Thursday, October 31, 2013

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!! °o°

Welcome Foolish Mortals!!!  I hope that you all have a great Halloween night!  We've had a busy few days here with work, watching the Red Sox and getting ready for Halloween.



I'll get caught up and post pictures of our decorations and Halloween fun sometime this weekend!  I still have to get pictures of our outside lights, and unfortunately, it just started raining.  I hope that we still get some Trick or Treaters!

In the meantime, I also wanted to say a quick Congratulations to the 2013 World Series Champions: the Boston Red Sox!!! I love this photo that Walt Disney World shared on it's Facebook page.

Photo courtesy of the Walt Disney World Facebook Page

Also, check back tomorrow for November's FREE printable calendar!!!


Have a spookacular night everyone!!!  °o°

Monday, October 28, 2013

Boo to You & Trick or Treat

Hey Everyone!


I have one more Halloween inspired printable that I wanted to share with you.  I was watching a Youtube video of the Boo to You Parade the other day, and I got the song stuck in my head:

Boo
To You
A Trick
Or Treat
For You
That's Boo
It's You
Know Who
A Boo to You and You and You and You
Happy Halloween!

Those of you how have seen the parade know that the music is pretty catchy.  Once it's stuck in your head, it's hard to get it out.  Anyways, I was thinking about it the other day and I wanted to do something to remind Eliot and I of the fun that we've had at Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party.



I decided to make some words to stick on the wall above our kitchen cabinets.  I also wanted to keep the Halloween theme going, so I decided to use a familiar "haunted" font.  I played around in InDesign until the words all fit on as few pages as I could make it.  Finally, I had my haunted words design!



I made three versions of it: one in all black, one to color in, and one pre-colored with orange and purple ink.  I personally decided to use the pre-colored in one to give my markers a break.  But I've uploaded all three files so you can choose which one you like best!



Here is the link for the file in black ink.

Here is the link for the file to color the words in yourself.


Here is the link for the file pre-colored in with orange and purple.


I cut out the words this afternoon while re-watching last night's episode of Once Upon a Time.  (I won't lie; I needed more Hook!  I love pirates... anyways.)  I have white walls so I didn't cut the words out perfectly.  I also probably could have left the inside of the letters, but since I'm stubborn, I cut those out using a pair of cuticle scissors.  I used Scotch tape to hang the words up.  

Also, if you're looking for those little Mickey Mouse candy corn shapes that I have on my cupboards, the template for those can be found under this blog entry.  The rest of the Halloween cupboard decorations I drew by hand a few years ago!


Happy Halloween!! °o°

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Halloween Jack O'Lanterns

One of my favorite parts of Halloween is carving Jack O'Lanterns! 


Last year we went to Katie's apartment for a pumpkin carving party after our Maine Wedding Reception.  It was dubbed Pumpkinfest: Bar Harbor Edition.  It was a great night of pumpkin carving, food, friends and fun. 


Eliot went online to find some jack o'lantern stencils for us to use.  I hadn't carved a pumpkin in such a long time!  We selected Kermit and Tigger since they seemed easy.  



I ended up getting a little bit of help carving Tigger (from the wonderful BJ) with carving out the details on mine.  And yes, I am still wearing my tiara.  I had it on at the reception and we stuck it in my hair pretty good so I just left it on instead of wrecking my hair style. Once a princess, always a princess!


Eliot worked really hard on Kermit.  He was pretty happy with the result.


Our Disney loving pals BJ, Katie and Kathleen also made Disney pumpkins.  They carved out Captain Hook and Malificent!  After all, what's Halloween without a few Villains?


Katie designed her own stencil and made Floyd, her signature flamingo!


Here's a group picture with how they turned all out!


At the party, Eliot severely caught the pumpkin carving bug.  He created a group on Facebook to share some of the templates that he found online with all of us.  He also wanted to carve pumpkins... lots and lots of pumpkins.

Since you can't just go out and buy pumpkins all year long, we decided to look into some of the plastic ones you can get at craft stores.  They also aren't as messy and they won't spoil so you can enjoy them for many years to come.  Luckily for us, Michael's had a large supply that were 60-70% off so we stocked up on them.  Eliot has made a few jack o'lanterns with the fake pumpkins.  (They are on sale right now if you're lucky enough to find some lingering at your local craft store.)



