Wordless Wednesday - Thinking Disney Thoughts

I've been in a very Disney mood lately, so here's a sweet picture from January. Ashlyn was star struck when she met Aurora, her favorite princess!

Tangled Movie Night

**I've been trying to get this post up since Wednesday morning! Sorry for the delay, but for some reason it just would not let me upload pictures!**

So I'm guessing many of you know that Disney's Tangled was released yesterday! *happy Snoopy dance* I was so excited because I absolutely love this movie I knew Ashlyn would adore it. We saw it when it first came to the island, but we have an outdoor movie theater which means movies only at night. So Ashlyn fell asleep part way through. But anyway, we decided to have a movie night to celebrate the release!

For dinner we had angel hair pasta with Maximus's meatballs, braided breadsticks, and Rapunzel lettuce salad (a nod to the original fairytale).


We also had, though I didn't take a picture of, Pascal's key lime pie (hubby really wanted some key lime pie so it became Pascal's) and hubby and I had The Snuggly Duckling's ale (blackberry merlot - The Snuggly Duckling is the tavern they go to).

I put Ashlyn's hair up in a braid with flowers like when Rapunzel and Eugene (Flynn) went to the kingdom.


I really liked how our decorations came out. Simple, but cute.


On the bottom I had two paper lanterns (with battery-operated tea lights in them), Rapunzel, and Pascal.


On the top I put up a banner I put together (idea and template from Supermom Moments - her Tangled party was awesome!) and since Rapunzel loved to paint on the walls of her tower, I put up some of Ashlyn's artwork.


And of course no movie night would be complete without my friend Jamie's movie tickets! Always an awesome addition!

As for activities, we ran out of time and didn't get to do nearly all I wanted to. We did the coloring pages (Ashlyn kinda helped color Pascal, but was much more interested in coloring Rapunzel) and really that's about it. I wanted to let Ashlyn decorate the lanterns with stickers and stuff as well as go outside and play with sidewalk chalk, but it just didn't happen. I also really want to make this Rapunzel tower, but I just didn't have the supplies and the NEX doesn't carry them. So down the line when we do Tangled movie night again, that's high on the list of activities. :) There are also a lot of cool Tangled activities we may do to mix it up a bit on the Disney site (whether for a movie night or just for fun).

All in all this was a great movie night that we all enjoyed. Ashlyn just LOVES the movie (the Mickey and Minnie version of Rapunzel in her Disney storybook is her favorite) and I'm sure I'll we'll be watching it many, many more times! (I kid, though I am in love with this movie, so is Ashlyn! She wanted to watch it again immediately after it ended {and the day after, and the day after that...}. Aaron really enjoys it, too.)

M-I-C.... K-E-Y...... M-O-U-S-E!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For awhile now we have been thinking and thinking and obsessing (well, maybe that last part was just me) to try and think of 100 things to do for the 100 days leading up to going to Disney World. The plan was putting the ideas on links and making a fun countdown calendar! Well, Sunday night we finally finished up and put everything together.

Monday we pulled off the first link.... 100 DAYS LEFT!! We had a special dinner to celebrate. I decorated our kitchen island thingy like I do with our movie nights.

The digital photo frame in the middle was going through pictures of Ashlyn with a bunch of characters.

For dinner we had Princess Pink Lemonade...

... Pirates of the Caribbean Grape Cannonballs...

... Mickey pizza (one regular and two personal)...

... and dessert was Rocky Road Brownies.

I was originally going to make sugar cookies and cut them out as ghosts to be Hitchhiking Ghosts. I had been meaning to make these brownies for awhile so Aaron suggested just making them and cutting them out. Well, the topping is way to sticky for that, so they are just the rocky road the hitchhiking ghosts have to travel on. :) Whatever it is, it was super yummy! I'll share the recipe soon... it is incredibly simple, too.

The Lion King Movie Night

Last night was our latest movie night! We watched The Lion King. Ashlyn enjoyed it but she actually didn't sit through the whole thing. I'm thinking maybe she just wasn't in the movie mood. She normally has a really good attention span and will usually watch a whole movie. It had been quite awhile since I've seen the movie, but my Daddy sent me a copy recently. I was incredibly excited!!! I had been looking around EVERYWHERE for a copy to borrow since it is in the Disney vault right now and I didn't feel like buying it on ebay. I knew it was a fabulous movie, but I forgot how fabulous.

So here is our table. I decided not to decorate the dining room table this time and just focus on our kitchen island thingy. We didn't have much, but I thought it was cute. Baby Simba didn't stay up there for very long. He is one of Ashlyn's favorite stuffed animals (it goes between him and her stuffed Princess Aurora doll) so she wanted to carry him around. :)

I knew exactly what dress Ashlyn was going to wear. I just thought it was perfect for the theme.

