A New Year is Here!!!

  I can't believe that Christmas has come and gone and we are in the New Year. Time seems to go so fast. I have been wicked busy with Christmas preparations since we went to Disney in the middle of the season. And then I was pooped from all the hustling and bustling. On top of that the workers were here working on our new shower  right up to and after Christmas Day.  So I now I am  resting and planning my projects for January.
  I did finish a 6 x 6 album for a friend who wanted to give it to a friend for Christmas. I worked around the clock to make the deadline, but I did it. I really like Graphic 45 Birdsong paper. It has an oriental theme. This is just what Kelly wanted.                                                                      

A 6 x 6 album for Kelly......

  I love making these pocket page albums. The directions are at My Sister's Scrapper. She does an excellent job of taking you through the steps and showing you how to do it. Her video is on Youtube, also.
  Here are some pics of the inside of the album.

Love this paper.

Flaps can be used for journaling.

Paper comes with great tags.

A like the pockets you can make for tags.

I used most of the paper from this collection. Love the way each sheet works well with the theme. It was fun to put together. I am anxious to get started on another album which I think will be a wedding album for my son's upcoming marriage this June. I am getting materials together for that one.
  I also finished another Christmas project for the owner of the Market Cafe, Cindy,  in Woolwich. She has a lovely restaurant that my husband and I go to every Wednesday morning for breakfast. We go with my friend, Elaine. We have a great time there. Everything is excellent to eat there. Cindy  wanted a smaller album for her daughter, I believe. I made an Envelope mini-album. I love making these, too.
   These albums use regular envelopes. So you can make them any size that envelopes come in. I have already linked directions to this album in a past blog post. It's on Youtube, too.
 I used a Christmas collection from DCVW called Christmas Cheer Stack. It has very pretty paper.

Christmas Envelope mini album

This is a smaller pocket.

  I found the angel at a gift shop in Falmouth. I think the name was Crate and Barrel. I am not sure though. It is right my Bernie's restaurant. The gems just gave the cover a little bling. I thought that Cindy's daughter could write her own title.

The pockets are great for storing tags of anything.

 I hope to make more of these little albums as gifts or just to keep for myself.








  Well, I am working on making thank you tags for the favors for the upcoming wedding of my son, Nathaniel and Kristin. Love doing this. I needed more paper and found the match at Stamped Designs in New Hampshire. So I am cutting the squares and then attaching the sentiment. Shouldn't take too long. I will post this and wedding invitations after they are sent out in February.
  Here are a few more shot of our recent trip to Disney. Happy New Year everyone!!

Nathaniel and Kristin

A Happy Place

Hollywood Studios and Downtown Disney

   Russ, Connie, Chris, and Tom took the boat over to Hollywood Studios yesterday morning. It was a lovely day;sunny but a little cool. A perfect day for us. Well, it was perfect until Chris "took a header" on the walkway. There was a depression in the wooden walkway as it joined the cement. She stubbed her toe and fell hard. It knocked the air out of her and she had trouble breathing. It scared us to death. The Disney staff were great. We showed them the unsafe area of the walkway. They took notes and gave Chris a band aide for her scrapes. By the time we came back from the park it was fixed. They do want safety first.

Her elbows and one hand got scraped, too.

I ate this for breakfast 'cause Mom's loves oreos.

  I love taking the boat over. It's such a lovely slow going trip and you get to sit down. The captain was a hoot. He told jokes like.." I always thought I would be an astronaut, but my teachers knew I would be a sea captain because my rank card was in the High C's"... We liked him.
  Once we got to Hollywood Studios where did we direct our path.. right to Toy Story Mania. There was  a forty minute wait so we got Fast passes that were good at 12:40. But as we started to walk by we noticed that there wasn't really a line outside. We took a chance and decided we would wait. It was only a twenty minute wait. Not bad. I lost to Russ, of course. I wanted a rematch at 12:40.
  Chris and Tom had to head back to Beach Club to play miniature golf with the kids. Russ and I wanted to explore Hollywood Studios more.
  We went on the Star Wars ride which I had

Star Wars ride

forgotten how much I liked it.

Our favorite ride

   













 

Meatball subs

   We decided to eat a little early at Pizza Planet. This was a new place for us. The food was pizza; imagine that. They also had meatball subs. We chose that to be different. It was pretty good. Russ loved it.

I am not singing....

   We walked around a bit and took in the sights. There was an umbrella attached to a post with rain coming down over it like the Gene Kelly scene in :Singing in the Rain". Russ wanted a picture of me under it.

   We went on the Great Movie ride which is a great ride for people who love old movies. We didn't wait too long.

Once around again...

  Then we used our Fast Passes to go on Toy Story Mania again. I improved my score, but didn't beat Russ: "Drats"
   We had extra Fast Passes from Chris and Tom. Once we were outside we looked for someone to give the passes out to use. We found an older couple who had NEVER been on Toy Story. We explained the ride to them and they seemed pleased to get on.. Hope they liked it.

A great show

Car chase scene

  We decided to go check out another show called "Lights, Motors, Action".  It was a really good show. It shows how stunts are done in the movies using cars and motorcycles. One scene had a man on fire and a man falling off the side of a high building. Way cool.
    


  It was time to head back and go to the pool. It turned out to be a pretty wonderful day weather wise, too. We had a great time at the pool.

The candy store

   Everyone wanted to go to Downtown Disney. What fun. We took the bus. It was busy but not to busy. I love going there with all the excitement in the air. I got a new Mickey for my collection, plus some souvenirs. 
  It was a great day but my feet were killing me. The bus ride home was relaxing. What will today bring for excitement. I think we are heading to Epcot. I will eat my way through the countries.

A Magical Day

  We started our day at Magical Kingdom. We we got there as the Disney characters opened the park. It's really fun to hear the music and feel the excitement with the millions waiting with us. Well...not millions, but alot of people.


