2025 Disney Goals

It's 2025... what a great time to feel alive!!!  

Today I'm back with one of my favorite annual traditions... setting goals.  I'm not super into resolutions, but goals I can get behind.  Each year, I write a bunch down and set out to accomplish as many of them as I can.  It's usually a pretty tall order, but I enjoy having some direction when the new year begins.

This year, I've decided to switch things up a little since I last posted my goals on here back in 2022.  Back then, I was still putting most of my goals on one list... and since then, I've expanded my lists.  I now have a Disney goal list, as well as a personal list and a blog list.  I'm not going to share the personal list because it's personal, and the blog list is pretty boring.  But I've made my Disney list more concise with goals to make everyday a little more magical.  So let's dive in to the fun stuff!

Melissa's Disney Goals for 2025

1.) Design a Miniature Scene

2.) Hang Disney Artwork and Pictures in Upstairs Hallway

3.) Beverage Station/Bar Set Up
4.) Decorate the House for the Holidays
5.) Paint Disney Nails

6.) Make Disney Home Decor for the House

7.) Use My Disney Planner
8.) Make Decor for the Holidays
9.) Make Disney Accessories
10.) Watch All of the Classic Disney Animated Movies
11.) Have Disney Board Game Nights
12.) Wear More Disneybound/Themed Outfits

13.) Watch All of the Marvel Movies
14.) Put Together a Disney Puzzle
15.) Design an Imagineering Project
16.) Watch All of the Live Action Disney Movies (Classic Re-Makes)
17.) Paint Disney Art
18.) Decorate House with Disney Touches
19.) Launch New Business Ideas
20.) Make Donkey Costumes and/or Outfits

21.) Read Disney Books

22.) Watch All of the Pixar Animated Movies

23.) Customize Clothing with Embellishments

24.) Finish Bathrooms

25.) Watch All of the Star Wars Movies

I'm pretty excited about this list!  Most of them are creative goals, and I really need to get some personal creativity time back into my life.  Eliot and I love our businesses, but sometimes I feel more like a production line than a designer.  So I want to make time to make things for me... simply because I love making and creating things.

As you all know, I'm into home decor and interior design, so those are obviously some pretty big ones for me.  I'm also hoping to work on more costumes and fashion designs this year.  It's been a while since I've watched most of the animated Disney and Pixar movies.  I haven't seen Star Wars in a very long time... and I've never seen most of the Marvel movies.  (One of my personal goals was to get more steps in... so I figure I can crush that while watching some of these movies!)

I've decided that my 2025 Word of the Year is ABUNDANCE.  It suddenly came to me a few weeks ago, and I just felt very connected to it.  It feels like the past few years have been filled with an abundance of sadness, change and uncertainty.  So this year, I'm manifesting an abundance of wonderful things like joy, peace, productivity, money, creativity, happiness, and magic.

I'm really hoping that I can cross a good portion of these off this year... 

It's time to thrive... let's do this 2025. °o°

Photos taken from the Disney Store's website from items in their 2025 collection.

Happy New Year!!! ✨🥂🐭✨

Hello friends!  I wanted to wish you all a very happy new year.

I know that 2025 is only a few hours old... but I feel full of hope for this new beginning.  I've been feeling the winds of change lately... and I'm hoping and wishing that means wonderful things are heading my way.  May this next chapter be a beautiful one.

Cheers, Ears, & Happy New Year!!! ✨🥂🐭✨ °o°

There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, 2024 was a year of major adjustment for me.  I’ve experienced a lot of extreme highs and extreme lows this year.  But for the first time in forever… I feel good about the future and where I’m at right now.  The girl right here has returned to me, and this is what I want to take into the new year.

She’s happy, smiling, and a bright rainbow of sunshine.

