A Magical Evening

I'm really excited to tell you all about a special event!  The travel agency I work for, Key to the World Travel, has partnered up with Casey from DLR Prep School to host a private cocktail mixer at the Disneyland Resort!

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"Pearls in the Park" will be held in the Rose Garden at the Disneyland Hotel on April 29th, 2016 at 7:30 PM.  (You can read about all the details here.)

Tickets for the event are $45 each.  The night will be filled with music, food, a cash bar and many fun giveaways.  It's also the perfect time to visit the Disneyland Resort as the 60th anniversary Diamond Celebration is still going on!

Pearls in the Park is sure to be an awesome event!  It's the perfect chance to make new Disney friends!  You never know who you might end up meeting there!  °o°

Success!

As much of a disappointment as last weekend was, this weekend more than made up for it!  In the realm of home ownership, this weekend was definitely a success!

First things first, our kitchen sink is unclogged!  Eliot and I tackled that project earlier this morning.  Thankfully, it ended up being a lot less involved than I was expecting it to be.  My three hours of tireless efforts last weekend seemed like a joke today.  Within about five minutes, Eliot and I successfully unclogged the sink!  All it took was our two new plungers, a little elbow grease and teamwork!

We also teamed up Saturday to work on cleaning and organizing the living room, dining room and kitchen.  Eliot and I moved a bunch of stuff around.  Now, I'll be able to access the cupboards and the remaining kitchen items.  I put a bunch of our kitchen stuff in the cupboards when we were moving in just to get them out of the way.  Now that we're really getting settled into the house, it's time for everything to find it's permanent home.  Hopefully I'll get to that later this week, or next weekend!

I also did some rearranging in our master bedroom.  Eliot and I decided to move some of my clothing, shoes and accessories so we could prepare the front window area for another coat of paint.  Once he's finished painting that area, Eliot's going to put my new dresser together right there since that's where it's going anyways!

My office space is coming along.  After many months of deliberations, I think I finally know where I want to put all of my furniture anyways!  I've had the bookcases and my desks in place, but the rest of the furniture has been in limbo.  Eliot and I still have to put together my adjustable drawing desk.  I've decided to make a few other work surfaces for my projects.  Finally, l've decided to get a few IKEA glass display cases like Eliot has for his Vinylmations.  It's far from done, but I'm happy with the progress!

When I needed to sit down and take a break earlier today, I wanted to continue on my productive streak.  I got looking though my email account and I ended up deleting about 10,000 emails from my personal email account.  They add up so fast don't they?

Fortunately, this weekend wasn't all work and no play.  Saturday night, Eliot and I finally watched The Good Dinosaur.  It was a cute movie.  It kind of reminded me of The Lion King.  I wasn't thrilled with the ending, but then again, Disney Pixar movies always make me cry.  Why should this one be any different?

Tonight, Eliot and I went out to dinner at Chili's.  It was nice to finally go out for a late Valentine's Day and dating anniversary date night.  We got back in home just in time for me to catch Once Upon a Time!!!  (Which I will do after posting this blog entry!)

Finally, I ordered more ear hats from the Disney Store!  I have a lot of new designs I'm working on for Happily Ever Hatter and I don't want to use up my current stock on the new designs.  This was good timing since the Disney Store was running a sale for 30% off Disney Parks items all weekend.  You also got free shipping with any Disney parks item!  Plus, they were still running the buy two mini tsum sums, get one free offer.  So I caved and bought the rest of my Zootopia tsums.  Nine for the price of 6 wasn't bad!

All in all, Eliot and I had a good, very productive weekend.  I think we're set up nicely for the week to come!  Hopefully this week and next weekend will be just as much of a success as this weekend was!  °o°

Fun Find: Disneyland Paris St. Patrick's Day

It's time for another Fun Find Friday!!!  In honor of St. Patrick's Day next week, I found a few videos of some of the ways Disneyland Paris celebrates the holiday!

First, here's a video of the St. Patrick's Day Pre-Parade at Disneyland Paris.

Next, I found a video of Chip and Dale dancing with some Irish step dancers.

