Once upon a time, not so very long ago (ok the middle of January to be exact), we went on vacation for two weeks.  And did I mention that eight of those days were spent here?

I've always thought it would be fun to go on a Disney Cruise, but it's probably not something that we would have splurged on at this point, especially since Ollie was too small to enjoy most of it, BUT Larry's generous aunt offered to pay for half of the cruise, and how could be pass that up?  Larry's mom and her siblings sold their parents' house last year, and Aunt Sherie decided to spend her share of the money the way she knew her parents would have loved to, on a family trip. So this was no ordinary cruise, it was also a family reunion. And somehow, I have barely any pictures of other family members because we were busy chasing two little rascals around an enormous boat of fun. Rest assured it was a big group and they were fun to party with.

So if you've been curious about Disney Cruises, here's a glimpse.  It's a party from the moment that you get on the boat.  As you step onto the boat they announce your name over a speaker and a crowd of employees cheer for you (which felt a little weird to me, but Creed thought was amazing)

 Then as the boat sets sail, there's a big party with all the Disney characters dancing their hearts out.

 Creed did not hesitate to dance his heart out on stage too.

 And who wouldn't be ready to party taking off on a tropical cruise with this guy?

 We've been on a few cruises, but as you might expect, Disney is by far the family friendliest.  There were so many extras that I didn't expect, and mealtime was when I was most impressed.  Getting spoiled by the food is always fun on a cruise, but Disney goes way beyond that.  There are three different dining rooms that you rotate through for dinner on different nights, but you always have the same servers.  This particular dining room is called the animators palette and everything is black and white when you walk in, but throughout the meal the walls start lighting up and being filled in with color and the portraits begin to change and by the end of dinner Mickey Mouse makes an appearance and the room goes wild while he does his magic.

 We have a few allergies, nothing major, but the cousin in this picture with Creed is extremely allergic to dairy, the first night the staff went through the menu and figured out what he could eat, and at the end of the meal, they asked what he would like for his next meal.  They didn't give him a limited menu to choose from, they asked his mom what she would like them to make for him and it could be anything he wanted.  I was impressed that they made whatever he wanted for the rest of the cruise.

They also knew all of our drink orders and had them ready and waiting at the table every night and the kids' were each labeled

 And they even poured the catsup in a Mickey shape

 Creed loved our server Mary Ann so much that he raced back into the dining room after dinner one night to ask her if she would go on a date with him.  She said yes.  He told her he would take her to a movie in one of the ship's theaters.  I thought it was hilarious that he had it all thought out.

Everyone gets one special character breakfast when each character comes to your table to visit and take pictures and your servers make silly napkin hats to entertain you while you are waiting.

Creed was especially nervous to meet Minnie and gave her a big kiss on the nose.

All throughout the cruise characters were stationed around the ship at certain times and you could line up to meet them, but since we met a lot of them at breakfast, my kids were content to skip most of the lines. We also ran into a lot of characters just walking around the ship.

There were the usually towel animals waiting in our rooms each night, which thrilled the kids, and made heading back to the room to sleep a little easier.

The activities and entertainment were pretty amazing. There are a few kids clubs where you can check your kids in to play while supervised by the staff and they were so fun that Creed begged to go, which gave us some time to focus on just Ollie, who was not old enough to go (you have to be three).  There were great family activities every day.  I think one of Creed's favorites was story time with Belle.

It was pretty adorable.

Afterwards Creed mentioned that he was a little disappointed that Belle wasn't wearing her big yellow ball gown, but look what happened the very next day! A dream come true.

There are a few big theaters on the ship and you could always catch a Disney movie that was still in theaters.  We didn't have time for many, but we did catch a showing of the Muppets and Beauty and the Beast 3-D (which showed on the ship before it showed anywhere else in the world).  They had great entertainment (Creed was particularly enchanted by a ventriloquist from America's Got Talent), and every night they had two showings of a big broadway quality production designed just for the ship like Toy Story the Musical.  The shows were just 45 minutes which was the perfect length.

One night they had a big pirate party on deck that ended with an appearance of Captain Hook and his Crew and a fireworks show.

The last day on the ship the kids' club performed and Creed was pretty excited by his debut on the big stage (but he was even more excited by the free yellow t-shirt).

His favorite place on the ship was the pool.

