Don't Get Body Slammed by a Lowland Gorilla

Obviously I haven't found it necessary to blog regularly here in the past few years, but this commercial's a keeper, although I definitely might be biased. :)

Jayhawk Wannabe

In honor of today's awesome Jayhawk comeback against Iowa State, I wanted to share this fantastic version of the Rock Chalk chant that can be found on "Page 2" of ESPN.com.



How cute is that little guy?

Laughing Babies

Can I just share that I think one of the funniest sounds in the entire world is a baby laughing? Today my friend Tish posted this video on Facebook of a baby that might be the cutest baby ever born. I mean seriously, if babies were all this cute and stayed this cute then I would definitely have one. I watched about four different videos her parents had posted, and I think this might be my favorite:



There is just nothing better than laughing babies! Watching this one video lead to a 30 minute voyage around YouTube in which I saw at least 10 other laughing babies. For me, laughing babies is like an addiction--once I start watching them I can't stop!

Cat Cuteness

I felt the need to share this because a) it gave me a good laugh and b) I have a few blog reading friends that are big cat people. This sweet little kitty is blind, so I feel a little bad laughing at him, but he is just too adorable and cute and funny!

Cuteness

Once again, my grand intentions of blogging about various things in our life have been foiled by our life. The thing that's been keeping me busy the last couple of weeks--besides laundry, cooking, cleaning and volunteering--is editing pictures of a couple of the cutest babies ever!

A couple of weeks ago I did a photo session with my friend Leigh Ann's 6-month-old munchkin--the beautiful E. Claire, also known as Emerson. Leigh Ann is well-known among her friends for making fabulous gourmet cupcakes, so when she saw a cupcake costume for Emerson, it was a no-brainer. She then got the awesome idea to make cupcakes to match Emmie's outfit and use those in a photo session, so that's what we did! We attempted to make a studio with said cupcakes on their back patio, and while the light wasn't very good at the time of day we had to shoot, there were still a few good pictures. These are just a few of my favorites.




About the time I was almost finished editing all of Emmie's pictures last weekend, we had the pleasure of going to KC to hang with our friends Vikkie and Brett, at which time I got a few shots of their lovely family and sweet boys. It was great to spend time with them, and Vikkie fixed us a fantastic dinner, part of which I've already tried to replicate at home. I think the pictures turned out okay, and I'm in LOVE with little Abram's cheeks! He is the most expressive little guy, which I believe I mentioned back in May when I did my first session with them! Could these kids be any cuter?





Oh, and the rest of the family is pretty adorable too. :)


Speaking of adorable, I couldn't resist sharing this video I saw this morning on Petfinder. Holy cow. Cuteness overload.

Go Muppets

Tonight while we were watching Modern Family (which I thought was an especially funny episode, by the way), we saw a commercial for the new Muppet movie that is apparently out or coming out soon. That reminded me of this video, which I saved to a blog post back in August because I thought it was funny enough to share, and then apparently promptly forgot.

I was a huge fan of the Muppets as a child and wanted to be Janice every time I'd "play Muppets" with my brother or friends. Now I think I'd rather be Animal, because I love the way he drums. Either way, today was the perfect day to watch this again because it was a doozie of day with a massive amount of stress, drama and tears. The cure? The Muppets and OK Go!!

OCD Dog

My aunt just sent this to me and it's seriously one of the funniest things I've seen in quite a while. Of course, since it has over 2 million hits, I'm guessing you may have already seen it. Just in case you haven't though, this one's a keeper.



This guy is adorable, but apparently not quite as smart as most Border Collies. Maybe he's just obsessive-compulsive?

Babe

For Valentine's Day, I'd like to give a shout out to my Valentine and best friend of the last 18 years. I love you, Bestest! Thanks for being my Valentine!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

This present is really pretty lame compared to the awesome V-Day gift my wonderful husband got me, which he had me open last night: two tickets to the Old 97's show in St. Louis this coming Friday! Road trip for us--I'm so excited!