Of course, no Disney celebration is complete without fireworks!  This is the special St. Patrick's Day fireworks display at Disneyland Paris.  The video below has really nice video footage of the castle projections.  (This is from the 2015 celebration.)

I also found another view of the St. Patrick's Day fireworks from farther away.  You get a better view of the castle and fountains and the entire fireworks show.  The castle projections just aren't as clear in this video.  (This is from the 2013 celebration.)

I hope these videos get you in the St. Patrick's Day mood!  °o°

Weekend of Productivity

Well, it's been another busy week around here.  I hoped that I'd come back with some news about how productive we were last weekend.  But things didn't pan out.  Eliot was sick and slept most of the weekend.  (Thankfully he's feeling better now.)  And there's always this weekend to get some stuff done around the house...

As I mentioned the other day, Papa's birthday was last Friday.  It was a rough day, but I got through it.  Eliot stayed home from work since he was really sick Friday.  He literally slept in bed all day.  I finally got him out of bed long enough to get a few groceries with me.  We bought a chocolate cake in honor of Papa.  He really loved chocolate!

The rest of the weekend was a little frustrating.  I had high hopes; at least I was fairly productive.  I emptied a bunch of boxes of office stuff.  I've got my bookshelves in place with the shelves put in the right spots.  Most of my books and binders are on there now.  I also have space for my storage containers and even some display room!

I also went to work in our master bedroom.  Eliot got the bed together a few weeks ago, so I spent some time putting all of my pajamas in my drawers under the bed.  I also tackled my closet.  It's still a mess, but I organized it so now it's an organized mess!  Eliot's going to start working on putting my new dresser together, so hopefully he can do that this weekend!  I'd love to finally get all of my clothes were they belong!

Sunday, I spent about three hours fighting with our kitchen sink.  It's clogged up and nothing I tried worked.  We've since gone out and gotten a sink plunger... hopefully that works!  I guess we'll find out tonight or tomorrow!  If not, I'm resorting to the septic safe Drano I found at Walmart!  Ahh, the joys of home ownership!

Needless to say, we didn't watch The Good Dinosaur or go out to see Zootopia.  I'm really hoping that we'll be able to do both this weekend!  Fingers crossed!

However, I did get to watch Once Upon a Time last Sunday night.  I looked forward to it all weekend.  I'm so glad it's back from it's winter break!  I'm really excited to see the Hercules characters this half of the season!  Is it Sunday night yet?

Hopefully I'll get a lot done between now and Sunday night!  I've got a few projects for work I'm doing at home, but other than that, I'm hoping to accomplish a lot around the house!  It was in the 60's yesterday and spring is right around the corner!  I really want to get more of the inside stuff done before the nice weather arrives!  

Here's to a weekend of productivity!  °o°

International Women's Day

Happy International Women's Day!!!

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I've always found the Disney princesses to be inspiring.  From a young age, I've always wanted to be a princess.  Sure, I loved the ballgowns, princes and fairy tales, but the Disney princesses have always symbolized strong women to me.  I know some people argue that they aren't good role models, but for me, they were.

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Jasmine taught me that I wasn't a prize to be won.

Belle taught me that being different was ok, even if people thought you were weird.

Pocahontas taught me to be accepting and open-minded towards others.

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Now, a new generation is learning that love isn't always from a prince.  Anna and Elsa have taught them that true love can be from your sister, family and friends.  Rapunzel shows girls it's ok to have dreams and that they should always try to live up to them.

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I will always be a strong supporter of women supporting other women.  In today's world, it's way too easy to spread hate towards others from the safety found behind a computer or phone screen.  Women should be building other women up.  "Here's to strong women.  May we know them.  May we be them.  May we raise them." -Unknown

I've been blessed to be raised by some wonderful women.  Thank you to my mother, grandmothers, aunts, cousins, friends and to the all of the men who have taught me to value myself and other women.  And thank you to the Disney princesses for all of the lessons they're taught us through the years.

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"I hope to be as curious as Ariel, as self-sacrificing as Belle, as independent as Mulan, as open-minded as Pocahontas, as confident as Jasmine, as courageous as Rapunzel, as hardworking as Tiana, as loving as Snow White, as sophisticated as Aurora, and as patient as Cinderella." -Unknown  °o°

Marching Forward

Hi friends!  I hope you're enjoying your March so far!  Eliot and I have had another busy week both at home and work.  It's also been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster ride for me, but I think things will be settling down.

