pirate and princess party at walt disney world 2008

When we took our vacation in 2008 to our favorite place on earth, we were so excited that they were having a special after hours event. Mickey's Pirate and Princess Party. Was it worth the extra ticket price? Heck yeah. Was it worth staying up until well after midnight? Heck yeah. Would we do it again? You better believe it!!

The empty the park out of the regular visitors which are easy to identify since they don't have a special neon colored bracelet on. Of course there were a few who lingered but once the employees spotted them, they were escorted out.

I pulled out my pictures from this wonderful evening of total fun and started working on them. And then realized I had to finish up my end of the year gifts so the rest of the pictures are now waiting to be scrapped... but I am getting there!

Once again I have turned to my beloved PageMaps for inspiration on all of these layouts. I am truly a fan of these sketches as they can be used in so many different ways and they never look the same twice!

For the evening, I had purchased a princess Mickey ears hat. It even had the tulle on the back!! My family opted to be pirates. Kira was Captain Pluto and daddy was first mate even though he did try to be Captain a few times! The crown eyelets I have had forever. I purchased the Mickey pirate Jolee's just for these pages as well as the Captain hat and ship brads. The pattern paper is from a package of pirate goodies I purchased as Hobby Lobby. 

These pages include our tickets so we can look back and marvel at how much money we spent that night. Thank goodness Alex was free!! I had to change the title of the party since I couldn't very well cut apart the "party" part from the "pirate" part and still make me happy. The times flier as well as the map of the park that had where the "treasure" spots and the character spots were are in the pocket on the right hand page. I added the word stickers to make tabs for easy removal. The Mickey and Minnie on the first page was another flier. I had a couple of those so I put them on the page so that you could see both sides of it. I also had extra maps so that is what is on the front of the pocket.

Great pictures and even better memories!! Kira LOVES Abu. And he is one of those characters that they didn't have out so she was thrilled to see him. As the line was moving closer and closer to him, the character wrangler was letting people know that Genie and Abu would be leaving but that Princess Jasmine and Aladdin would be coming out. Kira was ready to get out of line and leave. Seriously, she is NOT a princess kind of girl (if you couldn't tell by her choice of attire that night) Thank goodness there was a little girl in front of us who only wanted to see Jasmine so her mom was letting people by so they could be in the front of the line when she appeared. Worked for us!! The 'flowers' on this are the Spellbinders Moroccan Motifs which I added a bit of stickles to make them happy.

The group picture was one taken by the Disney PhotoPass people and you could add the little graphic to the print. Works for me!!

Here is what my desk looked like as I started working on the next page. Hubby and kids got me the Cuttlebug Mickey Pirate ship die so that I could use it for these pages. (So sweet to encourage my hobby/ sanity saver) I had never even opened it and once I did, I wanted to put it back. Oh my word!! The number of pieces I had to cut and paste and work together! Holy smokes Batman! I have a much greater appreciation for all of you who do this type of thing free hand or even with the help of a Cricut. WOW!! You are truly special folks and I loves you for it! And happy I don't have many of this type of die. :)

And here is the completed ship on the layout! I think it came out pretty darn cute if I do say so myself (and I do) Plus it adds just enough to the layout since the pictures are stinking adorable!! That's my mom hanging with Kira. She didn't want her picture taken with me but wanted to be with Nana. Works for me. The flag on the bottom is also from that Cuttlebug die. I added some dimension to the flag by adding pieces of cardstock. Looks pretty nifty in person.

And here I am!! Of course I went all Princess colors for this page. So much fun and we were so tired!! The park was getting ready to close but we HAD to get these pictures. I'm glad we stayed for them. So fun.

I have more pictures that are needing to be loved. Hopefully soon I can finish up these teacher gifts. I'm getting there but somehow there always seems to be someone I have forgotten about. I think I have them all covered, but who knows.

school office end of the year gifts

My life as a PTA president would have been much rougher if not for the help of three ladies in the school office. They helped so much and I am eternally grateful to each and everyone of them. Besides a lifetime of servitude, I thought a nice little box of monogrammed cards would be a lovely gift to end the year. Plus I had such a great time making the cards for the PTA helpers... why not??

I found this tutorial for a card drawer on Splitcoaststampers dot com and thought it would be pretty fun to make. The best part, it was pretty simple as well! Always a good thing when I am making more than one of something.

I used my border punches on the pattern paper strips as well as the medallion flower. Then I dug into my bling container and added a little personality to the flowers. Love how the pearls look!