Return of the Jedi

I realize the whole Star Wars trilogy is getting a little old and losing its humor, but I feel compelled to finish what I've started. Plus, this lame post will give me a an extra day to work on an "important" story from our weekend. There are at least a couple of moments in the short clip that made me chuckle, so I hope you find it at least a little bit humorous.

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

I really thought the highlights were a) Darth Vader's reaction to getting his arm chopped off, b) Hans Chad's flailing arms when running away from the impending explosion, and c) Darth Dad's hair at the very end. Sweet.

The Empire Strikes Back

When Eric and I started working on the second Star Wars movie we immediately had a casting dilemma with Lando Calrissian. After searching through tons of pictures on my computer we finally selected Eric's friend Bob, whom I had met and photographed on Eric's 40th birthday. We thought Bob would be perfect for the part...because in the picture I had of him he was facing the camera head on. Our standards are pretty specific in the world of Jib Jab casting.

Even with what looked to be the perfect head shot I had to re-edit his face like 5 times before getting the size and centering just right. The first few times we "shot" the scene his mustache was on his left cheek and his hairline was right at his eyebrows. It was certainly funnier that way, but since I'm quite the perfectionist I decided to go back and try again. I hope you enjoy the final product!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

A New Hope

Just in case you've never seen Star Wars, today I'm providing a wonderful synopsis done by some incredibly talented actors, just because it's Tuesday.

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Good stuff, if I do say so myself. I particularly enjoyed my husbands sideburns. I briefly toyed with the idea of casting him as Luke since people used to think he looked like young Skywalker as a kid, but since I was Princess Leia, that might be slightly awkward later on down the road. Of course it might be slightly awkward with my brother as Luke too, but whatever--at least that's true to the story! Also, I must say that I had a difficult time casting the role of Obi-Wan. I had originally chosen my dad, but then realized that if there were to be a sequel, my dad would need to be Darth Vader. So I ended up selecting my friend Nate, because a) he's a big fan of the genre, and b) I had tons of pictures of him to use after making a slideshow for his 40th birthday a few months ago. I knew there was a reason I still had those pics on my computer!

Hope you enjoyed the performance! There may be a sequel in the works, so stay tuned!

Christmas Photo Adventure

Although I have yet to actually start making our Christmas cards, over the weekend we did actually manage to get our family Christmas photo taken. Let me just say that this was a bit of an adventure. A couple of times in the past we've had a friend come over to push the shutter release button for us because it's so hard to get the dogs to look at the camera when there's no one behind it. I think in the future we'll have to plan ahead a little more and hire someone to come over and help us, because Sunday's photo shoot was a bit of a disaster--albeit a hysterical one.

With the help of a remote and a tripod, I took 101 total pictures, starting with a few just of Chad where I was trying to get the exposure right using just the light from our window. Once we got the dogs (sort of) placed I just started holding down the remote button, instructing Chad to just keep smiling and hoping that eventually all of the dogs would at some point look at the camera. Although I never actually captured them looking at the exact same time, there were a few decent pics of each of them in the batch, so I was able to use Photoshop to edit together different dog heads/bodies/eyeballs to fabricate one coherent and acceptable picture. This is the final product with sort of an "antiqued" finish.


Overall I'm fairly happy with what I came up with, and I appreciate the end result even more because of what we went through to get it. It's pretty darn hysterical. Enjoy!!

Infrequent But Funny

Wow. So that whole idea of me having more time to blog once I quit my job? Um, yeah--not so much. I can't believe I've actually averaged fewer posts per week than I did while I working! Clearly, I suck.

It sounds kind of crazy, but I've actually just been keeping really busy. I didn't really anticipate how much time it would take to become of the CEO of the Luce household. I've become quite the domestic goddess, whipping up creative yet tasty dinners from leftovers or whatever is left in the pantry. Chad has been quite impressed and also thankful that he's no longer required to be entirely involved in household chores like laundry, vacuuming, errand running and dog walking. Our evenings are super relaxing and couldn't love my new position as housewife any more, but I really need to figure out a way to work in some more blogging and other creative outlets!

