A Day In My Life

More Disney Scrapbooking!

Last night (Friday) was our weekly scrapbooking get together.  In August 2010 we started this thing called Finish it Friday ...you can read about it here: A Day In My Life: Finish It Friday... After taking December off for the holidays we started back up FIF again last night.

Remember the other day I showed you the Disney pictures of Nate in Mickey's house and in Minnie's house a few years back?  Here: A Day In My Life: Disney Flashback!  And I mentioned that my pal Karen had passed on some papercrafting stuff she wasn't using anymore?  This house pattern was in with some of the stuff and I got the idea I should make a Mickey house and a Minnie house for the pictures:

 
So last night during FIF I spent the time tracing fronts and backs of two houses onto chipboard:

 
 
 and inside pages :

 
 
So now I have two houses:

 
and lots of pictures:

 

I can't wait to start adding paper to it ...BUT I have sworn of creating while I work to get my studio back in some sort of "make sense".  I will show you pictures of that soon!

Dancingly, Denise

Disney Flashback!

I have alot of new readers right now, and so though many of you know this, several Of you don't.  i LOVE Disney!  We went last year, as sort of a last minute trip.  I had appendicitis in March, and it was pretty scary for us all, after I got out of the hospital and started to recoup, my husband said 'let's go...let's go to Disney this year".  We hadn't been since 2007 so I was pretty dang excited.

We went this past year in May as a Graduation Gift to Lauren (June), A birthday for Nate (May 19) and an anniversary gift for us (April)...and mostly a "Thank God it was just appendicitis and not something worse" trip.  We had a good time, though felt we wouldn't go in May again as it was in the mid 90's the entire time we were there...way too hot for us mainers!

Anyway, I do not anticipate being able to go again until maybe 2013 when Nate graduates...too much going on right now, and ofcourse no money.  So, I have been thinking about what I can do to keep the MAGIC in our lives.  I have a few ideas...one I will start on this Friday night at our weekly  scrapbooking night.

Back in 2006, the last night we were in Disney, Lauren was sooooo sick.  Our tradition was to go to MK on the last night ans stay for the fireworks, but she was just not up to it.  Finally it was decided that Nate and I would go and Lauren and scott would stay back at the hotel (riding the plane with a very sick girl the next day was awful, by the way!).

Nate and I visited TOON TOWN, which I guess we had never really done before.  And as usual I took a ton of pictures of both Minnie's house and Mickey's house. With Nate in them (he was 10). Okay keep up...i gotta change subjects for a minute...

My firned Karen is getting rid of most of her paper crafting stuff, and one of the containers had some chipboard house albums in them, as well as stickers about home, etc.  Soooooo it got me to thinking, why not take the pictures from that night and make two little albums called "the House That Mickey Built"  and 'Minnie's Mansion".  I am sooo excited to start this and will pull out all my Disney stuff tomorrow.

Here are the pictures from Minnie's house:

 
 and the pictures of Mickey's house:

 

The thing is, these pictures have sat on the computer, on a dvd and in a box for almost 5 years.  the kids don't get to enjoy them...so there you go!  I can't wait...and I will be sure to share the results with you.  PLUS, don't think I forgot Lauren...I have a mini album in mind for some pictures of her too!
Dancingly, Denise

More Disney Scrapbooking!

Hi, as promised I am going to share with you the start of the kids autograph book(s).  No tutorial yet for the paperpiecing, but bear with me!

Any how, The first year we went to Disney (2005), the kids were at a good age that they still wanted to meet the Characters.  THIS year, our fourth year going, they were too old (18 and 15:).  But for the three years we went before this year we got some great autographs.  The first year we went, the kids went armed with a little plastic holder that had sharpies and 3x5 index  cards.  All the characters signed the card.  When we got home, I cut the index card into a tag shaped, matted it on one or two pieces of cardstock punched a hole at the top and tied ribbon through it.  Some of them I couldn't punch a hole because the signature would be damaged, so I just stapled a ribbon to it..  We made sure to take plenty of pictures with the character, one of the character signing, one of the kids standing with them and then usually one of the whole family or me and the character.  I printed of the best pictures and matted them.  I used an 8x8 album, one for each child (although they are full and I haven't even finished the first year of characters yet:) Lauren's has Tink on it and Nate's has Mickey Mouse.

Here is Lauren's:

I love the look of all the ribbon coming from the top, so I made sure to get TOPLOADING 8x8 albums.  I have two more different ones for the rest of Lauren's autographs, and two more albums for Nates.  Treasures for them I hope.

So, here is the first double page so you can see what i am talking about...notice the tag:

I tried to choose paper specific to the character, in this case Mickey Mouse.  AND Ichose as big a sticker as possible for each character to add to the page.  NO paperpiecing on these pages!