Before dinner we went on Safari for Simba!

Where's Simba?

We kept it simple. Aaron took Ashlyn into the kitchen and once I hid Simba in her doll bed and then once in her princess tent thing. After that she didn't want to give him to me to hide. She wanted to carry him around. :)

For dinner we had Wildebeast Steaks, Pride Rock Baked Potatoes, and Forest Broccoli Trees! (We had a very last minute guest and we just had enough broccoli for 2... Ashlyn had dinner earlier... so that's why it's so skimpy. haha)

For dessert was Rafiki's Banana Pudding! I alternated the Nila Wafers with animal crackers to keep with the theme.

Monday marks 100 days until our upcoming Disney trip! We are in the process of making a countdown calendar to hang up on Monday and we'll have a special dinner. I'll be sure to post about it afterward! Have a great weekend. ♥

Pocahontas Movie Night

Last night was our latest movie night! Aaron picked Pocahontas and I was so excited because I had never seen it before! We decided on this movie fairly last minute so I didn't get a chance to put too much together, but here is our table. I have our Thanksgiving decorations in our back closet since we don't have many to begin with so I pulled out the leaves. And those flowers are ones that Aaron surprised me with a few days before. ♥

For dinner we had a mini Thanksgiving dinner. We had turkey, cranberry sauce (for Aaron), mashed potatoes, corn, and even some pumpkin pie. Yum!

I found a cool Earth Day craft that I thought would be great to do with this movie. We made a wreath with Ashlyn's handprints, put some lyrics from "Colors of the Wind" in the middle, and all three of us (though mainly Ashlyn) decorated it with water, animal, and plant stickers.

The lyrics we used were "The rainstorm and the river are my brothers. The heron and the otter are my friends. And we are all connected to each other In a circle, in a hoop that never ends."

Our next movie night is planned to be The Lion King! I'm hoping to be able to make it a really cool night.

Monsters Inc. Movie Night

Well, whoops. It's been almost a week since our Monsters Inc. movie night and I completely forgot to post about it! In my defense, Ashlyn and I have both had colds and I am just now beginning to feel human again (I think of Beauty and the Beast every time I say that).

So anyway, like I said, we watched Monsters Inc. Before dinner and the movie, the three of us did a little craft. I bought three poster boards and we each painted a door. For Ashlyn's door I taped some paper in some strategic places so when I took it off you could tell that it was a door. Here is her creation (all the purple is her and the yellow is from us making the door details stand out).

Here is Aaron's (you can see where Ashlyn felt his door needed a little purple).

Here is mine.

I really didn't have anything for decorations besides some green plates, green forks, and blue spoons, but the doors acted as decorations. And you know what? I had the. cutest. decoration. EVER! Our very own life-sized Boo! ;)

For dinner we had Boo's Mini Meatloaves (a fabulous recipe I found in Kraft Food & Family magazine - we've only tried the Fiesta ones but all three of us really like it) and Mike's Mashed Potatoes. Quite awhile ago Aaron asked me to make homemade mashed potatoes and once I did, we've never gone back to boxed. They are so good!

To drink we had Sully Punch. We got some of the clear Kool-Aid and put some blue food coloring in it (I don't know if they make blue Kool-Aid but they sure don't sell it here) and had purple ice cubes (grape Kool-Aid). Sorry you can't really tell the colors in the picture, and you also can't tell, but the ice cubes are Mickey Mouse shaped!

For dessert we had Eye Scream Sundaes. It was just so much fun. I still don't know which movie we'll be doing next week, though! Eek! We're going to decide this weekend, though, so I can start planning everything. I really wanted to do The Lion King because Ashlyn just ADORES her stuffed baby Simba, but I can't seem to find someone here who owns it and neither the library nor the little video store thing has it. My dad is sending us a copy, though, so we'll do that soon.

I also wanted to let you all know that tomorrow is NATIONAL CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE DAY!!!!! Heck yeah! I am totally making a batch tomorrow to celebrate. I was trying to decide whether to do something like oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (I have something I want to make with the oatmeal container so I need to use it!), Congo Bars, or what. But you know, this time I just want to make good old fashioned regular chocolate chip cookies. You can't go wrong there! Unless you're out of milk... but with a 19 month old in the house, we stay pretty well stocked with milk. I am also making rice krispie treats on Sunday because I'm using some for Muffin Tin Monday, but I'm sure we can find some poor, unsuspecting person to burden with our extra cookies and rice krispie treats. ;)

Kohl's Cares For Kids

Awhile back I posted about Kohl's and their program, Kohl's Cares For Kids. This is where they sell children's books, as well as coordinating stuffed animals, for $5 each. 100% of their net profit from the sale of these items goes towards children's health and education initiatives nationwide. A great deal AND a great cause? Count me in. They change up the merch from time to time, too! Too cool.

