  He’s brought a lot more excitement to both our lives, and our first dog’s life.  Check out our blog for pictures of Zeppelin: http://wwwfrozensunshine.blogspot.com/2011/09/remember-when-we-used-to-post-on.html enjoying his new life, and all the activities we do with him.

Not only are we thankful for such a great dog, but also for the great humanitarian (caninitarian, if you will) work that you do, by being a no-kill shelter.  Such loving animals do not deserve to die simply because someone moved, or their landlord doesn’t want dogs.

Thank you for all the hard work that you do, and know, that while the dogs can’t say it, they are grateful for people like you.

Sincerely,

Eric and Jill

(Just in case, we want to be very clear that these are our own opinions and no one encouraged or asked us to write about these companies.  We really just love these companies so much we wanted to take the time to officially thank them on World Gratitude Day.)

Did you thank anyone today?  We bet you did!  We would of course love to hear what you did to celebrate World Gratitude Day!

Knock Out!

National Punch Day is an odd holiday to celebrate, as no one is actually sure if they are talking about punching with fists, or drinking punch.  So we did both!!


First we had some fruit punch with our lunch:

After work, we did a kickboxing workout on DVD.  It's a Denise Austin workout.  FYI, she came in 9th place at the Div. 1 gymnastics championship back in her college days.  9th place, what a slacker.

We like these because they aren't the typical crazy workout videos, just regular easy to accomplish moves, but not too easy, so there is still actually a challenge.  You need not see the workout video, because we have pictures of us doing the workouts, and we're pretty much perfect at it.

Look at that punch form!

Yes, Densie Austin even has you do some of the awesome Tae Bo like with Billy Blanks.  Remember him?!

Anyone do anything to celebrate National Punch Day?  Let us know, we love, love, love hearing from you! 

What's a pirate's favorrrrite puddin?

BUTTERRRRRRSCOTCH!!

 Well it's prrrrobably actually RRRRRum.  But we decided to celebrrrate both talk like a pirrrrrate day, and national Butterrrrrscotch day.  So forrrrrr today, the answer is Butterrrrscotch.

Enjoy some pictures of us enjoying Butterrrrrscotch puddin.  Also, if you've neverrrrrr trrrrried it beforrrrrre with chocolate chips, we highly rrrrrecommend adding them.  It's grrrrreat.

Butterrrrrscotch puddin with a butterrrrscotch colorrrrrred dog.

Forrrrrr those of you who arrrrre going to be celebrrrating the varrrrious holidays with us, if you'd like to sharrrrre how you celebrrrrrated, you can email us picturrrrrres, videos, orrrrrr links to your site and we'll sharrrrrre them on ourrrrr blog.  Ourrrrrr email addrrrress is w.frozen.sunshine@gmail.com.  Forrrr videos, you can post them online, and we can just embed them, if they arrrre too larrrrge to email.

Big News, The Last of Our Art, and The Beginning of a New Resolution

First things first, we must mention how blessed we feel.  Our blog was featured for the first time on a major website: Pinterest!  You may remember them from this post, as we gathered some of our inspiration for this past week's resolution from this superb website.  You can see the feature HERE!  (We're #2 on the weekly round up.)  


We're practically famous now... not.  That's right, we are bringing 'not' back.


We have finally finished our art!  Here is Jill's final project, inspired by the below project from Pinterest.

We really enjoyed this resolution.  We wish we were a bit better at painting, because it'd be fun to be an official artist.  We feel we're going to do more painting and hopefully we'll get a bit better. You forget how much fun it is to actually paint, when you haven't done it since elementary school.  This is something we recommend trying, we got all of our supplies for about $20, and if you're just creating one masterpiece, it would be much cheaper.  

Here's what the art looks like in our house (Warning: these are not the best pictures we've ever taken, we just wanted to show how they are placed in our house.):

The dogs are hanging out in the office/guest room.

The blue geometric masterpiece is also in the office/guest room.

 As promised, a photo of this one from the side, so you can see how the lines wrap around.

The fire bird landed in the bedroom.

And the bubble flowers are growing in the living room.

Next week's resolution is going to be a very fun one.  And audience participation is greatly recommended/suggested.  We're going to celebrate odd, wacky holidays!! There is at least one holiday for everyday of the year.  For any of your college kids out there, these holidays are a great excuse to party.  However, we're going to celebrate them this week the way the inventors intended.  We're letting you know in advance what they are, so you can join us too!

Most are pretty self-explanatory, but here's the link to all of the year's holidays, so that you can learn how they came to be, and why, and what to do.  We'll be participating in:

Monday, September 19th: International Talk Like A Pirate Day, and National Butterscotch Pudding Day. (We're doing both, because they're both just too good to pass up.)


Tuesday, September 20th: National Punch Day


Wednesday, September 21st: World Gratitude Day


Thursday, September 22nd: Elephant Appreciation Day


Friday, September 23rd: Checkers Day (also the first day of Fall)


Saturday, September 24th: We will try to celebrate National Cherries Jubilee Day, but we will also be celebrating Eric's cousin's wedding!

We usually take Sunday's off, but we plan on continuing as Sunday, September 25th is National Comic Book Day!

Art Revealed!

It all starts with this.  A blank canvas equals endless possibilities. (That was a  'The Office' reference for everyone's enjoyment.)

For Eric's first painting, he used the inspiration from our previous post, from this project:

And combined it with geometric art he used to do in grade school, in order to entertain himself.  Below is the a few of the steps.

 

He used tape and arranged them in straight lines.  The tape makes the lines after everything is spray painted. When the straight lines merge together in the center, your eye combines them all to make one curved line, as you can see below.  

