A Little Magic at Home

I have seen many a cute way to keep the Disney magic going at home on Pinterest.  Just one problem, it's a little hard to do when you are planning a SURPRISE trip super far in advance.  Because of that our magic is being saved for the surprise announcement and the trip itself.  However, there is one place the magic lives on forever...in the boys bathroom.

When we moved into our house I let the big brother choose whatever theme he wanted for their bathroom.  We'd had a beachy theme in our old house because the bathroom was a hall/guest bath as well so I didn't want anything too kid-centric.  However, since this bathroom is upstairs and we have a half bath downstairs I put the beach themed items in the downstairs bath and he chose Mickey for their bathroom.  We bought some Mickey themed items at Target, but the bathroom seriously needed something more to jazz it up.

I had seen some super cute signs with reminders to "wash your hand" and "brush your teeth", etc.  However, even searching on Etsy I couldn't find any Mickey themed ones.  So I decided to make our own.  I don't own any fancy programs like Photoshop or anything so they are simple, but still came out super cute!

I started by spray painting some frames yellow.  Well, the Gunny helped with that one.  I bought black frames thinking if a  little black showed through it would look cool.  They required a few coats as a result, but they looked good when finished!

I then downloaded a free "Disney" style font called Waltograph to my computer.  I simply created three signs (because everything looks better in odd numbers, right?) in Word using the font.  I chose "wash your hands",  "flush the toilet" and "brush your teeth".

Then I cut out Mickey heads using my Silhouette Cameo in a fun red with white polka dots scrapbook paper.  I attached the Mickey heads to the bottom of the page after printing them up.  then I had to trim the 8 1/2x11 paper down to the 8x10 size of the frame.





Once the paper was fixed to the right size I simply placed them in my bright yellow frames and voila! 



After I had the frames ready to go the Gunny and I hung them up in the bathroom where they're easy for the brothers to see them, even if only one of them can read them right now!  I love that we added a quick pop of color to the room with very little effort.  I love that the whole project was about $15 even more!  (I probably could have found cheaper frames, but I was picky about the "hooks" on the back.)

When the big brother saw them he was so excited!  I told him I made them so I never had to nag him again.  He thought that was pretty cool, and a little funny, too!

Now we just need to paint the room!  Since we hate painting with a passion, this is probably a little ways off.   But for now, we've made one more room in our house look like we live there.  Bonus is that we're keeping the magic alive for our kids, without ruining the surprise!  How do you keep the magic going at home?

Disney Fund Update - July

What a fabulous month for the Disney fund!  We sure needed to make some progress and I'm happy to say we did!  Here are our deposits for this month:

$25 - Surveyhead
$30 - Opinion Outpost
$3.29 - Pam Rebate
$6 - Anheiser Busch Rebate
$6 - Pinecone Research
$1.70 - Ebates
$15 - Military Opinions
$57 - Yard Sale
$10 - Corona Rebate
$19.28 - Ebay Sales
$500 - Sold Bunk Bed

Total Deposit: $673.27
Total Savings: $851.70

There you have it folks!  I'm pretty stoked that we came so far this month.  It is and probably will be our biggest month thanks to selling the bunk bed, but we also won't have to shell out the cash for a new bed and bedding, etc in the upcoming months so I hope it continues to grow at a good rate.  I've been slacking on my surveys and such this past week with the 4th of July holiday so I need to get back into my routine so I can continue to add to our fund!  As such, I need a little less typing here and a little more survey clicking so next month's update is just as grand! 

Mail Call

This is exactly what was in my mail box the other day.  I love when everything in the mail makes or saves me money!  Samples, coupons and a $10 rebate for the Disney fund!  Woo hoo!  Wouldn't it be great if my mailbox were full of goodies like this every day!

Disney Details #4: Splurge

Sometimes I just can't help myself.  I am trying my best to save money and coupon my way to Disney.  But when you see these great OPI Minnie themed nailpolishes I just couldn't resist.

At least I only bought two colors.  Because there was at least one more I HAD to have, but resisted.  I think these will make for fun summer pedicures.  That I give myself to save money!

 I got these adorable colors at Ulta to spoil myself a little.  Maybe I'll do a fun Disney manicure before we go.  But for now I think this purchase might officially qualify me as a little obsessed with Disney.  A little being the key word!  Hey, at least I'll have cute toes!

Disney Details #3: Autograph Books

Getting his book ready!

This Disney DIY is still a work in progress, but so far I'm in love!  These autograph/scrapbooks are a true labor of love.  They are time consuming for someone like me who's a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to scrapbooking.  On our last trip to Disney we weren't sure how into the character autographs the big brother would be.  We bought him one of the standard books at the last minute when we ran into Buzz Lightyear, his favorite character EVER!  The book definitely did the trick, but thanks to Pinterest I wanted something bigger and better this year for him, and the fussbucket too. 

After pinning a million ideas my friend Jennie & I got together to work on our books and I started on the inside pages first because I had an idea and couldn't find any paper I liked at our local Michaels.  I really wish we had a nice scrapbooking store, but I guess it's not all the rage like it used to be.  Either way, we had fun working on them and I plan to continue to build pages over the next couple months, but wanted to share the general idea of what I'm doing. 

I always draw up a little design for my pages before I do them.  It helps me visualize what I'm doing, even though I always have to fiddle with things as I put it together.  I love how the covers turned out!  They are so fun!  I'll be adding some ribbon to the top, but wanted to wait till I was done with the inside pages so it's easier to turn them all.   Yes, they're a little sparkly, but it's all part of the magic, right!

The inside cover has a great fireworks and castle scene!  My plan is to put a family picture opposite it after the trip. 

The rest of the pages follow the same model of scrapbook page on the "top" and autograph page on the "bottom".  The boys will get an autograph on the bottom page for each character and we'll put a picture of them with the character on the top. 

I have quite the list of characters to do based on our character dining and those C got autographs for last time.  I figure then there will be blank pages for any who pop up that we get autographs for and we can do the decorating when we get back home. 

I did make the books almost exactly the same based on the papers I had on hand.  My main reason for this is that even though my kids are 10 years apart, there is still that sibling rivalry so I didn't want anyone to feel left out. 

Now the challenge is to finish these before our trip!  The autograph pages are relatively quick once I put my mind to it and find paper I like that matches the characters.  That's the catch 22!  I have one more week to work on them before C gets home, then they'll have to wait till he's back in school so we can keep the surprise element of the trip.  This is the one project I wish I'd gotten more done of, but a week is a week so we'll see what we can check off the list between now and then.  Either way, they'll get done and I'm positive that these will only increase the magic for my kids, not only for the trip, but for years to come!