Sunday, December 29, 2013

Christmas 2013

Hey Everyone!  Wow, it's been quite a while since I visited my blog!  (About a week and a half!  Ouch!)  You know how it goes: the holidays sneak up on you, then they're here, and you're scurrying around like crazy trying to get everything done!  But, now I'm back!  

I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Our 2013 Christmas Card!
Our Christmas was really nice this year.  Eliot and I went to my parents' house to join them, my grandparents and my brother for our Christmas celebrations!  Eliot had quite a few days off from work so we actually got to drive up Saturday and come back later Christmas Day!  It was nice to get away for a few days!

On our drive up Saturday, we stopped by my Mom's side of the family's Christmas Party! We were starting to get another winter storm so my parents and grandparents actually stayed home.  Eliot and I stopped to get the presents since it was on our way home anyways.  My Aunt Sherrie graciously fed us while we were there.  (Yum!)  And we did get to visit with a few of my relatives before we had to leave.

While we were there, we gave my little cousin Emery (our ringbearer) one of his gifts.  He loves Jake and the Neverland Pirates, especially Captain Hook.  Eliot and I found him a Captain Hook ornament!  He was so excited!  He tried to stuff it in his pocket, which was hilarious.  (I wish I'd video taped it!)  Eventually, Captain Hook made it onto the tree!




Sunday and Monday, "Downeast" Maine got a major ice storm and we were basically stuck inside both days.  We had plenty of food and a wood stove if necessary, so there was no reason to go out in the storm. The rain froze on contact and everything was covered in ice.  The tree branches bent over and a lot of trees fell over onto the power lines.  We lost power a few times during the storm.  During one outage, we started to get a little bored staring into the darkness.  To liven things up, I had Eeyore wave around a flashlight "light saber" for a few minutes.


  
Monday I decided that I better finish up my Christmas presents just in case we completely lost power.  I had planned to make a wreath for Mom and Dad as well as Nana and Papa.  It was my first attempt at making a wire mesh wreath, but they came out pretty good!  I really love how Mom and Dad's Chip and Dale Candy Cane Wreath turned out!  (Now I need to make one for Eliot and me!)  Later that night, Dad drove us into town so we could have dinner and visit with Katie.



On Tuesday, Christmas Eve Day, Eliot and I decided that we were going to finally go see Frozen.  (We had wanted to Monday, but the ice storm spoiled those plans.)  My brother Jeremy still hadn't seen it so he came with us too.  I even wore my new Elsa t-shirt, my snowflake earrings and the snowflake hair clips that I made!



We ended up getting to the theater just in time for the 3D show!  It was so amazing.  I'm bummed out that it took us so long to see it!  The music was incredible.  I'm still humming "Let It Go" over and over in my head.  The animation was also superb!  I want an ice palace like the one Elsa made!  And I'd love to live in Arendelle.  And I want a dress like Anna's coronation dress... and Elsa's ice dress.  And Olaf was hilarious!  And how cute were baby Sven and Kristoff?  It was so great; I wanna go again!

While watching the movie, I even saw a few of the hidden Easter Eggs!  They were really quick, but I did catch Rapunzel as well as the chocolates from Wreck it Ralph.  I pointed them out really quick, but the guys both missed what I was pointing at.  (I think Eliot was too busy trying to pet baby Sven in 3D.)  I was so entranced by the movie that I totally forgot to look for Mickey Mouse!  Maybe next time!


Photos from Disney's Frozen.
We thought it would be pretty funny to bring Eeyore to see Frozen.  He "snuck" into the theater inside of Eliot's drawstring backpack.  Eliot even found some 3D glasses for him! He was pretty cute with his giant glasses on.



After seeing Frozen, we did a few last minute Christmas errands.  I took a lot of picture of the ice from the storm.  Check out how much ice is on those trees!  It's like Elsa made her return! I'm a total dork and I also took a picture of Eeyore in the snow (ice) making snow donkeys.  