Minnie Mouse

Goofy

Nemo (no signature for him) and Coral (?)

Donald Duck

The Evil Queen

Pluto

Peter Pan and Wendy Darling   

Belle

Snow White

Cinderella and Suzy and Perla   

TiGGer

Pooh

Pocohantas and Meeko

Captain Hook and Mr Snee

Geppetto, Gideon and Pinnochio

And, did I mention I haven't even FINISHED that first year of characters?  Really after four years, about the only characters we don't have are the "evil" ones, cuz they come out at Halloween  and we haven't been there for that yet!

If you have any questions I hope you feel free to ask.  I will get to the tutorial soon!  I hope you have enjoyed these...I better get back to work scrapbooking those Disney pictures!

Daningly, Denise
   

  

Disney Scrapbooking PART II

As promised I am back with the rest of the pages I have done so far.  If you didn't see the first post about it, scroll down I wrote it last night.  A recap...I LOVE Disney...I took THOUSANDS of pictures in the four years we have been and I want to paper piece each page in some way...I showed you several last night and now these are rest that i have completed for 2005 so far.

First Peter Pan and Wendy

and Captain Hook and Mr. Snee, ofcourse:

a close up of the paperpiecing...I believe I made a pattern from a coloring page on this one:

Pooh and TiGGer and Eeyore:

My very Favorite guy DONALD DUCK in his safari gear:

I took the Animal Kingdom map and cut it into a shape of a rolled out map for this paper piecing:

In the scrapbook I have serating pages for each of the parks.  This one is for Magic Kingdom ofcourse:)
 
The THREE Amigos:

The kids got hats from MK: Inside of the crystal ball is a picture of thekids standing right outside of MK:

The TOWER OF TERROR at MGM (well now it is Hollywood Studios)  Nate and I went on it ONCE, got the pin that said we had survived it and vowed we wouldn't go on again and we haven't!  Everyone says the elevator guy in my paper piecing looks like Michael Jackson:)

Beauty and the Beast: I had seen this idea somewhere on the web.  The beast is paperpieced, and was quite "fun" to do!  belle is too, but she was much easier!

I loved the Pink Flamingos!
 
Here is a close up, I used pink feathers on it:

Tarzan and Jane.  This show was awesome and we were lucky we saw it that year as we never saw it again:(
 

and then we jump to the page where we head home...there are still many pages to go in between but for now this page documents how very small the car was that we rented:

and THE END:

Thank you so much for looking.  I would be glad to talk any one out there through paper piecing.  Don't forget to look at the blog post right before this for Part I.

Dancingly, Denise

Disney Scrapbooking PART I

 I love to paper piece...and I decided two years ago I would paper piece ALL of my Disney pictures for the last 4 trips. We are talking THOUSANDS of pictures...THOUSANDS!  So, I started with 2005, the first year we went.  I thought I would show you the pages I have done SO FAR.  Even thoough it looks like I have a beginning and end...I don't have everything in between.  I love doing it though and am hoping this fall I will finish up 2005.  One of the problems is that for the first three years that we went my daughter competed in TWIRL MANIA...(baton competition) down there so I have even more pictures.  I am going to put this in 2 post, one now and the other one will post around 6:00 tomorrow morning.  There are 39 double pages (or something like that) so i don't want to overwhelm you:)

The first pictures is the plane ride.  My dad was alive then and took us to the airport (actually he did for the first three years)...so that is him in the picture on the left top with Lauren.  In February 2005 Lauren was 13 and Nate was 10.  This was their first plane ride and Nate was rather sick, so yes the barf bag is the pocket on the page:)

I love paperpiecing.  I make patterns out of coloring pages, mostly.  I have quite a collection of Disney World coloring books.  A close up of the plane paper piecing:

We ate at The Rain Forest Cafe.  We LOVED it (might I add we love everything about Disney:)   
 

I made a pattern out of the kids menu, there was this adorable picture on it so VOILA!
 This first year set a tradition for us.  We always go to Downtown Disney when we arrive, saving our first full day for Magic Kingdom.  You might notice that Scott isn't in these pictures, he arrived later in the week.
 
Our first full morning we went to Chef Mickeys...it was our first ever character meal and we were hooked (until this year when the kids decided they would rather do other shows and such...too old for characters anymore:(
My paper piecings for these pages came from the menu:
A coloring book:

and the folder that the group picture came in:


No paper piecing on this page, just a bunch of characters:

    The princesses:

Scott is in the picture now.  He wasn't thrilled about posing with the characters, but he did some of them.
a close up of the snow white paper piecing.  Paper piecing is much like quilt piecing though I think it has a different name.  I trace out all the pieces onto cardstock and other various papers, leaving some room for a "seam" and then I glue them together.  It can be a tad tricky sometimes...but it is my favorite scrapbook technique.
I LOVED meeting THE QUEEN, she was soooooo scary!