Eliot wanted one for our apartment last Halloween, so he carved out another Kermit for us to enjoy. (We kept the real pumpkins at Mom and Dad's house since we weren't sure how they'd survive the 5 hour drive back to Boston.  Plus, we knew that they'd actually get trick or treaters and our apartment building would not since you had to key into the building.)  


Shortly after that, he made Captain Jack Sparrow.


He also found a stencil for Eeyore.


And a week or so ago, he added Tigger to our collection.


I'm trying to convince him to make me a Tinkerbell pumpkin with lots of pixie dust like this one I found on Pinterest!  I might even paint it lime green with some of my left over wedding paint!


If you're interested in carving some Disney pumpkins, the websites that Eliot found to get stencils to carve from are Zombie Pumpkins and Spoonful.  (You have to become a member of Zombie Pumpkins to get the stencils.)


Here is our current display of jack o'lanterns!  We use orange flickering LED tea lights to illuminate them.  (That way they can stay on for hours at a time and the LED lights won't melt the plastic of the fake pumpkins.)  They look great and you can't even tell that they're not real ones!  I'm hoping to add some Haunted Mansion hitchhiking ghost pumpkins to our collection next year!  °o°

Friday, October 25, 2013

Flashback Friday- Halloween

Halloween is only a few days away so I thought it might be fun to relive some of my Halloween memories through photos.  Sadly, I was only able to come across two pictures from when I was younger.  Those ones are always the best!  Clearly, this means that I'll have to raid my Mom's family photo albums while I'm home over Thanksgiving and Christmas... and then have a photo scanning party.  But have no fear!  I was able to come up with a few fun photos to share!


There was the year that I dressed up as a rabbit.  (I think my brother is a pumpkin man.)


And the year that Jeremy was Darkwing Duck and I was a dalmatian.  We absolutely loved Darkwing Duck and 101 Dalmatians.  This photo makes me smile.


In 2010, Eliot and I were in the Magic Kingdom for Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party on Halloween night!  And it was incredibly awesome!!!  (PS.  I'm loving my candy corn tote bag that matches our shirts.)


And of course, we met Mickey and Minnie for a Halloween photo op!


I can't forget the 2012 Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party when we celebrated an early Halloween... twice!  The first trip was with our family and friends the day after our wedding. (The full recap of that experience can be found here.)


The second trip in 2012 was during our mini moon.  (Full recap of that experience here.) That year I had a Haunted Mansion purse.  Apparently, I have a thing with themed bags...


And finally, Halloween day of last year I was working all day so I wore a festive outfit to work along with my orange and black Halloween crackle nails and my Mickey bracelet from Walt Disney World!



What have you dressed up as in the past?  Do you have a Disney inspired costume to wear for this Halloween?  °o°

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Mickey Candy Corn Printable PDF

Hello Friends!  I wanted to share another free printable that I designed.  I made a Mickey Mouse candy corn design for you to enjoy!



The link to download the PDF version of the free printable is here.



I absolutely love this design.  I think it's very versatile.  You can print it on paper or card stock, color it and cut it out to make a ton of different things.  


A few ideas that I had are:

Scrapbooking (fun cut outs for Mickey's Halloween Party at Disneyland or Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party at Magic Kingdom.)


Paper Garland (cut out and tape or glue to a string or a piece of ribbon and hang it anywhere!  I used a piece of orange ribbon.)


Decorating Your Kitchen Cupboards (I used a little Scotch tape to stick these on!)



Hanging from your chandelier, ceiling or a house fan (I taped ribbon to the back of the cut outs and then I tied the ribbon to the chandelier.)



Stick on a Window, Door or Garage Door Decor (if you print these on magnetic "paper", they should stick to your metal doors!)

Gift Tags or Small Greeting Cards (for Halloween Treat Bags or to send someone a special Happy Halloween message in the mail.)



Decorating your Resort Hotel or Disney Cruise Line Door (print on magnetic "paper" and stick them to your door!)

And anything else you can think of!  Enjoy! 

Happy Halloween!!!  °o°

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Celebrating Our One Year Anniversary

Well, it's been over a month since our first wedding anniversary and I realized that I never wrote a recap about it!  It's been a crazy month and we basically celebrated our anniversary over a 2 week period.


The actual day of our wedding anniversary, we were going to a Boston Red Sox game.  It wasn't really planned.  It just so happened that the game that we got tickets for was on our anniversary.  My Mom, Dad and brother Jeremy went with us.  Eliot had to leave work early so we could drive down to Boston in time for the game.