We spent Christmas Eve hanging out in the living room.  Mom and Dad finally kicked us out around 11:00 so Santa would come.  We made sure to "hang" our stockings up first!  I even found a small one for Eeyore!  (Jeremy also bought me a small Bumble one!)



Christmas morning we came down to many presents from Santa!  We all opened our stockings and took turns with opening presents.  I'm so excited!  Santa brought me the tabletop easel that I really wanted.  I also got the silk paint set that I've been looking at for about 2 years!  (Stay tuned for lots of crafty stuff!)  Jeremy got Eliot and me a ton of Disney Infinity figures.  (Now I just need to learn how to play Infinity!)  And Mom and Dad got me the Minnie Mouse Build-A-Bear that I'd asked for.  She has pink and lime pajamas for our wedding colors!!!



We also got Eeyore a few "gifts".  Ok, they're actually Build-A-Bear items, but they'll work for Eeyore and for our family's ever growing BAB collection.  I had gotten him a Santa hat to wear for Christmas, and we thought it was time he have a hockey stick and puck to go with his Sharks jersey.  We also found a Red Sox hat and shirt, some sunglasses and a basketball and hoop.  Jeremy even bought him a Patriots outfit!  (And it actually fits!  Dad squeezed him into the pants.  See photos above!)



Of course, no Christmas Day is complete without the Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade!  This year was even the 30th anniversary of the parade.  (I'm 29, so it's been on television as long as I can remember!)  Unfortunately, our cable was not working correctly due to the ice storm.  We missed the first hour and when the second hour started, it fuzzed in and out the remainder of the parade. 

This is the first time that I've ever missed the parade Christmas morning.  However, I was really thankful that we had power to begin with.  A lot of people in the area didn't even have that for Christmas.  Plus, Eliot and I were DVR-ing the parade back at our house... so I could watch it when we got home anyways!  (On a side note, some of the people without power still won't get power until this Wednesday!  It'll have been out for a week and half!  Yikes!!!)



Christmas afternoon we ended up watching our Disney Wedding DVD with my family. None of my grandparents had seen the DVD yet, and neither had my Dad and brother. Even Mom had only seen bits and pieces of it.  It was a lot of fun to re-live the memories with all of them together.  We really did have an incredible wedding at Disney!



Around 2:00, we ended up losing our power.  We had literally stopped the Wedding DVD about 5 minutes prior.  After a few hours, it was apparent that it wasn't going to turn back on anytime soon, so Eliot, Jeremy and I packed up our stuff before it got too dark out. When Eliot and I left Mom and Dad's house, they still didn't have power.  Luckily, they called us about an hour after we left to say that it had turned back on!  Once Eliot and I got home, we unpacked the car and watched the part of the parade that we missed!

We had a great Christmas and are incredibly thankful to have spent some time with family and friends!  Now we're shifting our focus to New Year's Eve and going to Walt Disney World for the Half Marathon!  It's going to be another few busy weeks!  °o°

Friday, December 20, 2013

Flashback Friday- Christmas

Christmas is only a few days away and I thought it would be fun to relive some of my favorite Christmas memories through photos.  

I'm still planning to raid my Mom's family photo albums while we're home over Christmas so hopefully I'll find a lot more to share eventually!  All of my pictures seem to skip from my elementary years to college.  There must be some high school photos of me floating around somewhere...


These are from the first Christmas that I remember.  This was when we lived in our first house.  (I was probably 4 at the time.)  Santa brought me a few Cherry Merry Muffin dolls that smelled like cupcakes!  I loved them!!!


I also got some Maple Town houses.  Did anyone else get those?  They had the little velvety bunnies and bears with cute clothes?


Then we moved to our new house and these pictures are from the next few years. Ironically the year that we sang "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth" in our holiday concert, I was the only one in my class without my two front teeth.


Next up, my holiday photo with all of our 101 Dalmatians.  (I set this all up myself and begged my Mom to take a picture for me.)


The only time we didn't celebrate Christmas at home was when I was 12 and we went to... Walt Disney World!!!  (It was during the 25th Anniversary Celebration.)