There were three pools on our ship: one just for adults in need of a little peace, a middle one for the whole family where they showed a lot of dive-in movies, and one shallow pool shaped like Mickey Mouse.  Creed loved the Mickey pool and so did we because it was easy to watch him from the edge without fear of him drowning.  Poor Ollie was also not allowed in the pools because no swim diapers are allowed.  They did have a small splash pad for babies, but it was cold and all the babies were purple and shivering after a few minutes. This is the only cruise ship that I've been on that has bathtubs in your personal bathroom so we did let him "swim" in there.

Overall, I'd say the ship is lacking in entertainment for little ones like Ollie, but Creed was the perfect age to enjoy everything.  He still believes in the characters and everything on the ship was magical to him.  He's already begging to go back.  More to share soon!

I forgot to share

My valentines for the Valentine Exchange. Let's be honest, I was low on ideas so they weren't anything brilliant but I think cute packaging made all the difference.

I started off with some cookie dough that I made and froze ahead of time.  I wrapped each little batch in a big square of freezer paper and sealed it with a heart sticker.

 I just happened to have everything on hand from past projects, except for the large, red pillow boxes that I picked up at xpedx.  Ten frozen cookies about the size of a walnuts fit in the box perfectly.

 I slipped baking instructions into the little chevron bags and they were good to go.

I knew everyone would be getting lots of sweets at the party so this way, they would have a treat for later.

Are you sick of hearing me talk about Valentine's Day?

Because I still wanted to share a few pictures from the valentine exchange. Thanks to Melinda, there's even a picture of me :)

 So I like to go all festive and decorate for the holidays, especially if I'm having a party (I am my mother's daughter after all), but I barely have anything for Valentine's day (because it's not really a holiday anyone decorates for, right?). I'd much rather invest the money in renovations then temporary decorations so decorating for the holidays in this house has been all about big impact on the cheap.  As luck would have it, the garlands of paper doilies and bakers twine that I used last year, fit perfectly across our new living room. And my mom brought over pillows and some pictures from her house to spruce things up(I didn't even ask, she's just that kind of party planner).

 And I washed down the big canvas chalkboard that I have hanging in my living room from Christmas (I still need to tell you about that because I love it) and drew something Valentiney.

Sidenote-Creed's friend Lydia saw this and said, "I thought that guy with the arrows was supposed to be naked." And Creed was shocked and said that she shouldn't talk about naked people and said it would be gross if he was naked.  Haha!

 More old doilies and a little garland from my sister on the fireplace

 I had "All you need is love" hanging down my hallway last year so I put it on our entryway in a big old frame I snagged from my grandma's trash years ago.

 And then, as it turned out, I had several cheap paper garlands and doilies from the past left over and just as the party started, a few friends helped me cover a wall in the kitchen with them.

 The perfect backdrop for cute pictures of friends!

 Add bunches of sugar cookies and frosting (I always let guests frost their own because frosting sugar cookies takes ten million years and then where do you put them all?)

 And sprinkles and candy to decorate the cookies (and some fruit because not everyone eats cookies)

 Add pink sodas and milk of course because what else would you drink with billions of cookies

 And you have yourself a party that's pretty easy to put together.  And your husband may even sneak in to steal food and see you're awesome friends.

 And your friends will go home with baskets of goodies (and tons of cookies because if you're like me, you will make way too many cookies!)

PS- sorry friends who are not pictured. Can you believe I did not remember to pull out my camera until the party was over? How did that happen?

Speaking of Valentine's Day

Every year, I look forward to holding a Valentine's exchange with a few of my friends.  This year I questioned holding it because there's so much other work to do around here, but I love this special time with my friends and decided that it could not be skipped.

In the past, I've had an exact head count and told guests to make a Valentine to exchange with each person attending.  This year I simplified things and told each guest to bring 12 valentines.  That way people weren't stuck making 20 valentines, but I missed having a chance to chat with each and every guest and seeing what each of them made (we exchange Valentines speed dating style and have two minutes with each person).  I wish I could share them all with you, but most of the photos that I took were a blurry mess so here's what I could salvage along with a few photos snagged from friends' blogs.

Susan brought along some of her homemade tattoos (I was secretly hoping she would!)

 Melissa made some bobby-pins and brought along some sweet treats.

Lisa brought some of her stoop waffles and they were amazing as always.

 Karisa handed out pencils engraved with "when this you see, think of me"

 Wendy had cinnamon pancake mix with frosting.

 Holly brought some of her homemade chocolate, (which I did not share with my family because they were too good)

 Melissa W. made little rosebud earrings that she packaged in little flowerpots.

 Nicole made candy mustaches on a stick for everyone, but she made a special set for Creed with a princess, castle, and carriage.