Pocahontas...
 

 Well. that is it for now.  I will get the other pictures uploaded, check it out first thing in the morning for part II.

Thanks for looking and if you have any questions...please ask.

Dancingly, Denise

Universal Studios Day 3-May 3, 2010

Our third day in Florida we headed to Universal Studios.  We really like the studio parks...but they are very different than the Disney parks!  We went two different days to Universal Studios...this was our first day...enjoy the pictures!

I love the walk into Universal Studios.  We usually end up in King Kong parking and so it is quite a distnace, but they have the moving sidewalks and great music playing...and it was about the only breeze we got all day!

Our first stop at US is always the SpiderMan ride.  It is a simulated 3-D and our very favorite.  (Although we loved the new Simpsons ride too).  BUT as we were getting to the Spiderman Ride...we ran into this:

We always love their inpromtu ride through the superhero part of the park!  Three years ago, when we went, we had breakfast with Spiderman, as well as cat In the Hat, and Spidey was great.  he had so much fun with Nate, telling him he was just the right kid to take over for him in a few years, etc.  So I am always happy to see spidey;)

We got to the ride...loved it as usual amd then lo and behold Spiderman was waiting for us;)

and yup...that's me in the crazy floppy hat, messing up the new haircut I had just gotten a few days before leaving home.  But it was so hot...95 and above...and the hat did help keep the sun out a little.  

By the way...THIS is the ride we did not, and never will go on...THE HULK...we are just not a wild rollercoasting family!

One of our favorite parts of Universal is Seuseville.  BUT before we went there we had to check out the new Simpson ride.  i don't even LIKE the Simpsons...but i LOVED the ride!  More about that on our second visit.  But Nate did decide to take a picture with HOMER:)

  We ate, both days, at the Circus McGircus Cafe.  I LOVE that my kids still like Seuss.  And...look who was checking out trash cans:)  We got great pictures of him with us three years ago, so we didn't do that again...but he was fun to watch!

Sadly, Harry potter was not open yet.  I am a big Harry Potter fan, my kids like him and my husband would say "Who?".  But we were all hoping we would be able to get in to see things at Hogwarts, but no luck.

 One of the kids favorite things at Universal is DIP N DOTS.  It was hard to find a vendor open that was selling them...but they finally did!  Plus check out Nate's hat...he ended up with three hats as souveniers this trip!

While Lauren did a little shopping, and Nate and Scott went into Nate's favorite shop...THE MAGIC SHOP.  I sat out side in the "sort of shade" and watched things go by!  Fiona posed for me...the Madagascar crew went by and so did Scooby Do!  (By the way nate DID get the flaming wallet and several other magic tricks this time!  He has been wanting the wallet since he saw it three years ago!)

One of the things we were celebrating while we were in Florida is Nate's 15th birthday.  We had made reservations at Hard Rock Cafe...we had never been there before...and Nate being the musician he is LOVED it.  He took tons of pictures of memorabilia all around the cafe!

When you first go in they take pictures of you with a guitar...so we had them take one of just Nate and then all of us together.  Later, while you are eating they bring them around for you to purchase.  We really had a nice meal...it was cool in there so that made it even better!  At the end of our meal, Nate took the camera around and took pictures of all the guitars and such he wanted to.  The waitress had given him a book to look at and he wrote the numbers down, then she told him where in the place the items were.  I also got a few pictures...Elvis' room, peter Frampton's guitar.  After we were done eating the ewaitress brought Nate and ice cream sundae with a candle in it...had him stand up on the stair case...and everyone in the area shouted Happy Birthday!

We ended our evening by seeing The BLUEMAN GROUP.  Lauren had suggested we see it, so I bought tickets ahead of time on line.  It was an awesome...nothing I had ever seen sort of show.  The three guys were truly amazing and pretty darn funny!

We were exhausted after the show, and headed back to the resort.  All of us were pretty thrilled that we would be able to sleep in in the morning and not rush off to a park!  We were going to Downtown Disney and La Nouba.  more on that in the next post!

Dancingly, Denise



 

Magic KingDom...Day 2 May 2, 2010

 It is tradition, for us, that the first full day at Disney we spend in Magic Kingdom.  We love Magic Kingdom!When we got there we decided to take the Ferry instead of the monorail.  It looked less crowded, and only Nate and I had ever taken it.  On the way over this was our first view of the castle!:

I can not put in to words how I feel when I see the castle for the first time each time we have visited, there is nothing like it and this was so cool! 

Once we got into the park we came in direct contact with the parade,,,we couldn't get real close, and we had never seen this particular parade, but I did get to get a few pictures.  It was a great way to start our day!