Image from Kohl's website.

Right now, they have two Toy Story books as well as three different (very cute) stuffed toys. You can bet I'm getting both books for Ashlyn. I'm also going to get at least 1 stuffed toy... I'm just not sure which yet. She hasn't seen the movies so I can't say which is her favorite. Maybe I should just get all 3 and let her choose. ;)

Ashlyn In Wonderland

We had our latest movie night this past Saturday. We watched Alice in Wonderland and had SO much fun!! Here was our table, all set up.

I had made signs for our walls.

Ashlyn helped out by coloring a beautiful picture of Alice and the Cheshire Cat.

I used Ashlyn's tea set to create a mad tea party...

... had mini pinwheels in the vase...

... and a mouse found his way into the tea pot!

For dinner we had chicken caesar salad bites (sounded like good tea party food to me!) and some garlic & olive oil vermicelli.

For dessert we had Caramel Apple Oatmeal Cookies...

...and our drinks had to have tags on them. :)

I am loving these movie nights more and more each time we have one. I mean, seriously. I start asking Aaron what movie he wants to do next before we've even done the upcoming one!! I just have so much fun planning them. Especially when most of our plans for our Walt Disney World trip are already made. 5 months without Disney planning? I don't think so! I'm going to REALLY start planning Ashlyn's birthday party here shortly, too. We know it'll be a Disney princess theme and her party will probably be the first Saturday in October. Plenty of time to plan, but it's time to start looking out for sales and deals for party stuff!

In two weeks we'll be watching Monster's Inc! I have dinner and a craft planned, but am not sure about dessert and need to work on decorations! I don't really have Monster's Inc. stuff lying around. If you have any ideas, please comment! I would love to hear them. :)

Book Fan Friday

Let's see... it's Friday... that means today we are checking out of our hotel at Walt Disney World and driving up to Jacksonville to get ready for our flight back home tomorrow. Next week I will be sure to post pictures and stories from our trip! But right now, it's time for...


Since we were at Disney this week, I decided to post about The Jungle Book 2.


Baby Girl actually picked out this book. We went to the library to pick a few books a couple of weeks ago. Hubby came, too, and we decided to pick out 3 books. I found one right away, and as Hubby was looking for one, Baby Girl found this book, picked it up, went to one of the floor pillows in the kid area, and sat down to flip through it. We couldn't leave without that book!! It was so sweet. It is broken up into three sections which are the perfect length for Baby Girl so she doesn't lose interest. The pictures are beautiful, too.

If you have found a great book, children's or otherwise, I would love to see what it is and what you thought about it! I will leave the link-up open all week so feel free to join in at any time.

Movie Time!

After reading a bunch of ideas on a Disney discussion board I frequent, hubby and I have decided it would be cool to have a movie theme night once in awhile... every 2 weeks or so. We kept our first theme "night" pretty simple. I already have plans to make them much more elaborate as Baby Girl gets older. We were planning on watching 101 Dalmatians since we just purchased it. And instead of a movie night, we had a movie morning on Saturday. We had chocolate chip pancakes...

...and dalmatian milk.

To make the dalmatian milk I used a pastry brush and "painted" some chocolate syrup on the inside of a clear glass (all we had at the moment were our wine glasses) and slowly pour milk into it. We ended up not watching our movie because while we were cleaning up from breakfast the power went out. Our netbook was fully charged, though, and we have a few movies on the hard drive so we went ahead and watched Up instead.

Sunday we finally got to sit and watch 101 Dalmatians. After the movie I sat down with Baby Girl to do a little activity. I had printed out a picture of one of the dalmatians, got out some circle stickers I had lying around, and I let her "Put the Spots on the Dalmatian!" It was her first time doing anything with stickers and she had SO much fun!

In a couple of weeks we are going to do a night for either The Little Mermaid or Finding Nemo. How about a poll? Comment and let me know which movie you think we should do (and you know I'll definitely be posting about it after we do it) and I'll pick whichever one has the most votes!