Russ loves roller coasters...



   We headed to FantasyLand 'cause we had not really explored this new section of Magic Kingdom. It's wicked cute. Barnstormer is a new roller coaster for those who are faint of heart-namely me. I went on and had my eyes opened the whole time. That's bravery....

  The weather was a little overcast but very warm. I think it was in the 80's.  It was lovely compared to 12 inches of snow that I heard Portland, Maine got yesterday.


The Big Top

 We went into what I call the Big Top. It was really a sourvenir place , but it looked cool. I love the lights and colors that are there. 

Yummies under The Big Top












Not to mention the yummies that are in the glass case above. I used my Magical willpower to not buy anything to eat here. Call me proud....
  


Winnie the Pooh ride



  We continued to walk through FantasyLand to see what we haven't experienced. We came upon a Winnie the Pooh ride. Who doesn't like Winnie the Pooh? So we went in. It was cute. We sat in the honey jar to ride through. It went pretty fast so many of my pics were blurry. Here are some good ones.



So cute...

                                                                        

Another scene in Winnie the Pooh ride

  We finally met up with the kids after eating a Dole Whip. I don't have a picture of these yummy treats cause we ate them so fast. I'll get a pic tomorrow.. if I can contain my excitement of having one of these luscious concoctions.


Love you Johhny Depp...

   We all then headed to Pirates of the Carribean ride. We had been on it just before the Dole Whips, but we went on again in the spirit of family solidarity and it's a fun ride, too.


A lurking elephant



   Next we all went on the Jungle ride. It is a nice ride on a boat through the jungle with animatronic animals. Again it was a somewhat fast ride so some pictures were blurry. Here are the good ones.



An animal meeting of the minds

   

What a great name for our boat...

                                                       One great ride for families is the Tomorrow Land Speedway. The kids( That's including Tom.) got to drive a race car. Kids can go by themselves if the parents let them.  



Driving home










We ate lunch and then Russ and I went to The Hall of Presidents and Monsters Inc. We were quite pooped by then. We all met up and headed towards the buses. The pool and hot tub was calling our names. What a nice end to a great day.


The Lobby



Here are some pics around Beach Club.

A picture in the lobby.

A Warmer Day at Disney!

  Yesterday was a warmest day so far here. We were without Dave and Cindy which seemed kinda weird. We decided to walk to Hollywood Studios to try and get on our favorite ride again: Toy Story Mania.
Disney Tip:   We thought we would have to wait for a long time, but surprisingly we got on in 13 minutes when the board said a 40 minute wait. How did did we do that, you ask? Well, we had to wait about ten minutes in the line til we go to where you pick up the glasses. Then the girl asked us how many, so we naturally said," Two". Well, we avoided going up the stairs 'cause she directed us to go to the right where the wheelchairs go. We walked around and got in the car pronto: thirteen minutes. We had already gotten a Fast Pass to go back on in an hour. Well, we thought, we will try this method again,and see what happens. Sure enough when we got to the girl again and said,"Two", we were directed to go to the right side of the stairs that go up and walked right through to where the cars were loading. That took four minutes with a Fast Pass. Ureka!! No more wicked long waits again..

People taking pics along with Cars characters.

   When we were waiting to use our Fast Passes, we came by the cast of Cars. We thought of Ezra, my sister's grandson, right away. He would love this ...

Kermit looks so cool here.

   We went in the Muppet 3D Show again. It is still cute... I love the old guys in the balcony who say silly things to the Muppet cast. They are so funny.

We were in the front...Notice how small our table is....

  We ate lunch at the Sci-Fi Theater Restaurant. Usually you need reservations, but they had an opening at eleven. So we ate early. It was cute, but I don't think I would eat there again. I thought we would have our own car , but they have taken the front of a car and attached a row of tables to the back. Not an awful lot of room. You do get to see a large screen movie projector that is showing clips of Sci-Fi movies from the past. Weren't they funny..The food was so so..

The lobby of The Great Movie Ride

  Russ wanted to go on The Great Movie Ride. He loves old movies. It was a twenty minute wait. When we walked in the girl asked Russ to take this tag like thing to the girl inside at the podium. Russ has done this on other rides. He thinks they choose him 'cause he looks so responsible.

My responsible husband

 

The pool

   It was such a lovely day we took the bus back to Boardwalk to enjoy the pool and hot tub. We have not been in the pool since the weather had been quite chilly. It is warming up..The wind was blowing, but the hot tub is sheltered by trees and the pool building. It was so relaxing. Hardly anybody was there. Loved it.. We rested in the room for awhile which was great. My knee has been causing me havoc. I see a doctor's visit in my future.

A great place to eat

   We wanted to eat at Red Lobster one more time on this trip, so we hopped in the car and ate at one of our favorite places. The food is really good. We had shrimp since they did not have haddock, which I really miss eating.

Happy Halloween

  We got back to Boardwalk and changed into warmer clothing for our walk to Epcot and the fireworks at nine. As we walked through the lobby and our the front doors, we saw a Halloween party going on on the front lawn. Kids were playing games and having their picture taken with Mickey. It was really cute.

  We went to the French Pavillion show. Really a pretty trip through France. Then we went to the American Pavillion to see Our American Adventure. I cry every time I see it. The music moves me so much. The pictures at the end are of Americans that have left a living legacy. Many have passed away.. So moving..
    We found a great spot to view the fireworks. The weather was pretty warm.. All in all a wonderful evening. Tomorrow is our very last day here. We drive to my sister, Phillis and her husband, Cary's home. But today was a pretty spectacular day together... Here are a few more pictures.

Narnia outfit

Where are we?

gift shop

Not alot of room.. but it's okay.

Welcome Home!