We then followed Lauren off to Pirates of The Carribean.  It's one of our favorite rides, and one of the only ones Scott can do (he gets sick:(  No flash photography on the ride, but I did get a couple of good pictures without flash...I really love my camera!

By The way, sometimes the kids get a tad bit unruly and we have to calm them down:)

It was so hot!  we tried to balance outdoor stuff with indoor.  One of our favorite things to do is to see Philharmagic.  Doesn't matter how many times I see it...I LOVE it! Course Donald is my favorite character!

So, the last three trips we took to Disney we stood in line to see EVERY character and get their autographs.  We have quite a collection.  This year i told the kids i wouldn't "make" them do this...they feel they are TOO OLD.  BUT I also said, if I saw a character I hadn't had a picture with...well I would have to stand in line, BUT it was okay with me if they went and did something else.  I had heard about PIXIE HOLLOW, whih was not there the last time we went...and I knew TINKERBELLE could be found there.  We had never "met" Tinkerbelle and since she is my favorite, next to Donald...I wanted to atleast try to meet her.  Thing is, we got there and the wait line was 60 minutes...UGH.  BUT Scott said he would go sit and relax, and the kids said they would wait with me in line.  Such great kids, they didn't want pictures with Tink and her friends, BUT they waited over an hour because I did!  Tinker Belle was pretty impressed with them too:) 


They also waited for me while I "met" the White Rabbit!  Great family!

Later in the day, we did a little shopping.  i discovered the DOONEY and BURKE purses and LOVED them, but there was no way i was going to spend that kind of money on one...so we just took pictures:)  A girl can wish right?

 I got some great pictures of the inside of the castle...it is so beautiful.  Here are only a couple:

And we do have our favorites.  We like to eat at Cosmic Ray's before the Spectromagic Parade.  This time we ate and then had about an hour to just sit outside the castle and watch it change colors...so beautiful! 


Because we sat so long, I got a picture of each color of the castle this time!  I didn't take as many pictures of the parade this year as the last time we went I took a TON!

And the most magical part of all...

We have learned that after the fireworks it is a really good idea to find a place to rest for a good half hour.  That way the crowd heading out has gotten a LITTLE smaller and it is easier to get transportation out to the parkinglot.  So that is what we did.  When we got back to the hotel nate and I took a swim before heading to bed.

And that is all for tonight.  Stay tuned for the next installment of our Disney trip!

Dancingly, Denise 

Disney Day 1 May 1, 2010

I am going to try and post this again.  I am so excited to show everyone some of my 3000 pictures that I took. (By the way, that's not bad the last time we went I took about 8000:).

We flew Allegiant Air and traveled staright from bangor to Florida, no stops.  I really liked that...it was about 3 hours.  Lauren said she would rather have had a switch to get up an walk a bit.  Neither Scott or Nate seemed to care.

We stayed at All Star Movies this time (usually we stay at All Star Music)...we stayed in the Dalmation 1 building, close to the pool and the food court, etc.

 


After we arrived and checked in we decided to go to Downtown Disney.  We were starving and wanted to try the new restaraunt T-REX. Unfortunately it was a 90 minute wait and RainForest Cafe was a 60 minute wait...and we were starving so we tried a new to us place:

After we filled our bellys we just walked around...looked through the stores and enjoyed the sites!  It was EXTREMELY crowded in Downtown Disney that night!  It doesn't matter how old he gets we have to check out the lego store...Woody was new to us this time (I think...we don't remember seeing him the last time we went):

The lego family:

and ofcourse the Lego water monster:

We made a trip to my favorite store...the scrapbook store:)  Inside they have a new "create your own t-shirt" area.  We checked it out and Nate and I had fun "making" a Tinkerbell one, but we didn't have it printed up.  Outside they ahd these shirts so I couldn't resist a picture:

And then one of the many pictures we took of "us" with all the statues downtown:

 We ended our evening by having ice cream at our favorite place (I wish I could express how yummy it smells as we passed by:

Lauren and I shared a Brownie Sundae...yummmmmmmmm:

Look how fast ours was melting!  It was in the high 80's that day.  having just left Maine that morning we were not used to that type of heat!

So, I have discovered that for some reason Typepad can't seem to upload my pictures as  large file anymore.  Everytime I tried to do this the page would get hung up.  But, I made my files smaller and voila.  Only problem is this takes more time:(  I am still planning on sharing pictures from each day of our trip so stay tuned, check back.  i will try to everyday, but life is crazy right now with nate's birthday party, Lauren's graduation, etc.  I appreciate all my readers hanging in there!

So next day we went to Magic Kingdom.  I'll share those pictures within the next day or so!

Dancingly, Denise