Book Fan Friday... With A Little Extra Story Thrown In

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it or not, but we're planning a trip in March to go to Disney World.... ooohhhh, actually I just looked back a few posts and I mentioned our trip in October. Well, first of all, for a few reasons that changed from late October to late September. AND I have some super exciting news. We're going this March as well! Hold on, don't get too excited yet. That's not the best part. I'm going to be meeting MY DAD there!!!! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!! Okay, a bit of background might be needed here. The last time I went to go see my dad was shortly after my mom passed away (she was only 56 - cancer sucks) and I was 7 months pregnant. That means I haven't seen him in 1 1/2 years AND he's never met his one and only granddaughter. Which means he finally gets to meet her!!!! I am beyond excited, let me tell you. And I feel very happy that I get to take him to WDW because, well, I get my Disney obsession from him and he's always lived in Cali so he's gone to Disneyland in Anaheim hundreds of times but he's never had a chance to go to WDW. So I think that it will be incredible for him to see it for the first time and to see it through Baby Girl's eyes. Please excuse me if I'm rambling. I just wanted to share my joy with you.

Actually, I decided to share this story today (as opposed to, say, this weekend) because it actually kinda has something to do with Book Fan Friday this week. Well, we already know that Baby Girl's 2nd birthday is going to have a Disney princess theme (Hubby's the one that suggested it! ♥) and she has had her picture taken with all but 4 of the princesses. I thought it would be cool to do something with those pictures to use as decoration or a game for her party (I have some ideas I'm playing with, but that's a different post). Anyway, I figured she still needs her picture taken with Princess Tiana (LOVE The Princess and the Frog), Pocahontas, Mulan, and... Princess Jasmine. Which brings me to....

Since I was thinking about this today I decided to showcase one of the books in the Enchanted Moments series, Aladdin.

I love this story. Fabulous movie and music, too, I might add.

If you have found a great book, children's or otherwise, I would love to see what it is and what you thought about it! I will leave the link-up open all week so feel free to join in at any time.

Mickey Oreos Revisited

Remember these tasty little treats? Remember how I said I had BIG plans for them? Well, I tried to take that pretty little picture I had in my head and make it reality. Did it work? Ehhh, let's just say please keep in mind this was my very first time working with fondant, not to mention I was super excited and was probably in a hurry to see the final product!


Does this give you an idea of what I did? No? Okay, how about this...


Still no? Okay then.


You know you have the Mickey Mouse Club March stuck in your head again. And you're welcome. :)

I know it is far from perfect, but I'm proud of it. I know what I did wrong and how to fix it next time I work with fondant. I have a new project in mind with the rest of the fondant I ordered. Nope, nothing to do with Disney. It'll be a Valentine's Day treat. We'll see how it turns out! Practice makes perfect, right?

The Super Bowl May Not Be In Your Future, But I'm Sure You Did Something Important. What Are You Going To Do Now?

WE'RE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD! Hubby and I are planning our next Walt Disney World trip! YAY! We are planning on going in late October. I know it's a little early to start planning, but I have a blast doing it so why not?!

I've gone to Disneyland in Anaheim, California more times than I can count while growing up. My first trip to WDW was in November 2008, two months after Baby Girl was born. Hubby had gone once when he was very young and doesn't really remember it, so it was almost like a first trip for him, too.


We then went back in October 2009 to celebrate Baby Girl's 1st birthday (her bday was in September, but October was the earliest we could go).


I could go on and on about Disney, our trips, and our planning, but for today I think I'll talk about the little bit of pixie dust we got during our last trip. Actually, we got quite a lot. :) But I'll focus on one instance in particular. Before we went this last October, we were trying really hard to get reservations to Cinderella's Royal Table. It's a sit-down restaurant inside the castle. I mean, shut up! But a lot was going on to where we weren't sure until a few months out exactly what dates we would be going to WDW. So of course by that time it was all booked up. We tried up to the day before and nothing had opened. When we went into the Magic Kingdom that first morning, we went straight to Fantasyland and went through the castle to get there. As we were going through the castle, hubby said "Just a second" and veered off towards the restaurant. He decided to take the long shot and ask if there were any last minute reservations. "We already know the answer, but do you have any openings for today?" hubby asked. The guy at the counter said, "Breakfast or lunch?" Hubby: "Whatever is available we'll take." Guy at counter: "No, really, breakfast or lunch? We have one for each. How's that for a little Disney magic?" What? Really? I wanted to hug the guy! Well, I hugged and kissed hubby because I had pretty much given up on going there this trip. I'm tearing up just thinking about it.


We are incredibly glad we went. The atmosphere was incredible, the food was yummy, and Baby Girl had such a great time! She was smiling and laughing and just loved it. Every so often a new princess comes out (we went during lunch) and is introduced with fanfare and everything and she goes around to each and every table to sign autographs and take pictures and stuff. It really was an incredible experience and recommend it to anyone who has a little extra money (it's not exactly cheap) and loves the princesses and stuff. After we were done hubby was the first one to say "Well, we're doing that again next year!" I love that man!