Today I am over at the Big Picture Classes blog sharing this Disney- themed layout!

These photos were taken during our 36 hour whirlwind Disney trip a few weeks ago.  I haven't decided yet how I am going to document our Spring Break week, but i knew i was ready to create a Disney layout :)

One of my tips in my class, Document the Magic is to pick up TONS of maps when you visit the parks (or any travel destination)!   In my next Document the Magic class series I will share a lesson on ideas of how to use these maps in your travel album.  This layout will give you a taste of what to expect.

Supplies Used: Elle's Studio Cienna Labels, Elle's Studio's January 2015 Kit, Elle's Studio's Yellow Letter and Number Stickers, Cienna Stickers, Hello 2015 Stickers, Studio Calico Roman Ladder Add On Kit (the "LOVE" wood veneer).

Project Life: Rehearsal Dinner

Today I am sharing a Project Life spread that highlights Elle's Studio's Cienna Collection!

Cienna is the perfect collection to use during the Spring Season, but it is also PERFECT for documenting Wedding related photos!

We had a BIG weekend last week, my brother got married!!  It was a wonderful weekend of celebrating Ben and his new wife Alyssa.   We couldn't be more happy for them.   I have been shuffling through all the photos and not really sure where to begin to share about the weekend on my blog.   Maybe this is the best way!

I devoted a whole page and a half for the Rehearsal Dinner.  It was a fabulous evening of celebrating Ben and Alyssa with both families and the bridal party.  Speaking of the bridal party-- we all played a role in their wedding!  Todd was the Best Man, I was a bridesmaid, and Jonah and Jordan were Ring Bearer and Flower Girl.  We were busy! 

The rehearsal dinner was held at Joseph Decuis.  It was delicious and a beautiful atmosphere!  I saved the invitation my parents sent out, along with the menu from that evening and included both within the spread.   My mom had gorgeous flower arrangements made for the tables and i couldn't help but think and how it would match the Cienna Collection papers!  ha!

On the backside of the menu I added pattern paper and stamps by Elle's Studio (sources listed below).  In the white space of the paper I added journaling about my dad and how he (purposefully) mispronounced the name of the restaurant for months.  he's a goof. 

After dinner we had a time where family and bridal party members could toast the bride and groom.  The stories told were great and the advice given was beautiful.   In my toast, I gave Ben and Alyssa bride and groom mouse ears that we purchased and had embroidered when we visited Disney back in September (he's wearing it in the black and white photo below).

Elle's Studio Products Used: Elle's Studio March 2015 Kit, Cienna Paper Collection Pack, Cienna Cutouts, Cienna Journaling Tags, Cienna Bits and Pieces, Cienna Wood Veneers,  Sycamore Lane Paper Collection Pack, Cienna Hello Stamp,  Cienna Happiness Stamp, Hello 2015 Stamp, Numbers Stamp

By far my favorite story from the evening came from this photo:



During one of the toasts Jonah looked at me and said "I'm ready to go next".

I had mentioned it to him a few days prior that he and Jordan could say something if they wanted to at the Rehearsal Dinner.  Jordan got really sick with an ear infection the day before we left for the wedding (that's another story!) so I didn't really have the opportunity to work with them on saying something at the Rehearsal Dinner.



Well, Jonah popped up on the chair and said "Hi I am Jonah.  Ben is my uncle and tomorrow Alyssa will be my aunt."   He then talked about all the things he likes doing with Ben and Alyssa.  He talked about Alaska, our Wednesday night dinner's, playing basketball.   It was SO precious.    I don't know if you can tell from the photo but both myself, Alyssa, and my sister Annie were all crying! (later he said "when I was up there speeching you guys were all crying!")

The funny thing was that Todd thought that I must have helped him with his speech, and I thought Todd must have helped him.  He said "NOPE!  I went in the bathroom and thought about it there!"  (where all men have great ideas right!?).



It was truly a special moment and I was so proud of my boy.  (and for the record Jordan was asleep under the table:).

