Bring it To Disney

I am not a crafty person. I can do some simple ones and have been fairly successful at finding things the Girl Scouts like to do. As we have been planning our Disney trip, I've been doing some Pinterest stalking for planning ideas. I have seen a lot of "make your Disney trip more magical" and "how to save money at Disney." Most of which involve a lot of craftiness on the part of Mom (because, let's face it, most Dads probably aren't a. Stalking Pinterest or b. Trying to make a Disney vacation "more" magical). I'm not sure why *I* (or any parent) needs to make Disney, of all places, MORE magical. Perhaps the internet age has made us all more competitive. I just know my parents would have never dreamed of making ANY trip more magical. And our 2 trips to Disneyland (at ages 3 and 13) were about as magical as those trips got in the 70s and 80s (I do not have a lot of memories of either trip).

But knowing my girls and wanting to do a little bit more as I am having fun planning this trip, I let my crafty side out, a little.

The girls are very excited about meeting a lot of characters so I knew they would be interested in getting autographs and I'm not a fan of autograph books (or guest books for that matter) so I looked for other ways to do this so we can incorporate the signatures into our photos somewhat. I combined a couple of ideas.  *Get a cheap, plastic photo album. *Get some scrapbook paper & cut it to fit in the album. *Get some Disney style alphabet stickers (I got mine at Michael's). *I bought some small clipboards for the girls to keep their paper secure & to have a hard writing surface for the characters. I also bought some Disney character stickers for the girls to use to decorate their photo albums and clipboards.

I also knew I wanted at least one family photo where we are wearing matching t-shirts -- hopefully in front of Cinderella's castle. Etsy.com has a LOT of options that are fairly affordable and customizable. Now I probably could have done these on my own (or asked Rocky to), but paying someone else $5 was a small price and I think my time is worth more than that! 10 days until we leave. And 5 days left of work. I think we are all looking forward to our first family vacation, that doesn't involve visiting anyone.