Anyway, hopefully soon I'll find some time to work on some posts which are actually about something in particular, but for now I just have to share a funny video that I think is a keeper. You might have seen this already since over 3 million people have viewed it on Youtube, but our friends Cara and Beth shared this with us just a few weeks ago, so I guess we were a little slow to the party. Since then, I think I've watched this and the "sequel" like 15 times, at least. It makes us laugh so darn hard! After sharing it with some friends last night we've been singing different lines from the song all day--in fact, Chad is singing right next to me as I type! Just so you know, there's a bit of foul language included in this "hastily made Cleveland tourism video," but hopefully you can see past that to the humor!


While I think the above video is pretty hysterical, the follow up "2nd attempt" video is even funnier, so you have to check that one out here. Seriously. It's so offensive in many ways, but so flipping funny! If you share our sense of humor, you'll be singing "buy a house for the price of a VCR" in no time!

Product Testing Institute

A couple of weeks ago we were watching football with some friends and we saw this phone commercial, which I absolutely love. It's so flipping funny! That made me think of the commercial below, which a coworker sent me a few months ago. It cracked me up so much I saved it, but then I totally forgot to share it! Chad didn't think it was quite as funny as I did, but I think it's a keeper. These little girls could not be more adorable!


Once you've watched those cuties you have to watch the other similar commercials for that particular Sony phone. They are seriously so hysterical. They have focus groups for Guidos, Models, Surfers, Glam Rockers, and Seniors. The Guidos and Models are probably the funniest, but the Models are so over the top I don't even think they're real. The Surfers are darn funny too though. When you need a break today you have to check them out!

Whoa

Today I went to JibJab to look for a funny email card for my friend Robyn's 30th birthday (Happy Birthday, Rob!) and I came across yet another JibJab video that I couldn't resist. This one is especially timely since last night at Chad's softball game I was talking with our friend Mark (aka "G") about movies, and he mentioned disliking anything fantasy/science fiction related. He specifically mentioned that he hasn't seen any Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter or Matrix movies, so I thought this Matrix synopsis would be helpful for him. I also thought it would be appropriate for him to star as the bad guy. This one's for you, G. :)

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Our Sweet Sixteen

Back on the 4th of June, while I was right in the midst of reunion planning, we did take a break for a day to celebrate our 16th wedding anniversary. We had a fantastic day off together that involved me caddying for Chad on the golf course, lunch and a little sun at the pool, and a trip to KC to buy each other new patio furniture for our back deck. Our dinner at Yardhouse turned out to be fairly marginal, but other than that it was a pretty perfect day. The best present was getting to spend a whole day off with my best friend!

In honor of our 16 years together, I've made us a lovely anniversary card--the same one I made for our friends James & Beth and Pat & Kristin, who both had anniversaries a week or so before us. This card's just too fun--I can't resist enjoying it once again!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

That actually kind of makes me want to enroll in some sort of couples dance class. Think I can get my husband to get his groove on with me?

Seriously?

As you might know, tonight my brother was on one of my favorite TV shows. I'd been looking forward to this night for months, even though my brother kept telling me it was really no big deal. As it turns out, my brother was right--I probably shouldn't have gotten my hopes up. In an unfortunate turn of events, tonight there have been major storms all over the viewing area, which means there were emergency storm maps all over the screen throughout our recording of the episode. This probably doesn't sound like such a big deal, but it seriously hampered our viewing experience. Seriously. I mean really seriously. Really.

So my brother had one quick line in the show, and this was what happened on our screen when he delivered it.


That snicker you hear is me, because seriously, that was just too freaking funny. I mean what are the odds? I probably would have cried if I hadn't been laughing so flipping hard. This was about the 4th time I'd watched it, and the first three times I was in absolute hysterics. I mean it was exactly like that scene in Monsters Inc. where the new commercial airs and Mike's face is totally obscured by the Monsters Inc. logo. I would have been really upset if I wasn't able to watch the scene later on Hulu (oh, and if it hadn't been so hysterically funny).