I'll admit, she hasn't gotten the best treatment from me lately.  (And in reality, she hasn't gotten the best treatment from a lot of people through the years.)  She's put herself and a lot of her needs on the back-burner for far too long.  But she matters.  So going forward, my new motto is that "everything I do, I do it for you…" 

I do it for this girl, who lost most of her sparkle over the last two difficult years of her life.  The girl who thought she had everything… only to have the illusion ripped away from her.  The girl who at times felt like she’d lost absolutely everything… and she had, because she lost herself.  I do it for the girl who finally got her sparkle back when she was sprinkled with two weeks of magic and pixie dust.  I do it for the girl who left Maine a caterpillar and returned home from Florida a butterfly.

The biggest thing that I've learned this year is that you can't pump water from a dried up well.  I've been trying to pull from something that wasn't there... and this girl took the brunt of a lot of heat for it.  But still she tried to, and in the process, she learned better.

If I'm not nourishing myself and my own garden, I won't have the energy to tend to anyone else's garden.  And everyone is going to have to accept that.  I massively burnt myself out... so much so that I completely lost myself.  And now that my sparkle is back, I'm not going to let anyone or anything take it away from me.

Moving forward, this girl is who I want to be.  She's the most important person in my life.  She's the only person who will be with me from the day I was born until the day that I die.  She's the person who I do everything for... because she deserves it.  

May 2025 be her best year yet... filled with more happiness, smiles, and bright rainbows of sunshine.  Because "There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow, just a dream away!" °o°

2024 Goals and Year In Review- Transform & Emerge 🦋

It's been a while since I've done a year in review post.  (I think the last time was all the way back in 2021...😳)  Eliot and I were traveling to Walt Disney World for New Year's Eve of 2022 and I ran out of time.  And I just stopped blogging all together after my Dad died in August of 2023.  So now I'm back in what feels like uncharted territory.

After quite a few personal gut checks, I don't think I want to do a year in review like I have in the past.  In years before, I would share highlights of each month with you, linking back to previous blog posts.  There aren't many blog posts to link back to in 2024... and to be honest, I would rather forget a good portion of this year.

But something is calling me to write this post, and I believe that I've finally figured out why.  I think it's because I learned a lot and grew a lot as a person.  So here goes... 

I'm going to to be 100% transparent, I spent the majority of 2024 pretty much miserable and wallowing in my own puddle of feelings.  The emotions I've experienced vary from the highest of highs, to the lowest of lows.  It was a year of transition for me, as my family still had a lot of "firsts" to go through without my Dad.  We had more birthdays, anniversaries and other holidays to navigate.  For the most part, I'd like to think that I went through them with as much grace as I could muster.

I didn't share my 2024 goals or my words of the year at the beginning of 2024, but I still wrote some down.  I knew 2024 was going to be a year filled with a lot of change, so I chose TRANSFORM and EMERGE for my 2024 Words of the Year.  I've never chosen more than one word before, but I felt it was necessary this time.  All I could picture was a butterfly.  It starts out as one thing, and then transforms into something completely different.  It's still the same little caterpillar that formed it's chrysalis, but it emerges as a butterfly, new and beautiful in it's own way. 🦋  This was what I hoped for myself.

And I honestly didn't think I was going to get there.  I was running out of time... 2024 was rushing past me and the end of the year was sneaking up on me.

But Eliot's and my two week vacation, our trip to Walt Disney World, spending time in my favorite place, being surrounded in holiday magic and voyaging on the Disney Wish sparked something in me.  I left for that trip a caterpillar, somehow I unknowingly put myself into a magical Disney chrysalis, and I returned home a butterfly. 🦋

I actually feel like me again.  And it's been a long time since I've felt like myself.

The mental and emotional toll of the things I've experienced over the past two years would be a lot for anyone.  And it's just an unfortunate part of life that I've experienced all the things that I have... right about at the same time.  I know that there's still a lot of emotions and feelings left for me to navigate and process through.  And that won't change... emotions and feelings are a never-ending and ever-evolving process.  

But I feel like I've finally transformed and emerged into the new version of myself.  The version who has been through some pretty intense stuff the past two years, but is ready and more equipped to take care of herself moving forward. 💖

So I guess if there's any goals that I'm glad I accomplished this year, it was this one. °o°

Looking Back At My 30 Things to Do During My 30's List

Well, I wasn't sure if I'd ever get back to this list.  But something was calling me to come on here and bring some closure to it... so here I am.

