So Much to Share!

December has been a wonderful month full of surprises and fun. Christmas was lovely. It was an interesting first year trying to have a Christmas tree up with two cats in the house. I had to keep ornaments and garland away from the bottom. Other decorations I didn't bother putting up cause I knew my kitten would go after them. I didn't do brunch at my house this year either. I had way more family in town this year, than past years and there was no way I could entertain them all in our little place. Maybe next year since we are planning to move in 2016.

This month we had our Christmas Disney trip. It was magnificent.

If you ever go, I highly recommend the Old Key West Resort. It was so peaceful and gorgeous.

And this kind of sort of happened that weekend too...

YES! I got engaged! It was a whole surprise that my family was totally in on. My dear boyfriend (now fiance) originally told me he couldn't go with us cause he had to work. Well he pulled a few strings and surprised me while we were in Hollywood Studios. I had a feeling he was up to something, but not this! It was a perfect early Christmas present in a place that is so magical to me.

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So after our fun weekend, it was back to reality and planning for Christmas. Like every year, I have the best intentions to finish gifts early before the big day, but stuff always comes up. I did manage to finish some gifts in time.

I made two more scarfs using perlescent, worsted weight yarn from Expression Fiber Arts. This yarn is so squishy soft, I bought too much! Again I had the best intentions on making more...

A scarf for my sister.

This red one I finished like 30 minutes before we needed to leave to my parents house on Christmas morning. My stepmom loved it.

I also found a cute tutorial by Shabby Fabrics for these cute box bags. You can find many helpful tutorials on You Tube by following their channel. These were a very last minute Christmas Eve...Evening project. They are meant to be a quick project, but it took me several hours of watching the You Tube video over and over before things started making sense. I think they turned out real cute and they took almost no material to make.

Well that is all I have to share today. Its been a great month and I can't wait to see what 2016 has in store for us. We don't have a wedding date set. We are going to focus on getting a new place in the beginning of the year first and then we will focus on wedding plans afterwards.

I wish you all a fabulous New Years. Be safe and we will chat again next year!

**Hugs and Love from Sunny Miami**

Jen

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

Disney Trips Photos and a Special Souvenir!

Yes! I have more than one post today. I actually have one more after this. I just love to keep you guys up to date on my crafting craziness.

Okay...honest answers, who is a Disney fan? **Raising Hand** I am! I absolutely love Disney. I am so lucky to live in Florida close to the Walt Disney World parks. It is a place so special to me, I will never grow tired of visiting. I still watch the classic cartoon movies too. They are so different from the modern movies and I think that is what makes them special.

I visited Disney twice about two weeks apart from each other just recently. We had to split these trips up for special reasons, but it worked out! First we went to the Magic Kingdom on October 28 for their special Halloween party. Wow O Wow....that is such a great event. They give loads of candy and since the tickets are limited for this event, the park was way emptier than a normal day. What does that mean?? No LINES! Hallelujah! If anyone has gone on a normal day, you could be standing in a line for two hours to get on most of the rides. It is crazy. Their fireworks show was spectacular also.

Two weekends later, we went back to Epcot to attend their annual Food and Wine Festival. This was our first time and it was fantastic as well. We want to make this an annual trip if we can. They have 25 country stands with different foods and beers/wines to sample. It was all so delicious. Well, worth the second trip to Orlando.

Here are a few pics from both trips. I only got a few from the Halloween trip since my camera takes horrid night pictures. I got great pics of us in front of Cinderella's castle, but Disney photographers took that one. I can't upload it here.

My son and I for the Halloween trip.

Pics from the Epcot Food and Wine Trip:

Me, my son Christian and (Man Child) Brian :)

At least Stitch understands how I feel standing next to my boyfriend. Brian is 6'6". I'm 5'4".

Brian, Christian and our good friend, Romney on the left. He proudly admits to being a Disney fan.

Moving along to my special souvenir. :) On the first trip, we went to the Downtown Disney MarketPlace. There is a store called the Art of Disney. Beautiful framed lithographs and paintings of everything Disney. It is there I found this!

Oh yea! It is an authentic Art of Disney Cross-Stitch Design. You can only find these in Disney World. No store carries these. I saw this design all stitched up and framed in the store and I just had to have it. My boyfriend even wanted me to get it and make it for our home. So cool right?! It is Mickey Mouse painting a picture of Walt Disney. That is just priceless although the kit was pricey. This kit cost me $44.00. You read that right! Truthfully, it was cheaper than the others they had. Those were in the $70.00 range. I am so going to enjoy every stitch of this design. Walt Disney's face is actually an iron-on transfer. :O I'm a little scared of that part.

I hope you enjoyed my little rambling of Disney World. Here is an FYI from a Floridian...whatever you do...don't visit Disney in the Summer. The heat will kill you and the crowds will make you wild. The best time to go is in the Fall and Winter time. The weather is perfect.

Now off to write my 3rd post for the day. :)

Jen