PrettyTiny Film Company Pic-A-Week *2024* -- The End!

[Alliecat]

Still seeing broken links.
?

Nanette is still waiting for my life to be different so I have the time and the concentration to try to fix her eyebrow with something other than Photoshop. But, here she is with a freshly opened flower.

[fishy]

Great to hear from you again. Great photo! I love the flower.

[Alliecat]

Thanks   I have something in bloom pretty much all the time.

Another late night end of week “snapshot” that turned into an hour long production messing with lights, focus, ex.posure, and of course some of the batteries in the lights didn’t work and the other lights I was going to use crapped out. Anyway, here’s Darla. The horse is a music box.

[Alliecat]

It's that time of year... time for the PTFCo Christmas party to get under way. As we all know... the minis have the best parties! Miki & Sidika are welcoming guests.

[fishy]

Great photo as always. It would be a great Christmas card!!

[Alliecat]

I have made cards of the Christmas photos, and some version of the mini party is usually the December calendar picture. 

On the road boat again…. Basically just fleeing the neighbourhood for somewhere hopefully quieter.

[davidd]

Yay for boat rides!
Yay for escapes!
Yay for cute li'l red-headed sailor girls!

... and YAY for miniature Christmas parties!

[Alliecat]

I brought Dawn & Yuki along with the minis, anticipating Christmas-decoration photos, because these folks had such a lovely tree last time, but this year they didn't decorate at all!  Well, they were going away.
So the girls will have to do random-outing pix instead.
Everyone got very wet here -- a photoshoot in the dark crouched under a tree while it's still snowing a bit and the branches are dropping gobs of snow is not my favourite way to shoot!  Hence they aren't great and I mostly missed focus.  Oh well. Merry Christmas!

[Alliecat]

"One more pic to finish off our year.  As President of PTFCo, I want to thank our dolly friends for following our adventures for another year.  We enjoy sharing them with you.
"This is our 'holiday' activity cos the weather has been awful.  It's been so gloomy and dark and after the snow, now we have rain; it dumped all day so we didn't go anywhere.
"Looking at this photo, we are reminded of some things.  The last 3 years have been a hard slog, and we keep hoping it'll get better.  Like this picture, we hope our puzzle is nearly complete, and that a few last necessary pieces will be found and can be put into place.
"Also, not too long ago, we came across a little essay about how life is like a jigsaw puzzle.  Everywhere you've been, everything you've done, is another piece that goes into the puzzle-picture of your life.  We go through life collecting pieces and putting together our picture.  When you start thinking 'what if' and looking beyond where you are now, maybe that's a sign that there are no more puzzle pieces to be collected where you are.
"That feels like where we are now.  That maybe there aren't any more pieces to be found in our current home, and it's time to go somewhere else and collect some different ones.  The fact that we can't seem to turn that last page on the longest saddest epilogue in this chapter, is something we really hope will change.
"We wish our friends a Happy New Year, and we hope that wherever you are, and wherever the coming year takes you, that you will find lots of bright and shiny pieces that will make your puzzle beautiful."

"Love, Sunsette "

[davidd]

Congratulations on completing A DOLL A WEEK 2024!

[insert voluminous applause sound effect]

Ahh ha ha ha ha! I LOVE the gloopy wet outdoor night scene! I've done things like that, it was miserable and frustrating at the time, but in retrospect it was fun even if the pix didn't turn out very well.

Plus, your night scene in the snow looks very Christmasy! That's a success!

And you were out of town during at least part of the holiday season, too, so BONUS!

Well... the picture puzzle picture is bright and cheery! What a fun "Northwest Tribes" motif. Hmmm... could BC be in your future?

The jigsaw puzzle analogy is maybe a little bit disconcerting. I mean, that puzzle is more than half finished. All the edges are done. Once the edges are done, are we boxed in? Are our options limited? And each piece that fits in place puts us one step closer to being... done.

That said, from a slightly more optimistic perspective -- which is uncharacteristic for me -- I really like the part about maybe it's time to move on because one "section" is finished. And while I know I often lament about how much I miss living on the beach in Hawaii (which I do), I realized recently that while that was probably the best place I ever lived or will ever live, where I'm living now is the second best place I've ever lived! Yeah, it's cold sometimes (like, right now), and it's a jillion miles from the ocean, but because it's affordable to live here I was just able to go on a Trans-Atlantic cruise ship cruise, so I saw plenty of ocean! More than that, while it's not like looking out at the ocean, the scenery here is still pretty nice. So nice, in fact, that this is where Hollywood has come to make movies for a hundred years. I just learned that Tom Mix, King of the Silent Movie Cowboys, came to Bryce Canyon in 1924 to film "Deadwood Coach," kicking off Hollywood's infatuation with southern Utah scenery, which continues today. Over the past couple of years, Kevin Costner has been filming his latest saga only an hour south of where I live. I mean, it's nice enough here that Hollywood thinks it's worth sharing with the world. Only I don't have to just look at it on a screen, I can walk outside in to a Hollywood fantasy.

So yeah -- there are risks in packing up and moving. Maybe things won't be AS good as they were. But it sound like in your case, things there are not nearly as good as they used to be. I have to remind myself about those aspects of Hawaii as well. The first several years were near on to idyllic. Then things began getting tougher. Maybe I could have ridden it out -- but it didn't feel like it at the time. So I moved from where they filmed "Baywatch" and "Lost" (gotta admit - it was pretty cool to be able to literally walk down the beach to the "Lost" film site) to where they filmed "Planet of the Apes" and "Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid" and "Kevin Costner's 'Horizons'" and "The Car" and "Drums Along the Mohawk" and "Sergeants Three." Plus - no next-door neighbors (at least not at the moment - the b*stard who I was helping build his wooden yurt the past few years has put his property on the market, and plans to drop the price in the spring, and has had the property rezoned to commercial - I may need to move myself here soonish) and nobody really cares what I do outside. I can light a campfire or shoot a gun or run a power saw or play the bagpipes (if I had bagpipes or knew how to play them) or get a pet goat and no neighbor or HOA will raise a fuss.

In Hawaii, fussy neighbors were becoming a PITA. I gotta remind myself of that sometimes.

The relatives in Las Vegas live in a brown house in a brown suburb where all the houses are behind walls with metal gates.

I don't even lock the door half the time when I'm gone for a few hours. (Sh-sh-sh! Don't tell anyone!)

Sounds to me like you're realizing it's time to pull up stakes and hit the trail. Wherever you end up might not be as nice as things used to be when you first moved to the island, but they'll probably be better than they are now.

Best Wishes for an exciting (in a good way) New Year! I'm kinda-sorta starting to believe that things might actually turn out pretty well for a change.

As long as your red-headed crew is along for the ride, you know it's gonna be fun wherever you go and whatever you do!

[Alliecat]

Hmmm... could BC be in your future?

Geez, I wish. It has always been my first choice. But have you SEEN the prices on Vancouver Island? Worse than a bad joke

The jigsaw puzzle analogy is maybe a little bit disconcerting.... Once the edges are done, are we boxed in? Are our options limited?

No, because as you fill in the pieces you're defining the edges of your dream -- and each little piece is a piece closer to having the life picture you want.
I'm glad you think you're in at least a 2nd-best place (out of how many?). Maybe you need to buy that neighbour's property!

Sounds to me like you're realizing it's time to pull up stakes and hit the trail.

RealizING? That happened 2 years ago. I just can't find a replacement.
Guess I'm the one who's not optimistic this new year.