Here we are at the entrance of Epcot Center.


Jeremy and me on Main Street on Christmas Day!!!  It was the most magical experience!


Now we skip ahead to college.  I think that this was from 2005.


And we got a family photo.  (We clean up pretty good.)


I believe this is my brother and me from 2010.


This was Eliot's first time decorating a Christmas tree in our apartment in 2010.  He wore his Grumpy Santa hat and I had my Tinkerbell hat.


These are our Christmas decorations in our apartment in 2010.  I had way too much fun!


These are some of the small Christmas ornament books that my Grammie always had on her tree.  I always loved looking at them each year.  (I took picture this when we visited her house Christmas Day in 2010.)


Finally, here's our photo from last year!  It was Eliot's and my first Christmas as Mr. and Mrs. as well as our first Christmas in the same place!


I'm looking forward to this Christmas and many more memories!  °o°

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Preparing for Christmas

Christmas is quickly approaching and honestly, I feel like I'm so far behind!  Anyone else feel that way?  Being sick threw everything off, and I'm scrambling to get caught up!

On Friday, I worked on our Christmas card photo.  I had a random design idea and went with it.  About 45 minutes later, our custom photo card was complete!  It came out so cute!  I absolutely love it!  (I can't wait to share it with you... but I'll wait until I actually put them in the mail for our friends and family.)  Eliot loves it and thinks that I should sell it as a printable on Etsy.  So maybe I'll have it available for you guys next year?  Here's a sneak peek!  


Saturday we were preparing for Winter Storm Elsa.  Ok, so it was really named "Electra." But as my Facebook fans know, I decided to call it Elsa.  It's more appropriate, right?  We were supposed to get 14-18 inches of snow!  (In the photo below, we are in the 8-14" area, but they later adjusted the forecast telling us to expect more snow.)

Photo Courtesy of WABI Facebook Page
After running around getting gas, food, and having oil delivered, we were ready for Elsa! Eliot and I spent the rest of the day putting up our Christmas tree and decorating the kitchen and living room with window clings.

On Sunday, it was clear that Elsa had arrived overnight.  Around noon, Eliot and I went outside to shovel our walkway and back deck.  Our walkway was about 16 inches deep! And then our back deck ended up being over 2 feet deep due to the snow drifting!  Check out that pile of snow on our table!  The final snow total for our city was 16 1/2 inches!!!


We lost our decorations in the winter wonderland of snow!  Eliot had snow-pants on so he jumped in and dug Mickey, Minnie and our inflatable snowman out of the snow.  Minnie's nose was just barely sticking out of the snow so we could locate them.  (I wish that I'd taken a picture; it was pretty funny.)  Our pathway markers are still under the snow, but they're trying to peek out!

Sunday night I watched the Once Upon a Time winter finale.  Argh!  I won't spoil it for those of you who have not seen it yet.  But what was that?  It's getting really crazy!  I think I have a love/hate relationship with it.  I can't believe that it won't be back until March!!!  Is it March yet?!?!?  Now?  How about now?  Ugh.


Monday, we woke up to a beautiful sunrise.  I spent the day curled up on the couch on "stake out".  I was expecting FedEx and Home Depot was coming to deliver our new dishwasher.  FedEx came around lunch time with a surprise: Our wedding albums!!!  

I was so excited to get our wedding photo albums!  I know what you're all thinking. "You're just getting them now?  Over a year later?"  It's not Disney's fault!  We had so many beautiful pictures that it took us a long time to figure out which ones we wanted in the book.  (I just ordered them in a few weeks ago.)  They did not disappoint.  The albums are absolutely beautiful!  Check out those cute Mickey details inside the book!  Love it!!!


I was on the couch the entire afternoon waiting for Home Depot, so I decided to finish my Once Upon a Time Season 2 marathon.  (I only had 3 more episodes left to watch.) While watching, I worked on a few more decorations for our kitchen cupboards.  I made a Christmas tree, a Santa Mickey hat and a Gingerbread Man.  Then, I used my Mickey Mouse paper punch to make some ornaments for the tree.  They're made out of card stock and colored with markers.  They're pretty easy to make and don't require too much time so it was a nice way to relax.  And our kitchen looks all festive now!


