Category Archives: Life

My Extended Weekend: Very Little Sleep and a Movie

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This past week has been pretty stressful. My husband was on call in addition to his regular work schedule. So we weren’t really able to go out, and there was the possibility he would have to go in at any minute. He luckily wasn’t called in at all during the week, but he was called in non stop the entire weekend. Middle of the night, early in the morning, seriously non stop. We were all on edge, and lacking sleep. I already wasn’t feeling like myself lately, so this just added to it…

One good thing that came out of it all was since he worked so much during the weekend, he was able to take off yesterday. We used the day to actually do some fun stuff! We went out to eat, did a teeny bit of thrifting (I found a Disneyland cookie jar and CT found loads of books), some “window shopping” and we saw a movie!! Everything was nice, but that movie was great!!

We don’t really have a way of going to the movies often, timing is just never right. If we want to go, it has to be a kids movie that all three of us want to see. It pretty much has to be cartoon and can’t be scary. We learned our lesson about scary when we saw Brave, I still haven’t seen the second half (though I did buy the dvd this past week, so I’ll know what happens soon) Anyway, we decided to check out Wreck it Ralph.

CT has been asking to go see this movie for months now! It’s been hard explaining that movies come out at different times, sometimes in theaters, sometimes on DVD. She’s starting to catch on. We didn’t tell her we were seeing Wreck it Ralph until we bought the tickets, just in case. She was excited once we got in. We all were, ha. Truthfully we’ve all been looking forward to seeing this movie, and I’m so glad we did.

It was seriously one of the best Disney movies I’ve seen in a long time. The characters were all done so well, and the story kept your attention the entire time. They were able to make you feel something for the bad guy, the main character Ralph. You wanted him to be the hero! CT loved Venelope the best, of course. She was adorable!! I won’t get into the full story line here, because I really feel that anyone reading this should see this movie! It has a nice retro feel, it has loads of video game references from different decades, it has a little love story and a hero’s quest! Perfect! I loved it so much I MAY try and convince the family to go see it again. Maybe when it’s at the $2 theatre.

Now it’s Tuesday and my week is about to get crazy. We are headed to my uncles for thanksgiving on Thursday, and I said I’d make a pie and some macarons. Then we are hosting our own Thanksgiving for my husband’s side of the family on Saturday, which involves a lot of cleaning, prepping, baby proofing and baking too. I’m also hoping to get some antique shopping in on Friday during a huge sale at one of our favorite shops. It will be my only plan for Black Friday. Hopefully.

I hope everyone else is having a calmer week than me, and a great time with family!!

(the above two photos were courtesy of disney.com)

 

My Weekend: Crafty Bastards Recap

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This weekend was pretty awesome! I was exhausted, but was happy to be out and about.

Saturday was Crafty Bastards. It is an Arts and Crafts Fair held in Washington DC. It’s pretty close to home and is almost always super busy, which is why I love the show so much.

Normally my husband or sister would help me at the show, but this year that just wasn’t in the cards. Instead, luckily, my friend Molly was able to help me! No offense to my husband or sister, but Molly was the absolute best helper I’ve ever had! Thank you! It made the show a bit calmer for me to have her there. Though the start of the show was of course hectic. I’m apparently not that great at giving directions (especially when im distracted by talking), so we missed a few exits and arrived late for set up. By the time we were done getting ready, shoppers were walking around, so the only picture I was able to get of my booth was the above one (it was my view of the booth all day). There were so many people I just couldn’t get a picture in any other direction. I need to get better with documenting things again. The show was great. It was in a new location, so I was a bit worried at first, but once the aisles filled up I felt fine. I sold a bunch of my new pieces, and I was able to see which pieces people liked more than others. That’s always useful. I was also able to see a bunch of old friends from the area and from other shows.

I was so tired from the week leading up to the show that I didn’t get up and shop as much as I usually do. I only gave myself the last 20 minutes to shop, so I was pretty much speed shopping! Ha. I did get a few neat things…

Above you can see the few items I got…

- The set of prints are by Berkley Illustration. They have loads of prints and it was really hard narrowing it down to two. If I had had more time I may have even purchased more. I just thought the Cowboy T-Rex print would complement are eclectic style the best , and the Hedgehog print is actually for someone else.