Project Life was created by Becky Higgins as a way to simplify how you document life and preserve memories. Photo pockets used in my Project Life are created by Becky and can be found here. You can read all of my Project Life posts here.

Project Life: Easter

Happy Monday!  Today I am sharing a spread I made highlight Easter Sunday!

We returned home from Spring Break the day before Easter-  I am so glad we were able to go to church and celebrate Easter with our family (instead of being in the car).     I decided to designate a page and a half for Easter.  



The left side was all about Easter Sunday and what we did: church and lunch with family.    I mostly used Elle's Studio's March Kit and the Cienna Collection in this spread.



On the half page I made an insert about visiting the Easter Bunny.  We obviously didn't visit him on Easter Sunday (actually it was St Patrick's Day when we visited the bunny! ha!) But  I wanted to keep all Easter together on the same page.   I am trying not to be SO chronological in my scrapbooking.  I want to care more about the stories than keeping it in order of how it happened.

Tomorrow I will share what i did on the back side of this insert!

Elle’s Studio Products Used: Elle’s Studio March 2015 Kit, Cienna Blank Labels, Cienna Happiness Stamp, Cienna Stickers, Cienna Wood Veneers, Cienna Journaling Tags, Letter and Number Stickers- Light Pink, A Bushel and Peck Stamp, Numbers Stamp

Project Life was created by Becky Higgins as a way to simplify how you document life and preserve memories. Photo pockets used in my Project Life are created by Becky and can be found here. You can read all of my Project Life posts here.

How to dominate Disney in 36 hours

2 kids, 2 adults, 22000 steps (per day), 3 parks, 2 character meals, 1 hotel pool... all in 36 hours.

Yep that about sums up our "Surprise" Disney overnight on Spring Break.  While already in Clearwater, we told the kids that my sister in law and I would be taking them for a fun over night to Disney(see the video here!) !



Problem: we would be leaving on April Fools Day so for a good 30 minutes they didn't believe us!  (side note: don't feel bad for Todd who stayed back in Clearwater with his dad during our 36 hour Disney blitz.  He views this as a win/win.  I get my Disney fix, and he didn't have to go;)





The Backstory:

I began planning this surprise back in January.  Obviously I LOVE Disney.  I kept telling Todd it was torture knowing I would be only an hour and a half away from the Happiest Place on Earth without visiting over Spring Break.   So, he generously suggested we go for an overnight and invite my sister in law to join us.   WOOHOOOO!



Now this is my third Disney visit in less than a year, so I am pretty familiar with what we like to do at Disney.  I know how to book the hotel, restaurants, tickets, Fastpasses all on the Disney website.  I know our favorite rides, favorite parks, favorite restaurants, however, I have never tried to fit it all in in 36 hours!!

So I learned a few tips along the way of how to dominate Disney in 36 hours.

1.  Stay on property / Close to the parks.   We are typically "off property people" for a variety of reasons (cost, we want a kitchen/washer/dryer, my husband want's to get away from Mickey at night{humph}. this is our favorite off property hotel), however for a very short stay the cost of being on property/being close to the parks is VERY justifiable.

 

We decided you can't get much closer than the Contemporary Hotel!   We LOVED that we could walk to and from the Magic Kingdom in 5 minutes.   It truly added a huge convenience factor to our trip and saved us a ton of time.

2.  Choose your favorites, you can't do it all.   Did we ride Pirates of the Caribbean? nope.  Jungle Cruise? nope.  Seven Dwarfs Mine Train? nope.  Soarin'?  nope again.  (Sigh.....)

Before you feel sorry for us here's what we DID do in the Magic Kingdom:  Space Mountain, Dumbo, Voyage of the Little Mermaid, Splash Mountain, Thunder Mountain, Prince Charming's Royal Carousel, and Peter Pan's Flight.

Hollywood Studios: Hollywood Tower of Terror, Beauty and the Beast LIVE, The Great Movie Ride, Toy Story Mania, Rockin' Roller Coaster, Frozen Sing-A-Long.

Epcot:  No rides but we visited every country!  (and keep in mind this was during a VERY crowded Spring Break week).