I used two sketches I dug out of my sketch binder for all the cards. Makes it easier on me to do that. I embossed the papers to give a little bit more to the cards and each has a monogram for the ladies they were created for. I used the Sizzlits Monkey Tails and Aphrodite for the letters. (I am not endorsing any of the sites that I am linking as I have not purchased from them and know nothing of their customer service, I wanted to show what the alphabets looked like)

Here are the boxes all packaged and ready to be delivered. I have a couple more weeks but very happy it is all done.

I have two teacher gifts and two girl scout leader gifts to get done as well. But I need a run to Michaels before I can do much with those. Can't wait to share the completed projects!

our friday

Friday was a busy one for the Foltz Family. Kira and Daddy went on the chorus/ band field trip. First they were able to compete in the Great East Festivals competition. Very happy to say that both the chorus and the band won the gold medals!! They are a great group of kids. Here is Kira with two of her good friends holding the award.

The second part of the field trip was to go to Canobie Lake Park to burn off the excess energy. The money for this trip was funded by a pancake breakfast that the kids all had to work at as well as a Dessert and Show they put on. Standing in the splash zone of one of the water rides is always a highlight. Last year it was too cold for Kira (60's) but this year was a tad better so she donned her bathing suit and got soaked. Here she is with the group of girls hubby got to chaperone. He said they were a great group and had a ton of fun.

After they got home from their field trip, we went to Build A Bear for their Friends Reunion. If you brought in one of your Build A Bears, they could get a check up, redressed with ribbons and a free t shirt. Alex took advantage of the bath and the new ribbons for his dog Mickey. Poor dog left with every single color of ribbon on his ears. And he is one healthy puppy.

Kira brought her beagle Benny and I brought my pig Oinky. We even got to take our picture with our friends. So much fun!!

After dinner at the Outback (total splurge on our part), we went to Toys R Us to get Alex the IronMan chest piece he wanted and daddy had promised. While we were there, he HAD to have the mask. It is a tad too big for him, but he looks so adorable in it we gave in. Here he is all set to be IronMan! So cute.

The rest of the weekend has been non eventful. We have done some organizing and cleaning out of things we have and haven't used in years. Pretty laid back but good. I think we can make it until the end of the school year now.

Hoping my next post will have some scrappy goodness in it to share. :)

mother's day 2012

Trying to catch up on posting some stuff and I did promise this a few days ago. Been a little slow lately. Yesterday I went without the ACE bandage on my ankle and today I don't think I should have. A bit sore this morning. Hoping to take it easy and get it back to normal... or as normal as I get!

Here's what the kiddos gave to me for mommy's day.

Aren't they just so sweet?? The big pig is soooo soft. The two little piglets are Kira and Alex. Both of which have been adopted by the kids but they did leave me the big piggie who is named Oinky. So cute. Yes they are all Build A Bears.

After breakfast we headed out to see the Avengers. Alex was really looking forward to it. Me and my kiddos as we head out.

At the movie theater with "Captain Thor Alex" He seems to be taking the best of all the heroes. He really wants the IronMan chest piece. We'll see about that.

Alex checking out the dessert menu at Bugaboo where we had dinner after the movie. He was really studying them.

Alex's moose picture. So sad they only give them two colors of crayons with which to color.

And here is Kira's 'evil' moose picture. She is so funny.

Overall it was a great Mommy's Day. Love my kiddos.

disney 2008 continues (photo heavy)

I went away a couple weeks back to a friends place in Maine. I spent the entire weekend surrounded by some amazingly talented women. We ate, we laughed, we slept a bit and ate some more. We each even managed to squeeze some scrapping into the weekend as well. I brought along my Walt Disney World 2008 trip to see if I could plug away at more of that trip... and I did. Nineteen pages later I returned home. I had to put titles on two of them and a journal spot on another which I finally was able to do this week.

Time to share. I used PageMaps for all of these great pages. Sometimes they look like the sketches... sometimes not so much. But that is where my inspiration comes from.

Kira hanging with a small collection of dalmatians at one of the stores at Downtown Disney. Happy little girl there.

They have this fun fountain at Downtown Disney and Kira LOVES standing in it. It was warm so she was enjoying cooling off a bit... but not too much. I used the papers since they looked like water shooting in the air and it matched her outfit as well! I used my big red Sizzix machine and lowercase fun serif alphabet for the title.