- The light aqua colored coyote skull is by Skullery. It’s actually a hand cast plastic replica. I talked to the artist for a minute or two, and found out that it is made out of the same material as my jewelry. How cool is that?!? I love odd things like this, but I only like replicas or faux versions. I just can’t bring myself to bring a real skull in the house, so these are perfect! I want more!!

- The large plush mushroom is by My Paper Crane. Heidi’s booth was actually right next to mine, and I saw this mushroom the second we started setting up. I love pretty much all the stuff she makes, but I am always drawn to the larger pieces. Larger pieces can be displayed on couches or on the ground. Perfect for someone running out of shelf space, like me. This particular piece is on the couch since CT thinks it’s hers. I tried to buy her something at the show, but they were sold out of her size, so since she’s careful with things I let her have the mushroom… for now.

This was the smallest, and quickest, shopping spree I’ve ever done at a show. I did collect a bunch of business cards from booths I really liked. So I may still get a few more items.

Crafty Bastards really was great this year, I really enjoyed it and I hope to do it again next year!!

Oh and Sunday I started holiday shopping, with a quick stop at an antique mall. It wasn’t AS exciting as Saturday, but I did find some neat things. I’ll share them tomorrow!

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My Weekend: At Home

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We didn’t really do anything this weekend. I had loads of work to do in preparation for Crafty Bastards while also dealing with a cold and some bad news about a family member.

I was up way too early today and will probably be going to bed late tonight. I have a list a mile long and not enough hours to finish. My husband always says whatever I finish for a show is enough. I’ll try and keep that in mind while I work this week away!

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My Weekend: Pumpkins and Candy

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We were a little late getting around to doing pumpkins this year. We were all still getting over being sick from vacation. Saturday was our towns day for Trick or Treating, so we knew we had to get them done. No more procrastinating. The pumpkins were from our trip to the pumpkin patch last weekend. Originally we were going to cut three of the large ones and let CT paint her little one. But the light pink one that I picked out (and forgot to take a picture of) was just too pretty to cut into. So we ended up only cutting two of them, and CT still painted her, as you can see above! She loved the painting part, but hated the getting paint on her part. Ha!

Here is her finished pumpkin…

… and these were the ones we cut. Mine is on the left and JC’s is on the right! (above photo, their switched in the bottom photo)

CT couldn’t make up her mind about what she wanted to be, everyday was something new. Towards the end of last week I asked if she would like to be Alice again, and she freaked out and said YES! So that what she was. This time I had her hair down, with a little black ribbon as a headband. I also put her in tights since it’s a bit cooler here than Florida. She was really eager to get ready and loved that everywhere knew who she was!! (If you’re interested in the pattern to make your own Alice dress, check out my post about it)

I was originally going to go trick or treating as a mounted deer head mask thingy I found. But last minute decided to dress as a hip Mad Hatter. It was actually my husbands idea by the way. I already had the hat from a Disneyland trip years ago, plus most of my clothes are brightly colored. Also, lucky for me, I forgot to straighten and do all that fancy stuff to my hair, so it was a huge curly mess. Perfect. Next year I’ll wear my deer head, and maybe JC can be a plush hunter or something.

We live in a new construction neighborhood, and were early moving in. So last year there were hardly any house. This year there were loads (apparently it was a good year for the builders). Loads of houses meant loads of candy! CT’s bucket got heavy halfway through, and we had to help her carry it all. Last year I was able to explain to tell CT that candy was only for looking at, so I didn’t have a super hyper kid running around. This year she caught on and ATTACKED her bucket the second we got back to the house. I don’t think she went to bed until about midnight Saturday. It was worth it, she had so much fun and can’t wait for next year!!

On a side note… we took advantage of the fact that she was wide awake Saturday night, and took an impromptu trip to the grocery store to get a bunch of dry goods in preparation for Hurricane Sandy! It wasn’t crazy at all. Yep, I’m going to talk about that… we live in Maryland and are in the path of the storm. Were expected to get loads of rain, winds over 80mph (we get bad wind to start with here) and possibly some snow. The power will most likely be out by late tonight. Our power is finicky as it is. I have one more blog post scheduled for tomorrow, but after that if you don’t see anything here it’s because we don’t have power! I hope all my east coast friends out there are doing ok, and are safe in their homes!! I’m also hoping it’s not as bad as expected, because really, were not prepared for this!! We moved to the mountains expecting just to worry about rain and blizzards. Instead in the past two years we’ve had two tornados, an earthquake, a tropical storm and now a hurricane. What is going on?!?