I had originally planned to do this blog post as a six months to go check in.  But since that came and went back months ago when I wasn't actively blogging, we're just going to wrap this up and move forward.  So now as a newly 40 year old, I'm officially saying goodbye to my 30's and my 30 Things to Do During My 30's List.

For those of you who are new here, ten years ago I decided to make a list of thirty things that I wanted to do during my 30's.  I decided to make this list after discovering that a lot of people make 30 things to do before turning 30 lists.  I didn't do it before I turned 30, so I decided to make one for while I was in my thirties.  Then, I kicked off my 30th year with a Rapunzel and Tangled themed birthday party.  Instead of turning 30 with dread like most people do, I chose to look at it as the next big adventure.  

Photo Source: Disney

Over the past ten years, I've had to make some tweaks to the original list.  There was my first revised list when my priorities changed.  Then, I checked in again at the halfway point.  My last revision and update was two years ago when I reached the 3/4 mark. After the coronavirus pandemic, there were a few things that didn't make sense to keep on the list.  But I wasn't too worried about it... a lot can happen in 10 years!

Here's the list for those of you who haven't seen it:

30 Things To Do During My 30's (Updated List):

1. Visit Disneyland During the 60th Anniversary 
2. Buy Our First House 
3. Go On Our First Disney Cruise
4. Get a Puppy
5. Have Kids
6. Attend a D23 Expo Convention
7. Take My Parents to Disneyland for the 1st Time
8. Go to Disney for Dapper Day
9. Ride a Horse
10. Get My Photo Taken with Every Disney Princess
11. Go to 10 Different NHL Hockey Arenas to Watch the Sharks
12. Go on a Christmas Disney Cruise
13. Visit Walt Disney World During the 50th Anniversary
14. Ride in a Hot Air Balloon
15. Go to Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party
16. Get Our House Organized and Decorated
17. Read a Book in French
18. Finish 5 Disney Races of Any Distance
19. Go to Aulani
20. Visit the Walt Disney Family Museum
21. Swim with a Dolphin
22. Go on All of the Opening Day Attractions at Disneyland in One Day
23. Reach Gold Level in Disney Cruise Line Castaway Club
24. Study French for 365 Days Straight
25. Travel Somewhere New
26. Sew Myself a Dress
27. Learn 10 New Crafting Techniques or Mediums
28. Go to Magic Kingdom on 10/1/2023 for the 100 Years of Disney Celebration
29. Launch Other Business Ideas
30. Take Nice Photographs at Walt Disney World for Our 10th Anniversary

I was originally planning to do three blog posts with a recap of 10 goals on each one.  My idea was that I could go into more detail about accomplishing each of the goals I was able to.  But right now, I simply don't have that in me.  A lot of these you've already heard about on here anyways... and I'm not going to get into the things that I didn't accomplish.  There are various reasons we didn't check some of these off... and I've become a lot more of a private person than I used to be a decade ago.

So without further ado, here are the simplified results of my list.