One of my little guy on this trip. Unfortunately, he was at the age that once he was released from the stroller, he would take off and laugh at you to try to catch him. Needless to say, we didn't let him out too much. This was one of those times he was testing his boundaries.

Donald Duck!! He was so good with Alex. Alex didn't cry or scream. Just covered his eyes. I added in the circle of brads around the best picture. So much fun!

My silly silly girl. Sometimes she cracks me up to no end.

Waiting for the electric parade and the fireworks.

The kids got some new toys while we waited for more fireworks on this night.

Random smile pictures from around the Magic Kingdom. I stamped SMILE across the top of the layout with my Mickey head alphabet stamps. Very happy I picked them up when they were on clearance!!

Alex thought this was a great show! It was air conditioned, he could get out of his stroller and his television friends were there! Good time.

A few pictures from my mom's favorite ride which turned out to be one of Kira's as well.

Here Kira is hanging out in one of the shops at Downtown Disney. She took the little Tigger and helped him climb the tree in the shop. I totally loved the decorations and took pictures of them.

Alex climbing a light pole at the Hollywood Studios. If Dave hadn't been holding him, I think he would have gotten farther. He was intent on getting to the top where a bird was sitting. He then took off chasing the birds on the ground.

We had lunch at the Rainforest Cafe at Downtown Disney when we first arrived on the Disney grounds. Good food and fun times.

There they are. Now to keep the pace up and I might finish this trip someday. LOL

may sketch challenge

Since I was cutting it very close to the deadline on the Christmas card challenge group, I didn't want to do that with the layout challenge group! And this layout totally inspired me. The hardest part was coming up with the pictures since I had a few different events to choose from.

Here is the sketch I had to work with. Pretty nifty and I can see me using it again!!

Here is my layout. A couple years ago for Alex's fourth birthday he received a toddler scooter. When we got home from Syracuse (where the party was) he insisted on trying out the scooter. It was a chilly kind of day so he didn't play for long but totally loved it.

I used some embellishments that have been hanging around forever. Felt good to use them too. I took the clear stickers and put them on white cardstock so that they wouldn't get lost on the red background. I added the black dots to the title letters so they would stand out against that plaid. Seemed like a good idea at the time... partway through... not so much! Added rub ons to the two pictures on the left.

Tomorrow I shall post some pictures from Mother's Day. I hear a storm coming in so I am getting away from the computer!! Catch you all later!

christmas card and tea time

Yes it is that time of the month again where I share a wonderful sketch and a completed Christmas card. I am so loving this group I am a part of and all the inspiration they send out via the internet. I am also very happy that I now have 25 Christmas cards already created and ready to head out to family and friends!! Such a wonderful feeling.

Here is this month's sketch. Doesn't it totally rock??

And here is my take on the sketch. I used a holiday stack I picked up at Michaels recently (as in last year recently) I also used two of my new to me Studio G stamps that I bought off of a scrapping friend. Isn't he the cutest?? I colored in his scarf to match the colors in the card. Trying to figure out why that green snowflake looks so out of place in the picture. It really is the same green as the rest of them.

On last Saturday, I had the pleasure of having a tea with my little lady at the towns rec center. Seriously.... they put on this amazing event with all the money raised going to the local hospital and their womens center so that any woman with or without insurance can go in and have a mammogram and a PAP smear. What a wonderful thing to do.

Kira picked out her own outfit and I was so happy to see this one on her as it is one of my all time favorites I bought for her. Daddy took pictures of us before we left. If you look closely, you'll not only see that she is almost as tall as me!! How the heck did that happen?? But my left ankle is quite large. Yup, I twisted it at the school on Thursday. At the same time I fell on my right knee and palms. I'm sure it was pretty graceful.... NOT!! I tried to disguise the ankle brace with a pair of leggings. I don't think it fooled anyone.

Anywho... the tea was so wonderful. They gave us a lesson on drinking tea and had a bunch of vendors for us to look at and shop at. Plus some raffles which I am happy to say we won!! We have a gift certificate to a local bookstore and a new bulletin board!!

After the tea, I took Kira shopping for some new summer clothes as hers are a tad bit on the short side. I don't think she should be running around in daisy dukes so she needed new shorts. There was a nice sale at Justice and we did pretty well. The best part?? The most amazing time with my girl. We had so much fun. Love that little munchkin of mine.

I need to get my Mother's Day pictures off of the other camera and post them. Keep your eyes posted!!