Kristin from Sycamore Street Press brought a card she designed

And that's apparently all I will post because Blogger doesn't seem to want me to upload any more pictures. I'll try to post what I gave out soon and maybe I'll even make it to other party details or that two week vacation that we went on . . .

I'm feeling pretty fab

Do you shop at Fab.com? It seems there's something to tempt me every single day.  Today, I was pleasantly surprised to open my email so see some products from Sycamore Street Press (Eva mentioned the sale was coming up, but I forgot about it)

Happy shopping!  The sale lasts until Tuesday morning at 11AM E.T. Let me know if you need an invite or you can find one on the Sycamore Street Press blog.

Creed's Valentines

Creed's Valentines turned out so well this year, but I was in such a rush to get to his class on time that I only have a few hastily shot photos. They are so bad that I am seriously tempted to re-do the whole thing, but let's be honest, I'm two months behind in blogging so that will probably never happen so here they are in all their messy glory :)

Every since Creed spotted some heart-shaped balloons last year, he has been enamored with the idea of handing out heart-shaped balloons as his valentines, totally impractical for a thousand reasons, but I decided to make it work. So one day last week we stepped out on the porch and took a few pictures of him jumping with his arm in the air.

 I was inspired this valentine (Created by one of Larry's ex-girlfriends, Alissa, who I actually think of as one of my blogging friends.  Is that weird?) and thought we could do something similar only stick the balloon string through the card to make it look like Creed was holding on to the balloon and floating away.

I just cut little slits with an exacto and slid the balloon string through them

 I tied a heart-shaped sucker to the bottom of the string so no balloons would float away, but it actually wasn't necessary, the card was enough to weigh it down. If you use 4" x 6" photo paper and balloons like this, you could probably just tie a knot to keep the string from sliding through, but we didn't want to disappoint any preschoolers and we went with the suckers on the bottom just in case.

You should have seen how excited the preschoolers were.  A note of advice if you plan to try something similar, the balloons got really tangled up with our windy weather so next time I would bring a bundle of balloons to your final destination a little early and then add the cards or treats on the spot.  Luckily, we ended up getting them untangled in time with help from another parent.

VAlentine's Day may be the cutest holiday around!

I couldn't resist instagraming a few photos of the boys hard at work on their valentines

 Creed goes to preschool two days a week and two days a week we do a neighborhood preschool taught by the moms of the group so he'll know a few kids when he starts kindergarten next year.  Last minute the neighborhood preschool decided to do a valentine exchange so thank goodness I saw this free printable on Lily Jane Stationery and was able to throw these together the morning of. Their are only seven kids in teh group so it was nice to be able to do something a little special.

 Preschool handwriting is the sweetest!

 I happened to have bakers twine, craft paper, and red spoons on hand so we just picked up the tiny boxes of cereal and wrapped them up.

So simple and the kids all loved them.

So when you happen to be a stationery designer, there's a little pressure to come up with a good Christmas card because it feels a little like you're sending a business card to all of your friends (or maybe that's just in my head), but you've spent all year designing stationery so at times it can be hard to come up with something new.  Luckily, this year I had an new idea in my head that was original and easy to execute.

Step 1: Take a cute family picture.  Easier said than done.  We decided to forgo the professional shoot knowing Ollie would never cooperate. Instead, we woke up to snow one morning and quickly bundled up and snapped a few shots in the first snow of the year. Simple and cute.  I opted to add some simple text in Photoshop, but it would have been just as cute without it.

Step 2: Shove the picture in a paper CD sleeve and add some fake snow to make snowglobe to mail to all of your friends and family (or don't get around to mailing some of the most important ones like your dear friends the Hudsons, who will get theirs in February)

 Honestly, the execution as a little bit sloppy (dang you busy Costco photo people who printed this so dark when I didn't have time to reprint it), but I still loved how it turned out.  I used to extra space on the photo to print the snowglobe base and the wrap-around label, which also printed such a weird color, but oh well.

 I tried the fake snow you can buy at craft stores and cutting up my own snow from cardstock, and we liked them both equally so we went with the easier method and added about a teaspoon of fake snow to each envelope.

They were so fun to shake, and easy to slip into normal envelopes and mail out.  The back of the wrap-around label said, "Good tidings we bring to you and your kin."

I know I go a little overboard with Christmas cards so I almost skipped them this year, but these were so easy to put together. I think it's always worth the effort to let your family and friends know that you are thinking of them.