30 Things To Do During My 30's (Updated List):

1. Visit Disneyland During the 60th Anniversary ✅ 
2. Buy Our First House ✅  
3. Go On Our First Disney Cruise ✅ 
4. Get a Puppy ❌
5. Have Kids ❌
6. Attend a D23 Expo Convention ✅ 
7. Take My Parents to Disneyland for the 1st Time ✅ 
8. Go to Disney for Dapper Day ✅ 
9. Ride a Horse ❌
10. Get My Photo Taken with Every Disney Princess ⚠️ (Work in Progress)
11. Go to 10 Different NHL Hockey Arenas to Watch the Sharks ⚠️ (WIP)
12. Go on a Christmas Disney Cruise ✅ 
13. Visit Walt Disney World During the 50th Anniversary ✅ 
14. Ride in a Hot Air Balloon ❌
15. Go to Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party ✅ 
16. Get Our House Organized and Decorated ❌
17. Read a Book in French ❌
18. Finish 5 Disney Races of Any Distance ✅ 
19. Go to Aulani ❌
20. Visit the Walt Disney Family Museum ✅ 
21. Swim with a Dolphin ❌
22. Go on All of the Opening Day Attractions at Disneyland in One Day ⚠️ (WIP)
23. Reach Gold Level in Disney Cruise Line Castaway Club ✅ 
24. Study French for 365 Days Straight ✅ 
25. Travel Somewhere New ✅ 
26. Sew Myself a Dress ❌
27. Learn 10 New Crafting Techniques or Mediums⚠️ (WIP)
28. Go to Magic Kingdom on 10/1/2023 for the 100 Years of Disney Celebration ❌
29. Launch Other Business Ideas ❌
30. Take Nice Photographs at Walt Disney World for Our 10th Anniversary ❌

I think I did pretty good.  Some of the things I didn't accomplish were out of my control, and some of them just weren't high priorities anymore.  A few of them were works in progress, with me completing most- but not getting the entire list completed.  I'm happy with what I did accomplish!  Plus I had a ton of cool experiences that I wasn't expecting to do that definitely made up for the things I didn't do in my 30's.  Here's that fun list! 🙂

Other Cool Things That I Did In My 30's

- I Saw the San Jose Sharks Live in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals in 2016 ✅ 

- I Saw Alan Menken in Concert (twice) at the 2017 D23 Expo ✅ 

- I Saw the Disney Princess Panel with the voices of Moana (Auli'i Cravalho), Tiana (Anika Noni Rose), Ariel (Jodi Benson) and Belle (Paige O'Hara) at the D23 Expo ✅ 

- Eliot and I Took a Photo with the Descendants Cast at the 2017 D23 Expo  ✅ 

- I Was in Disneyland For It's Actual 62nd Birthday Celebration (in 2017) ✅ 

- I Celebrated My 33rd Birthday in Walt Disney World (in 2017) ✅ 

- Happily Ever Hatter's Explosion of 3D Printed Mouse Ears Created An Entirely New Genre & It Allowed Me to Quit My Job, Be My Own Boss & Work at Home Full Time ✅ 

- I Attended the 2019 NHL All-Star Game in San Jose ✅ 

- Eliot and I Touched the Stanley Cup During All-Star Game in San Jose ✅ 

- I Saw a Few of the Disney on Broadway Concerts at the Festival of the Arts ✅ 

- I Went to Tons of Regular Season Games at the Shark Tank and on Road Trips ✅ 

- I Went to the Sharks Western Conference Final in 2019 ✅ 

- I Saw the Disney Princess Concert of Broadway stars... twice! ✅ 

- I Saw Two of My Favorite Childhood Bands That I'd Never Seen Live (Backstreet Boys in Bangor, ME in July 2022 and Hanson at the 2023 Food and Wine Festival) ✅ 

- Eliot and I Met a Bunch of San Jose Sharks and Sharks Legends ✅ 

- I Met Disney Imagineer Joe Rhodes at the 2022 D23 Expo ✅ 

- Daddy and I Saw the Entire Cast of Frozen Get Inducted as Disney Legends ✅ 

- I Celebrated the End of my 30's Aboard the Disney Wish! ✅ 

All in all, my 30's were pretty good.  They weren't really what I was expecting when I first set out to make this list.  But even with those jaded visions of things not coming to pass, they were still good overall.  (And losing my Dad in my 30's was definitely not on my Bingo card...)  Now I'm ready to put my 30's behind me, and look ahead to the future and what exciting new experiences and things my 40's will bring!

And that's a wrap on my 30 Things to Do During My 30's List! °o°

Santa’s Workshop Elves

I have a lot of mixed feelings about today.  It’s a day I look forward to… but it’s also a day I dread.  Every year, the US Postal Service holiday shipping deadline looms on my calendar, and “Hell Week” is usually crossed off in GIANT letters signifying that nothing else matters that week.