The good news is that Eric could be seen in several other scenes in the second half of the episode, so we weren't completely shut out. It's always fun to see him on TV, and we had a fun time playing "Where's Waldo" and picking him out of the background of different shots. Here's a screen shot of him and Chuck and some other crazy people in the hospital.


Despite the fact that our viewing experience was a little less than stellar here in Kansas, it was still a great experience for my brother and he still gets to add it to his resume!

Prodigies

There are so many things I'm dying to blog about, but I just can't seem to sit down and focus these days. My brain has about 12 different things it's constantly thinking about--one of them being my high school reunion that's coming up in just 6 weeks that I'm trying to plan. It seems like every free moment lately has been trying to work on the details, which means that blogging with any regularity has become a thing of the past!

Since I have no time for anything lengthy, I wanted to share a few Youtube videos that people have passed along in the last couple of weeks that I've absolutely loved. If you have time for a quick break from what you're doing, you have to check out these cuties!



I love this little guy! He's such a beautiful kid with amazing ukulele skills--along with hysterical facial expressions. I love that he clearly knows no English (the original poster says they are Japanese) but is just belting out that song like nobody's business. The nose scratches in the midst of his performance are just too adorable. There are several more videos of this talented little man on Youtube.



How precious is this tiny little guy? He is rocking out and I love that song! I love the laughing and smiling at the end too. I just want to take him home! This kid's name is apparently Howard Wong, and he's all over Youtube as well. There's one video of him playing drums in his dad's band and several of him playing as a 2 year old. He's pretty amazing!



This little guy isn't quite as amazing as the others, but there was just something about his head bobbing that killed me--too cute! He looked like such a shy little kid and then belted it out with such confidence I was extremely impressed. I certainly wouldn't have had the guts to sing that kind of solo when I was that age!

There were so many more videos of child prodigies that came up when I was watching these on Youtube I could probably have watched them all day. There are some amazingly talented kiddos out there!

Freak Face

This morning I watched a video on my friend Cara's Facebook page that was just so flabbergasting I couldn't stop thinking about it all day. This is, in my opinion, an instant classic.



I mean really, does it get any better with regard to unintentional comedic content? Everything about this video is priceless--the huge 80s hair, the ridiculous breathing, the insane facial contortions, and as Cara pointed out, the fact that she has an exercise outfit on her body when she's exercising her face.

Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, I saw this.



Add just a few more things to the crazy funny checklist: the bizarre body position, the tights on her toothpick legs, and the fact that she's clearly produced this "exercise" video in her living room.

What makes this even more awesome is that there are additional videos of this woman on Youtube, which were clearly produced many years later based on her hairstyle, in which she has clearly had major plastic surgery on her face. The change in her appearance is profound even with the horrible video quality! I guess that's good evidence that these exercises don't work at all to prevent the need for plastic surgery, which is good because I was just about to start doing them!

Mud Foot

Yesterday, I was uncomfortable pretty much the whole morning because my pants were slightly too short. My pants were too short because my only matching shoes had a slight heel. I only had one pair of matching shoes because my matching flats were dirty. My matching flats were dirty because they'd been in a mud related accident a couple of weeks before and I hadn't yet cleaned them. I finally cleaned them on my lunch hour because I felt so uncomfortable in my too short pants. Before their cleaning they looked like this:


That's an impressive amount of mud, don't you think? How this happened is kind of a funny story. A few weeks ago, before our recent snowstorm, we had an entire week of rainy days, so the whole town was a little muddy and soggy. We went over to our friends James and Beth's for small group one night, and while walking up to their apartment building I missed one of the stepping stones and landed right in a massive pool of mud. I told everyone the tale of my clumsiness once I got inside, and then as we were leaving I made sure to remind everyone to watch out for the mud mass that I'd so gracefully stepped in. So as we're walking to the car, I literally turned around to my friend Cara to point out the muddy location she should be aware of and simultaneously slopped my other foot into a different mud puddle. That's some impressive clumsiness if I do say so myself!