Eliot and I went to college in Boston, so we're very familiar with the commuter rail and the subway, or the "T".  We arrived at Fenway Park about 30 minutes before the game started. The Red Sox had been doing really well and if they won that night, they'd clench the AL East.  (Spoiler Alert: For those of you who don't pay attention to sports, they're now going to the World Series!)  The last week before the playoffs is a fun time to go to a game!


Ironically, Eliot and I sat in the "12" and "13" seats in our row.  It was totally appropriate since we were celebrating our 2012-2013 anniversary year!  And the game was awesome! The Red Sox played the Toronto Blue Jays and ended up winning 6-3.  

After the game, the Sox celebrated on the pitcher's mound.  A lot of the fans stayed in the stadium long after the game ended.  We usually let the crowds go before us.  We stayed and got a few post game photos before heading back towards the T.    


As you can see, we wore our Mr. and Mrs. Cady custom wedding shirts.  (We stood out a bit in the sea of blue, white and red.)  Ironically, my Mom and Dad were wearing their Wedding Party shirts as well.  Jeremy laughed and said that he must have missed the memo.


Upon our return to Maine, we had an Edible Arrangement waiting for us from Eliot's family. We ended up getting two of them.  Our landlord was nice enough to sign for it and put it in our refrigerator since we'd already left for the Sox game when the delivery driver arrived. We got another one on the following Monday just in case the first one spoiled in our absence.  It was a lot of fruit!  But it was really yummy.


The arrangement was one of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse ones and they added a pineapple "1" to the center.  Eliot and I also enjoyed the pineapple Mickeys.  But my favorites were the chocolate covered banana, apples and strawberries.  I also washed out and saved the vase that they came in.  We're planning to put one of them in our Mickey themed bathroom.

Since the Edible Arrangements took up a lot of space in the refrigerator, we decided to hold off on thawing out our wedding cake.  (Something told me before we left not to bother since we'd be gone overnight for the Sox game anyways, and I'm glad I listened to my gut!)  We held off on the cake until a week or so after our actual anniversary.  (And once we ate all of the fruit and chocolates!)


One of the things that we did do to celebrate our anniversary was to get a frame for the wedding gift that Eliot's sister, Elissa, gave us.  She'd made this beautiful print of us out of charcoal for her art class.  We measured it out and I found a poster frame at Target that fit it perfectly!  I'm really happy with how it looks in it's new frame!  It seemed appropriate since the first anniversary is supposed to be "paper."


A few days after our "actual" anniversary, we decided it was time to break out the cake.  


Our wedding cake was one of my favorite parts of our wedding.  Not only was it stunning, but it was delicious!  The details of the sea shells and seahorses really made it pop.  And since Eliot and I really didn't get to eat much of our cake during our wedding, I was really looking forward to our anniversary.


In order to transport it from Disney to Maine, we sent my Mom's cousin Donna (who was storing it in FL for us) a special insulated foam box with freeze packs.  My Mom got it from the local lobster pound and it's how they ship out their lobsters.  They know what they're doing when it comes to shipping food!  After we received it in the mail, it stayed wrapped up in our freezer until we were ready to eat it!  I carefully moved it from the freezer to the refrigerator so it could thaw out.  


I opened the box not sure what to expect, but it looked like the cake was still pretty much intact and most of the white chocolate Cinderella's Castle topper was as well!  I cut us each a piece not sure what I should expect it to taste like.  (It ended up tasting just like I remembered it did.  Yum!)


I also took out our Wedding Toast glasses that we bought from the Disney Store online.  I was excited to use them again as well.  Eliot's not big on champagne, so we bought sparkling apple cider instead.


We enjoyed our wedding cake and a toast to our first year of marriage during a relaxing evening at home watching television.  And it was perfectly magical!  °o°

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Wedding Reception in Maine

It's hard to believe how fast time flies.  It's already been one month since our wedding anniversary!  Today we celebrate another wedding milestone: the one year anniversary of our Maine Reception!

Since we had a destination wedding, not all of our friends and family members were able to make the trip down to Florida.  Eliot and I had planned on having receptions in our home states so that we could celebrate with everyone.


We had our reception in Maine exactly one month after our wedding.  We had access to the Disney Wedding ceremony footage since it was still on the online website.  We decided that we would play the wedding video and then have an informal reception.  I'd always loved Maine in the fall with the pretty changing leaves, so we decided to use that as our theme.  