For a short trip to Disney you can NOT do every ride.  You must pick and choose which rides you love most and make these rides your utmost priority!


3.  FASTPASS for the afternoon.   I follow many unofficial Disney blogs (one of my favorites: Disney Tourist Blog) and most all of them will suggest to book your FASTPASS selections for late morning/mid afternoon.  Why?  Because this is when wait times for ANY ride will be longest!  So plan to visit your favorites mid afternoon and skip the lines!!  Visit your second favorites at other times when the lines will not be as long.

We did Magic Kingdom on Wednesday and we booked our three allowed FASTPASSES for Splash Mountain (12:15-1:15pm), Thunder Mountain (1:15-2:15pm) ( I LOVE BOOKING THESE TWO RIDES BACK TO BACK!) and Peter Pan's Flight (4:20-5:20pm).



So naturally, our very first stop was Space Mountain since we didn't have a FASTPASS.  We got to the park at 9am after driving from Clearwater.  We had about a 40 minute wait for Space Mountain which was our longest wait for the day.   I knew I didn't want to FASTPASS rides like Dumbo or Little Mermaid, however these were rides the kids REALLY wanted to ride.  So we did them FIRST thing before wait times increased!

We had a similar plan of attack for Hollywood Studio's on Thursday.  We booked our FASTPASSES a little earlier in the day (10am) knowing we wanted to park hop LATER in the afternoon (we FASTPASSED Tower of Terror, Toy Story Mania, and Frozen Sing-a-Long on Thursday).  Nikki and Jonah rode Rockin' Roller Coaster and I took Jordan to get her face painted and to shop :)

4.  Meet the Character's at the table.  We knew with a trip so short we would be waiting in lines for rides regardless of our FASTPASS selections.  It was inevitable!   However, I knew I did NOT want to spend my time in character lines!  Normally for a week long vacation I would be totally fine to wait in a 20 minute line to meet Ariel in her Grotto, but NOT when you are only there for 36 hours!

But don't worry, we got to meet Ariel!  As well as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Jasmine, MICKEY, Minnie, Pluto, Goofy, and Donald!  I'd say 10 characters in 36 hours is pretty good!

How did we do this?  Character Meals!  Even though Character Meals are not my favorite FOOD selection at WDW Parks-- it's WELL worth the price to accomplish all these Character Greetings while also grabbing a meal (and forgo the long lines in the park!)   We ate at Cinderella's Royal Table in Magic Kingdom for a late lunch on Wednesday, and had an EARLY (7:30!!) Breakfast Thursday at Chef Mickey's to meet the Fab Five! (bonus: this restaurant was in our hotel!).

We also ate at Hollywood Brown Derby at Hollywood Studios for lunch, and La Hacienda De Angel (Epcot, Mexico) for dinner.  It was SO nice to pre book these reservations.  The longest i waited for a meal was when i did NOT book a reservation!  So make this a priority no matter how long you are visiting WDW.  It is SO nice to sit down and enjoy a restaurant after many hours of walking, heat, and long lines!

5.  Be flexible and go with the flow.  Realize that with such a short trip there will be bumps in the road.  And at times you might feel like how Jordan looks in this picture. :)




For instance, I had high hopes to watch the fireworks at the Magic Kingdom on Wednesday night.  But towards early evening i knew there was NO WAY this would be a good idea.  The kids were exhausted, I was tired, and I knew we had a super early morning planned the next day with our breakfast reservations.  So instead, we opted to go to the hotel and swim in the evening.



It was SO nice and refreshing.  And I was glad we had an opportunity to enjoy our hotel!  Then we watch the fireworks from our hotel balcony public viewing area (another bonus of staying on the monorail loop).



Even though we weren't watching the fireworks from Main Street, we still were able to enjoy the show from afar.  I have to say, the perspective of the fireworks outside of the park was pretty neat!  It totally looked like they were above Space Mountain all night!



Roll with the punches!  I realized that being flexible was the key to enjoying the day to the max.