Leaving for a two week long vacation right before our busiest time of the year felt like a giant risk. 😳 But it was the greatest gift I could have given myself. 💕 Eliot and I left home with a clean slate, no orders and a prayer that we’d come back home and not get gobbled up alive by whatever the universe threw our way.  

And somehow we didn’t just survive, we thrived. “Hell Week” wasn’t hell.  Have we been busy since we returned from Florida, yes.  Have I probably been a tyrant about 3D printing, oh yes.  Have I checked my print list more than Santa checks his naughty & nice list… definitely yes. 🤣

Is today Monday, Wednesday… I have no idea.  (Apparently, it’s Tuesday, but if you ask me in any given moment, I’m sure you’ll get a different answer.)  I ate my breakfast today at 1:30 PM.  I don’t know what time of day it is, but the sun seems to be setting.  I haven’t gone to bed at a "normal time” in days… but for the first time in years, we’ve actually gotten sleep.  ("Team No Sleep" didn’t have to report for duty this year!) 🎉

Eliot dropped off a giant pile of mouse ears at the post office this morning.  And here I am on what should be the most stressful day of the year… calm. 🙂 

We have two more things we’re trying to get out tomorrow… on the actual USPS holiday shipping deadline.  I’m not in panic mode.  In fact, I don’t even think either of them are holiday gifts.  (The desk accessory was actually ordered this morning, and I’m already busy assembling it… just in case.  The other item is a pair of mouse ears scheduled to go out by January 7th.)  For the first time in forever, we’re not going to be scrambling to get things ready for the deadline.

Sometimes, the universe has a way of showing you that you are right where you’re meant to be.  That happened today when I went on Facebook for a few minutes to mindlessly scroll and decompress after getting all of our orders mailed out.  I saw a tiny image that somehow felt familiar, so I watched the story.  Pair Eyewear shared a customer photo, and it was Marcy who ordered these mouse ears from us a few years ago.  I usually don’t even watch their stories… but the universe wanted me to see it. ✨

I guess this is a long way to say that even though I have a lot of mixed feelings about the holiday shipping deadline, even though Eliot and I don’t get much sleep, even though our body clocks don’t exist, even when we get crazy messages from that one customer, even when my Christmas cards are always sent later than planned, even when it’s “Hell Week” and even when it sometimes feels like the endless hours of assembling things will never end… I know this is what I’m meant to be doing. 💕 

I’m so proud that making other people smile is my job.  It’s an honor that the universe chose us to be some of Santa’s workshop elves.  And while the load feels heavy this time of year, it’s so rewarding to make something that brings a little bit of magic to someone else's life! 💖 

It Was All Like a Dream... My Birthday Wish Come True. ✨

It's been about a week since Eliot and I got home and settled back into the "real world" after what was probably the most wonderful vacation I have ever taken. 💕 

We've had a lot of magical memories at Walt Disney World, down in Florida and out at sea on Disney Cruises... but nothing like the wonder that was those two weeks.  It was probably the longest vacation Eliot and I have ever taken, and this was definitely the longest trip that we've taken just the two of us.

And it couldn't have come at a better time.  Now that we're home, we're 100% focused on getting through holiday orders for both of our shops.  Then, we'll have the holiday season.  Before we know it, we'll be at New Years and another year will start.  So this break from our everyday lives was at the perfect time.

I still haven’t been able to process everything and how much I really needed this. 💖 

2024 has been a rough year for me, full of a lot of transitions and personal heartbreak.  I've had a lot of stuff to process, and I desperately needed some magic in my life.  It was like my soul was calling out to the only place it knew I could get filled back up.

And filled up it was.  It feels like the magic brought me back to life again. ✨

I'm not sure that I'll ever be able to put the feeling that I have into words.  But I am so thankful for our magical trip and for getting to spend two weeks with my favorite person at some of my favorite places in the entire world! ✨🏰🌳🎥🌐🛳🏝🐭✨

It was all just like a dream... my 40th birthday wish come true. °o°