However, I still have a lot to do.  Over the next few days, I'm planning to work on more Christmas projects and a lot more decorating!  Stay tuned!!!  °o°

Friday, December 13, 2013

Minnie and Mickey Christmas Printables

After the popularity of my Mickey and Minnie Pilgrim decoration printables, I've decided to make some more for Christmas!



Once again, I used the Mickey and Minnie Candy Box printables from Spoonful.


I modified them by enlarging and zooming in on their faces.  This time, I used Photoshop to get rid of the extra background stuff.  Next, I printed them and cut them both out on sturdy cardstock, being careful to just get their faces.  Then, I added some Scotch tape to the back and viola!  I have created simple Mickey and Minnie Christmas cupboard decorations!  Don't they look absolutely adorable?


If you'd like to make some of your own, but don't feel like going through all of the steps I did, I've posted my modified files below.  I do not take any credit for creating these! They are property of Disney and Spoonful.  I just modified them to fit my needs! Ok? Got it? Good.  :-) 





These would make a fun project for kids to make their own masks!  Or, if you're going to Disney for the holidays, you could print them on magnetic paper and put them on your Disney Resort door!

I made a medium size for smaller cupboards or window decorations.  You probably could also use them for postcard style Christmas cards or note cards!


Then, I realized that you could shrink them down even smaller and make them into a paper garland, gift tags or ornaments.  They would also be perfect for Disney scrapbook pages!  So, I decided to make a file in a small size as well.


The possibilities with these are endless.  Enjoy!!!  °o°

UPDATE 12/14:  I've been told that the links aren't working correctly.  When you click the links the pages appear blank.  After re-uploading them and double checking the links, I had Eliot try them on his computer, and he says that if you click "File" and then "download" they will work.  If you're still having trouble and you'd like me to email them to you directly, please send an email to my blog email: mydisneylifeblog@gmail.com and I'll send them to you!  :-)

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Catching Up

Hi Friends!  I'm back after a short hiatus.  Eliot and I had a craft fair this past Saturday. Then Sunday we put up our Christmas Lights.  And on top of all that, I'm still sick.  I thought that I'd gotten the advantage over my cold, but it seems to have manifested itself into a sinus infection/head cold.  The good news is that I switched medicine and I seem to be back on the mend, again!  After about 10 days of this, I'm really ready to be healthy Melissa again!  

I haven't written about our daily adventures in a while, so I wanted to do a quick recap of everything from Thanksgiving until now.  I feel like I'm playing catch up!  Here we go:

We had Thanksgiving at my parents house this year with my Mom's family.  It was a great day filled with lots of yummy food.  I love getting together with my family and my cousins and I always share some laughs together.  Eliot and I even dressed Eeyore up for the occasion!



Hanukkah also fell over Thanksgiving which kind of threw us for a loop.  We worked really hard to get our Thanksgiving decorations up.  Then Eliot and I were away for 4 nights of Hanukkah since we stayed the whole Thanksgiving weekend with my parents. By the time we got home, Hanukkah was half over.  We discussed decorating for it, but Eliot didn't want to bother.  Then, I got sick the day after we returned home, so I wouldn't have been able to decorate anyways.  Sadly, Hanukkah passed with no decorating this year.  But next year, Hanukkah falls in mid-December (December 16-24) so we'll be ready to have a giant Christmukkah celebration!



We did get our Hanukah gifts from Eliot's family.  We both got a Mickey or Minnie cell phone charm/zipper pull.  Eliot also got a keychain with his Hebrew name on it.  I got a really cute "M" necklace with a super small Mickey head on it.  I've looked at the monogram Disney necklaces a lot, but I've never gotten myself one.  This will go nicely with the rest of my Mickey Mouse jewelry!