I hope these tips give you a good idea of what it's like to visit (and conquer!) Disney in 36 short hours!  It's totally possible! :)

Also, I have a Document the Magic Class right now at Big Picture Classes.  The first part of the class offers packing, planning, memory keeping tips, and many photography tips.  The second portion of the class (coming this summer) is about putting your album together.  Be sure to check it out!  

Project Life: Spring Break

Today I am sharing my Project Life spread highlighting our Spring Break Week!



We did SO much over Spring Break!  We visited the Coke Museum in Atlanta on our way to Florida (after a crazy first day in the car), we visited Winter the Dolphin, we hit the beach and we surprised the kids with a Disney overnight!  This spread is just a glimpse of all of these things! (i do plan to do a separate Spring Break album)



So basically this spread covers over a week (Friday 3/27- Saturday 4/4).  The page following this spread is my Easter spread (will share soon).  I love the more casual approach I have in documenting this year.  I was getting so strict about the chronological aspect of documenting the week that it started to stress me out if I didn't have a lot to put down on the page.  then i would become uninspired.  a quick "refocus" was exactly what I needed to get back going again.



For this spread I used the new Elle's Studio April 2015 kit!  It really is perfect for Spring Break (or vacation) documentation!  I love the small flag tags that label the days of the week.  And the Morning/Afternoon/Evening 4x6 tag!  It was perfect to document our whirlwind day at the Magic Kingdom.

My other favorite aspect of this spread is the Coke plastic bag.  Who doesn't love the Coca Cola font?  The large print and transparent aspect totally grabs my attention!

Elle’s Studio Products Used:  Elle’s Studio’s April 2015 Kit, Cienna Journaling Tag, Shine Lil Snippets- Highlights, Cienna Wood Veneers, Letter & Number Stickers- Red, Lots of Love Wood Veneers

Project Life was created by Becky Higgins as a way to simplify how you document life and preserve memories. Photo pockets used in my Project Life are created by Becky and can be found here. You can read all of my Project Life posts here.

When April Fools goes wrong...

So we had a little surprise for the kids up our sleeves during our Florida Spring Break trip.   We planned for my sister in law Nikki and I to take them to Disney World on Wednesday and Thursday of Spring Break Week.  A 36 hour Surprise trip to Disney!   What could be better!?!?!?!



Maybe the fact we were taking them on April 1st (April Fools Day) threw them for a loop, just a bit.   We decide to tell them on Tuesday (they day before we left) and well, here's what happens when an April Fools Surprise goes wrong!

Meeting Winter the Dolphin

We spent the first half of our Spring Break visiting Todd's Dad in Clearwater, Florida.

One of the BIG adventures we had planned was to visit Winter at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium.

Have you seen Dolphin Tale or Dolphin Tale 2?  In case you haven't, Clearwater Marine Aquarium is a rescue and release aquarium and the movie is about a true story of one of their rescue dolphins, Winter.

  

"Winter was found in the coastal waters of Florida in December 2005, caught in a crab trap, which resulted in the loss of her tail. She was then taken to Clearwater Marine Aquarium. The loss of her tail caused her to swim unnaturally with her tail moving side to side instead of up and down. As a result, she was fitted with a silicone and plastic tail that enabled her to swim normally. She has since become a highly popular attraction at the aquarium, which led to the film's making. She lives in her pool with another dolphin, Hope, who is the subject of the 2014 sequel to Dolphin Tale, Dolphin Tale 2."

Jonah (and especially) Jordan are BIG fans of Winter and Hope.  Their big Christmas gift this past Christmas was the opportunity "to meet" Winter over Spring Break.  Oh, and also Rufus the Pelican!  We can't forget Rufus!  

As soon as we entered the aquarium (and warning! you enter through a huge gift shop) we walked up the steps to the pools.   I guess I didn't realize that the filming of the movie totally took place here as opposed to a set-- it's the real deal.  Totally familiar (if you have seen the movie), and an accurate representation of the movie. Everything is right there--- Hope and Winter's pools, Rufus's area to the right, and then other rescue areas for otters and turtles to the left.  Of course everyone was there to get a peek at Hope and Winter.  Even though it is small, the CMA offers an open view to watch Winter and Hope interact as long as you want.