Last week was a rough one for me.  It was our family dog Lucky's birthday on February 23rd.  I still miss him terribly sometimes.  He was like another sibling to Jeremy and me.  The next day, the 24th, had been a year since my family gathered in the hospital around Papa and when all of us cousins said our goodbyes.  As you may recall from my post last year, we lost him on the 25th.  The week was emotional to say the least.

As you've probably figured out, I'm very talkative.  I'm usually only quiet when I'm truly upset.  I didn't feel much like talking about it, or reliving it through a blog post.  But I muddled through it like the rest of the family.  Having it be a year later doesn't change anything, but at least we've made it through all of "the firsts" without Papa.  Now, it's about marching forward and living life to the fullest.  Like he'd want us to.

And the week wasn't a total loss.  One of the days when I wasn't feeling too great, I decided to watch Hercules on Netflix.  I love that movie and I thought it was the perfect selection to prepare for Once Upon a Time's trip to the Underworld this spring.  Eliot and I also had a productive weekend getting things done around the house!

Eliot's and my eight year dating anniversary was Sunday the 28th.  We didn't do anything fancy for it.  We'd thought about going out to dinner, but we were getting so much done at the house that time kind of slipped by us.  We're still planning to go out sometime to celebrate though!  We still have our gift card to Chili's from my parents!

Of course, Monday was Leap Day.  I had an awesome day and I got a ton of stuff done.  I was happy to work on a few projects that I've been putting off.  (I haven't worked on one of them since last August!)  I created some new ear hat design ideas for Happily Ever Hatter.  I'm really excited to start working on them!

Photo Source: Disney Store

Tuesday, March 1st brought another Tsum Tsum Tuesday.  This month's first release was Tangled!  I was also thrilled to see the Pirates of the Caribbean set from the Disney theme parks online!  Eliot already bought me the New York City Mickey and Minnie, but I was excited to see those for people who weren't able to get them yet.

Eliot and I been trying to watch our new The Good Dinosaur movie all week but we've been too busy!  Eliot's work had a video taping yesterday.  Monday night he didn't leave work until 9pm and Tuesday he left at 10:35, and that was only after I called him to tell him I was going to bed soon.  Thankfully, the taping went well and he came home at a half decent time tonight!  Maybe we'll finally watch it this weekend.

Photo Source: IMDB

Speaking of movies, we'd really like to go see Zootopia!  Originally I was hoping we'd be able to go tomorrow but I have a funny feeling that Eliot is going to crash when he gets home from work tomorrow night.  At this point, we'll probably have to go over the weekend!  I'm going to find something to keep myself busy though.  Tomorrow is Papa's birthday and I'm expecting it to be an emotional day.  However, instead of being sad like I was last week, I'm really going to do my best to keep marching forward.  °o°

March 2016 Calendar

Hello March!  I'm very happy to see you because it means we're one step closer to spring!  Usually, March is a pretty dreary month around here, but I'm going to use it to my advantage.  Eliot and I are making progress with the house and this is the perfect opportunity to get more done before the really nice weather is here!  Of course, it also means it's time for my free Mickey and Minnie Mouse Printable Calendars!

This year, I've also made a blank version (without the holidays) to make them more versatile.  My calendars have been used for many things over the past few years including: Disney trip countdowns, teachers' Disney themed classrooms, training calendars for runDisney events and to surprise kids with a Disney vacation!

Here's the link to download the March 2016 PDF version of the printable.

Here's the link to download the Blank March 2016 PDF version of the printable.

Feel free to link this post up to Pinterest or Facebook so your friends and family can have a fun Mickey and Minnie calendar too!  Let's spread the Disney Magic!!!  °o°

Note: I've made calendars through 2016.  I don't post the PDF links on my blog until the beginning of each month.  If you're looking for a particular month and would like me to email it to you ahead of my post going live, you can send my blog an email at mydisneylifeblog[at]gmail.com.  I'll send you the PDFs directly as soon as I can!  :-)