Leading up to the craft fair, I had a lot of scarves to make so I decided to have a "Once Upon a Time" Marathon last week.  My best friend Katie had been sick over Thanksgiving and she told me that she got hooked on it through Netflix.  (Thanks to moi.) I decided that it was the perfect show to re-watch while I was feeling sick, and it was great background television for scarf making!  I made about 20 scarves in two days from the comfort of my couch!



The rest of the week consisted of me helping Eliot make more soaps.  We ended up sending out a bunch of the soaps and scarves for his mother to sell in California.  Then we made more with the new scents that we got.  I also worked on more Mickey rhinestone earrings for Eliot, as well as some more Frozen inspired snowflake hair clips.



The craft fair itself went pretty well.  We didn't do as well as we'd hoped that we would, but it was still fun.  The kids loved the soaps and I got lots of compliments on my scarves.  We're hoping that next year we can participate in a few more fairs.  And I'm also planning to add some of the leftover scarves to Etsy at some point!


On Sunday, Eliot and my Dad put up our Christmas Lights.  I helped with a few of the lights, so I should probably give myself a little credit.  As I've mentioned before, this is the first year that we've had an entire yard and house to decorate.  I've got a few photos from the initial decorating.  (We're planning to take some more photos and videos, so I'll make sure to add those once I take them.)

I put lights on our back deck that we're planning to keep up year round.  They're red, orange, blue, green and yellow.  I figure that they'll be bright and fun colors for the summer as well.  After all, who doesn't like pretty lights and a cozy backyard barbecue? (Ooh and don't forget the s'mores!!!)



This is the side of our house.  (It looks a lot better at night when you can see the lights.)



And here's the front!  We have a Mickey, Minnie and snowman inflatable front and center. We also added a few more lights since this photo was taken.  This is a panoramic picture so it's a little bit skewed.  We're planning to add our tinsel penguins and flamingo soon. And you also can't see the wishing well.  I'll work on that.  (It's really hard to take a picture of the entire house from our front yard.  I might have to go to our neighbors across the street.)



Over the past few days, we've also started to bring our Christmas decorations up from the basement.  I'm hoping to get them up in the next few days and over this weekend as long as I'm feeling better.  I love this time of year and all of the fun Disney decorations that we have!  Stay tuned for a fun photo tour!!!  There's a lot of Disney stuff to see!!!  °o°

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Happy Birthday Walt Disney

Hello Friends!  I've missed out on a few days of blogging since I've been fighting a head cold all week.  On a the plus side, I've had my own personal "Once Upon A Time" Season 1 marathon from the comfort of our couch.  Today I'm finally feeling better so I wanted to check in on my blog!

Image Source: The Disney Wiki (Link here.)
Today is also a special day as it marks 112 years since Walt Disney was born.  Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901.  


I owe Walt a debit of gratitude.  Without him, this blog wouldn't exist, I wouldn't have had the most incredible wedding, and I don't know if I would have ever wished on a star.  (I probably can blame the lack of money in my wallet on him too.  But our lack of willpower could also be to blame so I'll let that one slide.)


Image Source: The Walt Disney Company (Link here.)
I think that one of the things that inspires me most about Walt, is that the sky was the limit with his imagination.  When I decided to pursue interior design in college, I wanted to design everything.  You can't think "too big" in terms of Disney.  Everything is larger than life and it's amazing.  My least favorite part of my design classes were always when there were parameters.  I suppose that even Disney has limits, but it's that sky high mentality that has always drawn me.  (My creative side doesn't like rules or boundaries.)

Image Source: Pinterest (Link to pin here.)
I've had a lot of time to figure out what I want to do career wise this year.  No matter what I do, I can't seem to narrow it down to one thing.  I want to do travel planning, interior design, landscape design, graphic design, jewelry making, crafting, painting, wedding planning, and so much more.  And why should I have to narrow it down?  I look at all of the incredible things that Disney (both Walt and as a company) has created over the years and it gives me a new determination to follow all of my dreams.

Happy Birthday Walt.  
Thank you for wishing on stars, dreaming big and never giving up!  °o°