We purchased a package for our family to meet Winter as a Christmas gift to the kids (maybe me too?)  Wanted to link it here in case anyone was interested in exactly what we did--- (details here).  The kids got more excited about meeting Winter the closer we got to Spring Break.  And when we actually met her it was SO VERY AWESOME.

A few things to note:

1.  Only one person is allowed to touch Winter.  And by touch that means hold your hand out very straight with no movement.  (NOT a petting motion, more of a "training" motion of holding your hand flat).  Winter will swim up to you and put her nose to the hand for the photo.   They are VERY specific on hand motions and every movement means something with dolphin training.  So the thought of several people moving their hands in front of Winter to touch her is CRAZINESS to the dolphin trainer.

When I booked this experience I thought it would be no big deal to talk them into having both kids be able to touch Winter, because who could chose one person?  But that is NOT the case... they are very strict on this rule.  So be prepared to decide how to deal with this beforehand (or be prepared to purchase a few separate excursions to meet Winter!).

When the dolphin trainers brought this up right before we met Winter, my sweet Jonah looked at Todd and I and said "I want Jordan to pet Winter because this really means a lot to her".

And then my heart exploded into a million pieces.

He got this shaved ice as a reward afterwards.  Which really doesn't compare to touching Winter but we were so proud of his selfless act of love.  My mom later told him that his choice "was something Jesus would have done" and it made him BEAM.  which made me beam.  i'm so proud of that boy.

2.  You need to take off everything by your clothes to meet Winter.    So you think I might be trying to be funny here but NO... anything that can come off your body (and possibly fall in the water) must be removed (aside from your clothes of course, and items such as hearing aids.).  Hats, jewelry (yes wedding rings), hair bands, earrings, sunglasses, necklaces, fitbits, phones, flip flops, chapstick, wallets, phones, purses, coins, watches, anything in your pockets.... take it off.  anything but your basic clothes needs to GO.  PS there are nice CMA employees that will hold all your belongings and take your phone and camera to snap photos of your meeting with Winter:)

3.  Prepare to bawl when you meet Winter.   So I am not really an animal person.  But there is something about meeting an animal that has been through a lot of difficult circumstances that is totally special.  I loved the movie about Winter and they did an amazing job connecting the audience with her.  One thing that stuck out to me when we met her was how she TOTALLY MADE EYE CONTACT WITH US as she swam up to Jordan.  At first she couldn't see Jordan's hand so she turned and looked directly at us to find where she was supposed to be.   I remember that same eye contact displayed in the movie in several different shots (this was something i only remembered it when she looked at us).  I got SO choked up at that moment.    Total. Sap.

Our official picture with Winter:

4. Don't forget other opportunites and encounters at CMA.    Like Rufus!   Both kids had tickets to Feed Rufus, the actual Pelican in the Dolphin Tale Movie.   "Rufus" was actually played by two pelicans Lucy and Ricky (one pelican was better with people, one was better at running and chasing, so they say).  The kids loved it and said the fish were slimy :)

There are many other encounters that you can experience at Clearwater Marine Aquarium-- other dolphin encounters, shark encounters, being a dolphin trainer for a day, behind the scenes tours.  You can see all these opportunities on this page.

(i think it's fair to note here that Han Solo and Yoda have been RELEASED!  look out you should be)

5.  Don't forget Dinner!   To cap off our Dolphin Tale day we had dinner at the Island Way Grill which is next door to the Aquarium.  In Dolphin Tale 2 this is where Sawyer had his Surprise going away party and where they got the call about Hope's rescue.

The food was excellent, but our waiter wasn't especially helpful with my gluten free needs (the restaurant is listed as gluten free friendly but he wasn't giving me many options.  and was telling me their potatoes and bacon were not GF- which was weird).    Anyway, we had a good time and a wonderful dinner.



And of course she needed her photo taken here with Winter and Hope :)   This girl LOVED her Dolphin Tale day!!

I would highly recommend the Clearwater Marine Aquarium if you are in the Clearwater area!