Anyway, again, be safe everyone!! and Happy Halloween, just in case I can’t say it on Wednesday.

 

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Our Disney Vacation: Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party

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Our original plan was to do the Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party the second night we were there, just in case any of got sick or something else happened. Kinda get it over with before everyone was exhausted. Well, it rained that night, so we were able to switch our tickets over to the next party, which was the night before we left. So it was basically a party to celebrate the end of our vacation!

You may be asking what the difference is between the party and any other night at the Magic Kingdom? well, a lot! They have these events a few times a week starting in September and ending right after Halloween. It cost additional and tickets should be purchased before heading to Disney, and if you go on Halloween (like we did for our anniversary in 2008) you have to get those tickets months ahead of time. It’s a great time to have your entire family all dressed up in costume, because everyone else was! (CT was snow white, us parents ran out of time to make costumes)

They close the park to anyone who didn’t purchase the party tickets around 7pm, which is when they start all the fun stuff. The first thing they do is hand everyone trick or treat bags, this year they were paper bags with Wreck It Ralph and Frankenweenie on them. These are used for trick or treating all over the park! Sometimes its just a Disney employee handing out the candy, but other times its actual characters. Though this time I didn’t see actual characters doing it, maybe its just a Halloween day thing? Soon after all that they start the first of two special Halloween Parades…

We figured we’d just watch the second parade, since they’re exactly the same, and go ride some rides during since they’d be empty. But we got sucked in and had horrible spots, so sorry for the crappy photos. If there’s a next time, we’ll prepare better and wait it out in a good seat. The parade was all about the villains. The whole night was pretty much all about them. Everything was so neat looking and all the costumes were amazing. It really set the mood for the whole night.

After the parade we went to ride the teacups again. As you can see above, the teacups really were her favorite thing at the parks. When you ask her what the best things at Disney were, her first reply is the pool at the resort and her second thing was the teacups!

The Happy HalloWishes fireworks were amazing! Again, they were all Disney villain themed. During the fireworks show they would cast weird lights on the leftover smoke to make it all creepy looking, and they would also project images of different villains onto the castle. As you can see in the green colored photo above, one of them was Oogie Boogie from the Nightmare Before Christmas. There were many others, but I can’t remember them all. Wow, does Disney do fireworks right! They were basically all around, complete 360. As my husband says, what’s considered a grand finale for our local fireworks is just the beginning at Disney. It was all so pretty!

After the fireworks we went to go have dinner before the next parade started. CT had been up a little late every night we were at Disney, so we figured she’d be able to stay awake. We headed down to the beginning of the parade hoping to get a better seat. We had no such luck. Good thing for CT, her dad is tall and she was able to sit on his shoulder to watch some of the parade… She started to get drowsy halfway through and ended up falling asleep in her stroller. We figured we’d seen the parade before, so we would just slowly head out of the park. I took a bunch of pictures on the way out of course, always take advantage of the quiet and calm time you have when your child is asleep! (like me writing this blog post right now) We actually caught the parade at the entrance and ended up being trapped in the middle circle of main street! That’s where that photo on the right above came from. Luckily they let people through inbetween parade floats, so we were able to beat the rush to the bus. which was great, because carrying a passed out toddler, a stroller, backpacks, camera, etc on a crowded bus sucks!! (we know, we had to do it a few nights before)

As you can see, our little snow white was seriously exhausted. I know she had a great time though, because she has excitedly talked about it all nonstop since we got home!!

I’m really happy we were able to take her to Disney World, and even happier we could do the Halloween party. It’s one of my favorite things to do at Disney! It makes me wonder if the next time we go should it be for Halloween, or maybe mix it up and do the Mickeys Very Merry Christmas Party? Has anyone ever done both? If so, which was more fun for little ones?

Well, this is the last post I’ll be writing about our actual trip. If you’re interested in seeing all the photos from this our Disney vacation, just head on over to my Flickr page, I uploaded everything finally!!

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