The works really well with a ruler and a thin pencil line, with lost of lines.  However, since the skinniest tape we could find was half an inch wide, the magic is almost lost.  Yet you can see how the curved line is made.  Remember everything you are seeing here is a straight line of tape.  Pay attention to the bottom as the canvas wraps around.  This picture does not show all of that as well as it can, and hopefully we'll make a video, but that accentuates the lines.



Jill's first project came from this inspiration:

As we stated in the last post, we are dog people, but we hope this doesn't make us crazy dog people.  Jill made silhouette's of just the dog's heads.  

These really make us laugh.  It's great how unique and distinguished Bolo's head is, and how typical Zeppelin's head is.  She took pictures of their shadow on the wall, and then printed those pictures out.  After that, she cut it out, traced and painted.  These look really good in person, and set us apart from the silhouette's of people head's that (if you're going to have a silhouette) are so common.

For Eric's second painting, he wanted to do something a bit more challenging.  He's always loved the Phoenix legend, and the possibility of flight. (He would like to go hang-gliding or wing-suiting someday.)  

A lot of phoenix renditions are bright and all fire-y orange.  Eric decided to go a bit darker, and add some black as ash in it too.  The hardest part of this painting was getting started.   Actually putting paint brush to canvas is a lot harder than you think.  Eric has a new found respect for painters who can just sit down and paint something amazing time and time again.  However he's quite impressed with how well he actually did on this painting.  He only ever had one art class in high school. And of course the art classes that everyone takes in elementary school.


Art is meant to be enjoyed, and thought about, and stir your emotions.  Comment below, tells us what you think.  We want to know your thoughts good or bad.  we're really enjoying this resolution, and so want to know how to get better.  And don't feel bad, because to quote 'History of the World:Part One, 'And of course, with the birth of the artist came the inevitable afterbirth... the critic.'

Inspiration Via Pinterest

Since this week’s resolution is that we will paint something, we thought it would be very fitting to share the awesomeness of a website we really enjoy (in particular Jill): Pinterest.   It has provided us with some great inspiration for our paint projects.

This site is great if you love hoarding good ideas in an organized manner.  Pinterest allows you to “pin” different images in a file system on your personal account.  These “pins” can come from fellow Pinteresters (is that the right term?!) or websites, as long as there is an image associated with the site.

Jill has several boards which house some amazing ideas.  She came up with this saying:

For any of you fellow Pinteresters out there you likely know how she feels.  Pinterest can be very addicting, but in a great way.

Thankfully this week’s resolution is forcing us to actually do something and take advantage of all the amazing inspiration.

Here are some of the pins that we are using as inspiration for our painting projects.

What is being called artwork for non-artist.  The left is the creation that the bloggers, Two Girls Being Crafty and the right is their actual inspiration. 

Here's a simple idea from Readymade where they used canvas, tape, and paint to make a cool piece of work.

And finally, this image was taken from Better Home and Garden's.  What can we say, we are dog people.

Oh and since this post is all about Pinterest, let’s keep the story going.  You see a few weeks ago, Jill signed into Pinterest and on the home page was this image:

It is quite possible she just sat and started at her computer for a few minutes.

You see this is one of Jill’s favorite images of all time.  She had first been introduced to it in high school in her photography class.

SIDE NOTE- Do they even teach black and white photography in schools anymore.  We both have fond memories of developing black and white photography.

They had the assignment to take a photo of a photo.  This was one of the photos she selected and that photo has been with her ever since.  You can even spot it on our current hallway bullentin board.

Anyhow, Jill had sporadically been hunting for the photographer for the last few years with no luck.  Yes, even google couldn’t help!!!!

When this image, by Henri Bresson appeared in Pinterest, Jill had to write to Pinterest and just thank them for existing.  The message, with the subject line, “Not that you haven’t heard this before” went a something like this:

It's true I'm sure you have heard it before, but Pinterest is awesome and I just wanted to thank you for coming up with such a great idea!

Two reasons why I seriously LOVE Pinterest:

1- I used to collect a draft email in my email account dedicated simply to website links of ideas I loved.  Tracking the ideas, good.  Via email, bad.  

Thank goodness for Pinterest!  Now I can easily collect, organize and then find all those wonderful ideas in a simple easy tool.

2- I had been hunting for a photograph for a long while (sadly, I couldn't recall the photographer, making the challenge a little more difficult).  None of my google searches were helping...at all.  

Today, I signed onto Pinterest and low and behold, there was that photograph right on my homepage.  My level of excitement may have gone through the roof!!!  :)

When someone does a good job and makes my life peachy, I try to let them know.  So: many thanks!

And what would you know, but literally a few hours after sending this message, Jill received a message back from Pinterest that went something like this:

Thanks so much for taking the time to write to us and, of course, for pinning with us! We really appreciate it so much and even though our day-to-day is already pretty awesome, it's such a huge reward to hear that Pinterest isn't just a site you visit, but a tool you use for any number of reasons.

If you even want some stickers or a t-shirt, email me your address (and size) and I'll try to send something over as soon as I can. :)

Thanks again and, as always, happy pinning! 

We of course said we would love a t-shirt and some stickers, since we love free clothes and have a thing for bumper stickers.

Surprise!  The following arrived in the mail:

We have a feeling you will be seeing some of these guys soon. ;)

Lesson learned, it never hurts to say thank you and Pinterest is even cooler than we thought!!

PS- If you are interested in getting an account with Pinterest, just comment below or send us an email w.frozen.sunshine@gmail.com with your email address and Jill will happily invite you to join in her addiction.