A Little Bit of Disney Christmas

Another Christmas has come and gone, can you believe it? I can't. I feel like I just rung in 2012 last week and here I am about to ring in 2013. Well here's to another great year I say!

I do hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with your families. My Christmas Day was a very relaxing one. I stayed home and was a couch potato while my dear honey went to a friend's house to watch some basketball. We celebrated with our families on Christmas Eve. First we visited with his family and had one dinner, then we visited mine and had a 2nd dinner. You can say we ate well that night. My son made out like a bandit this Christmas. He is really loved. My parents surprised him with his own Apple I-Pod Touch and we surprised with a Nintendo 3DS. The child is in absolute video game heaven right now.

I wanted to share some pictures of the mother-son trip to Disney from two weekends ago. Christian and I had a blast just the two of us. The only sad memory I will have about this weekend is that while we were enjoying the most magical place on earth, the most horrific tragedy in CT was happening. :/ My heart still goes out to all those families.

Even though our trip was only for two days, it was just enough. Disney is so beautiful during the holidays. My son had no idea where we were going. I kept it a secret all the way up there. It was torturous for him, but as we got closer, he figured it out. We stayed at the Disney All-Star Sports Resort.

We had some cute surprises in our room. The Mickey towel as you can see above and these little guys. Cute huh? 

Here are some pictures of my son around the resort.

Look at this beautiful Christmas tree in the hotel lobby

Since we had some time to kill before heading to Magic Kingdom for the Christmas party event, we went and played a little Disney mini golf.

We got to the Magic Kingdom right on time. The event was from 7 - 12am, but they allow guests with the special ticket to enter at 4:00pm. The wonderful thing about this event (as well as the Halloween Party they do), is that they ask guests to leave who don't have the special event ticket. If you don't have the wrist band, you get escorted out, and that means SHORT LINES for the rides for the rest of us. That makes those tickets worth every penny in my book. 

Here's Main Street:

Of course, I had a plan of action when we got there. I just had to see the new Fantasyland. They worked on it for 2 years and I just had to see what it was about. It is awesome and they are still adding to it. They made a whole Beauty and Beast area complete with Beast's castle. There is a restaurant in it but you have to have reservations to get in it.

They also made a Little Mermaid area complete with Prince Eric's Castle. There is a new Little Mermaid ride inside which we got on super quick. It was fantastic.

Finally, they expanded Dumbo and I really mean expanded cause before they only had the classic Dumbo ride. Now they have two of those rides, along with three Big Top Tents and various circus type props everywhere for picture taking. I have to share this next picture cause I was in a little bit of shock when I saw this. Disney is testing a new method of "waiting" called Play and Wait. They give you a pager and let you into a play area for the kids to run around in while you wait your turn for the ride. When your turn is up, they page you and you return to the desk where they let you in the line to get on the ride. Here was the play area for Dumbo. I was dizzy by the time we were out cause I was constantly staring up and turning my head back and forth watching/looking for my son. There was another mother next to me who said: "Do you find this a little bit crazy?" I was like "O Yea".

All of the kids I saw were having a blast so I guess they approve of this new waiting method. 

Finally, my most favorite spectacle of the whole night.

We were at the park for 7 hours and I felt like we were there since 9 in the morning. We rode everything. Splash Mountain we did twice. My son was so proud of himself for getting the courage to ride that one. He just had to ride it again. Big Thunder Mountain was closed unfortunately. 

All in all, a fantastic evening. They gave out free hot chocolate and cookies, their fireworks show was mind blowing, the parade was gorgeous and their castle show was amazing. Plus they make it snow on Main Street. Truly magical especially when you live in Florida! 

The next day we went to Downtown Disney and enjoyed lunch at Christian's favorite restaurant, T-Rex Cafe. He just had to see the animated dinosaurs. We had some icecream at Ghirardelis and we went to the theatre to watch Rise of the Guardians. If you have kids/grandkids, you have to take them to see this movie. It is adorable. I did a little shopping afterwards, and then we headed home. A perfect weekend.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures. Disney at Christmas time is something you have to do at least once in your life. Trust me. I would have had more pictures except I left the memory stick to my camera at home in my computer. These pictures I took with my phone and unfortunately it doesn't have flash. So once night time hit, the pics were over.

I wish you all a Happy New Years and thank you for stopping by today.

**Hugs**

Jen

Merry Christmas to you All!

Sending Christmas Hugs and love to you all. Merry Christmas!
 
Jen :)

A Big Hello and a Small Happy Dance

The Personal Bits:

Wowser! I can't believe its been 2 months since my last post. The days just fly by so quickly it seems. One minute I was getting ready for Halloween, then it was Thanksgiving, now Christmas is here. It honestly hasn't hit me that Christmas is here. I haven't even dragged out my Christmas decor yet if you can believe it. It must be because we are having a warm winter down here in Miami so far. Kinda of hard to get in the holiday spirit when its not even cold outside. I'll admit I am a little jealous of you folks who have been getting snow already. You can send some snowflakes my way. I'll be glad to take some off your hands...er yards I mean. :D

Let's see, what's new? Well, this Thursday was when my little family and I were supposed to go to Disney. Plans changed unfortunately, but you know what, the saying is true...Everything happens for a reason. I had to cut the trip short because my honey's new job started later than anticipated and he didn't want to ask for the time off. On top of that, a co-worker of mine is out on family leave with an undetermined time of returning, so my work this month was increased. Well, I just had to get my Disney fix so I decided to change the trip plans a little bit. You see, my son thinks the trip was canceled all together, but little does he know that mommy is taking him to Magic Kingdom on Friday for the Mickey Christmas Party in the evening. How cool is that?! I would be in heaven if I were eight years old and got a surprise trip to Disney! It will just be me and him for two days in the land of the Mouse. It will be a mother/son trip that we both will never forget. I can't wait and on top of that we will be spending that one night in a resort. Something we normally don't do cause their resorts are expensive, but I snagged a room at a nice discount. Yay for being a Florida Resident!

The Crafty Bits

I have two projects to show you. The first is a Halloween bag I made for my son to use for his trick or treating. I wanted to do this for him last year but never got around to it.

This project was fun to do. I've never done felt crafts with beading before, so this was a new kind of crafty project for me. I really enjoyed it. It was a somewhat mindless project that I did in front of the TV in two evenings. The kit was a great price and cheaper than some Halloween bags I saw in the store. You can find the kit at Herschners.com here. They also have one of a Black cat too. The bag is a nice size and it holds plenty of candy.

Now for the Happy Dance part! I finally finished Page 1 of my Heaven and Earth Design cross-stitch project. I have about 20 more pages to go, but just finishing the first page feels like a huge accomplishment. These patterns are not for the impatient stitcher at all.

Progress as of September 16

Progress as of December 10

 

Now I am eager to continue onto the next page of this. The first page felt like forever because of the all the confetti stitches, but I have a new plan of action for stitching the rest of her.

That is all for today. Thank you friends for stopping by. I'll be back with some Paper Crafting projects in my next post. Please keep warm where ever you are and enjoy the holiday season.

**Hugs from Sunny Miami**

    Jen