It was pretty crazy to plan the entire thing right after our Disney Wedding.  The paper for the invitations didn't arrive in time to make them and send them out.  We were scrambling to get everything together.  But my Mom, Nana and Aunt Sherrie are all amazing, and between the four of us, we pulled it all together.


We rented a hall at the campground across the street from the road I grew up on.  So the "venue" was literally 5 minutes away from my house.  It was a newer building with tall ceilings and a projector already set up.  It was perfect.  And since it was the campgrounds "off season," the price was incredibly inexpensive.  Perfect!  They even let us come to decorate the night before!


We got a bunch of pumpkins and flowers from one of my Dad's clients.  Eliot and I met my parents at iParty a few days before and we bought tablecloths, plates, napkins, plastic silverware and other decorations.  I had found some fabrics from JoAnn Fabrics to use.  We hung up a photo backdrop in one of the back windows.  I also had a bunch of Build-A-Bears that we'd bought a few years prior that were fall themed.  We dressed them up as a bride and groom (with a tiara), and the other set as Cinderella and Prince Charming (complete with glass slippers).


I took screenshots of some of our wedding photos since we hadn't gotten the final archival CD but we had the website access to view them.  We printed the screenshots so they weren't the best quality, but they were enough for everyone to experience our magical wedding day.


(My Mom actually liked the poster frame displays that I made so much that they are still sitting in the entrance to my Dad's office where all of his clients can admire them!)

I decided to make some treats as part of our favors.  I made chocolate dipped pretzel sticks and chocolate covered Oreos.  Eliot also had some soaps that he'd made special that were leaf shaped and we added a few of our extra Mickey Mouse soaps from our wedding.


Finally, around 2:30 in the morning, everything was done and it was time to go to sleep so we could get ready for the reception!

We got up early Saturday morning and I attempted to make the cake... that's another story. The cake itself turned out fine... the decorating of it, not so much.  Let's just say that my bridesmaids came to the rescue once again and helped frost it for me before I destroyed it in my rush to get it done.


We eventually made our way to the hall where we finished the last of the decorating.  We set up the poster frames with the pictures and put the guest book out.  We added the leaves that we had people sign and set up the display of some of our wedding invitations, place holders, table signs, celebration buttons and other things that we'd had in Florida.  I also grabbed my Cinderella ear hat to use as a decoration on our guest book table.

All of us girls got ready in the bathroom right at the hall.  Katie, Katie and Kaitlin were all there to help me get into my dress.  After getting ready, we were "announced" by my cousin who I'd asked to be our unofficial DJ.  At that point, we had no where to escape to get outside of the hall so we were announced coming out of the bathroom.  (At least everyone got a good laugh, including me.)


We watched our wedding video while everyone ate and then had our toasts.  Katie gave another wonderful speech.  Since BJ and Jeremy were our only groomsmen able to attend, we had asked BJ to be our East Coast best man and to do a toast at our Maine reception.  He did a great job and I'm glad that he was able to talk about his and Eliot's friendship and how we all became the fab five.


We played the same songs that we had for our first dance, father/daughter dance and mother/son (in-law) dances at our wedding reception and we re-created those memories.  I had really wanted to make sure that we did this so that my grandmother who wasn't able to attend our wedding in Florida could still see me dancing with Eliot and my Dad.


In between the activities, we got some good pictures of the wedding party members who were there.



Our ring bearer Emery was very excited to show me the pictures and the scarecrows that were about the same size as him!  He was too cute running all around.


Finally, we made sure to get plenty of family photos.  I really wanted to get some with my Grammie and with the rest of my family.  We got a great photo with all of us.


And then we took some with my grandparents.


We also got one with my Mom and both of my grandmothers.


And Katie and BJ recreated their signature "Beauty and the Geek" pose from one of our college dances.  Eliot and BJ had to get a photo together and BJ and Katie had a husband wife photo op.


Of course, I needed a photo with my maid of honor!


Finally, after visiting with everyone, the party wound down and we started to take everything down and shuttled it back to the house.  Somehow, I ended up by myself for a few minutes and had a great time attempting to get myself out of my wedding gown. (Someone came to my rescue finally.)


All in all, it was a great day.  Eliot and I were really glad that we could share our wedding fun with some of our friends and family who weren't able to attend our wedding.  But we still had plenty of Disney magic sprinkled throughout to make it a magical celebration!  °o°