DIY Disney Beach Sand-off Bags

We do a lot of summer travel. This summer we will have climbed sand dunes, visited several Lake Michigan beaches, as well as the Chesapeake Bay. And we have another blissful trip scheduled for Disney's Hilton Head Island Resort this fall. In every one of these scenarios we will be covered from head to toe in sand. Last year I found a deal for these powder pouches and bought them for our summer travel. We loved them and used them often. The concept is simple: the talc dries the water causing the sand to fall off your body. It works brilliantly!

Of course this summer, I can't find those pouches anywhere! But I reasoned that they couldn't be too hard to make for myself. A quick search through Pinterest brought me to this super easy tutorial for these talc filled bags. Mission accomplished!

If you are in the straight line sewing club, you can do this. If you happen to have two 4" square scraps of fabric, a small bit of ribbon and some talc laying around the house, then you could actually make this for free! And they didn't take long to make either. I whipped up these three in less than 30 minutes. (You may recognize these fabric scraps from the cute toddler pants I made several years ago for the littles.) We simply keep these talc pouches in a plastic bag in the back of the van (although if you have a dedicated beach bag, that would be awesome too) so they are ready for all our sandy adventures!

If you are planning to stay at any of the resorts in Disney that have a sandy beach, these would be a great little item to have packed in your suitcase! Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

Eggs Kamehameha from Disney's Papeete Bay Verandah | Forgotten Disney

At that time there were no autograph books or handlers rushing the characters from table to table. In fact, it looks like we were one of two families in the restaurant in these photos! It was fun and we used to get Mickey balloons and a small token to remember the day by. I think leis were also given from time to time.

The 80s, perhaps, were not know for their amazing culinary moments. Even in Disney. I have mentioned before, one of my favorite Disney cookbooks for it's vintage recipes, Mickey's Gourmet Cookbook. Mostly, I love it for the cocktail recipes! But the Eggs Kamehameha reminded me of Minnie's Menehune and I just had to give it a try. The recipe is pretty simple, but I was suspicious of it's wine sauce. I was right to be. Suffice it to say, this recipe has potential, but needs some reworking in my opinion. I hope to work that out soon and post an update.

Here is the recipe for Eggs Kamehameah. It's good, and it's fast; two things that matter to this busy mom:

4 eggs
4 slices of bread, fried in butter
1/2 C Gruyére cheese, shredded
1/4 C dry white wine
salt
cayenne pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Arrange fried bread in oven-proof serving dish. Melt cheese in a saucepan with wine. Season with salt and cayenne pepper. Pour wine and cheese over fried bread.

Melt butter in frying pan and fry eggs. Place 1 egg on each slice of bread. Put dish in oven or under broiler for 2 minutes to glaze tops of eggs.

Serve at once; yields 2 servings.

I tweaked it by not using the oven. The sauce, did not come together as a sauce for me (as I suspected it wouldn't), but I put the cheesy wine on the toasted bread and  then put the cheese lump under the egg so it still looked good. And I used paprika instead of cayenne, as I prefer the flavor. Not a bad dish, just not as good as it could be. Definitely worth the stroll down memory lane!

Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

DIY Disney Digital Scrapbook Embellishments

There seems to be a wealth of Disney related scrapbooking products on the market, that is, until you start looking for something for your digital scrapbook. Perhaps it's the fear of copyright infringement, or the small market. Whatever the cause, I have difficulty finding new Disney embellishments for our annual trips. I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I happen to live with an incredible Disney photographer, who is well aware of my passion for scrapping. For years, he has been taking photos for his awesome blog, Photos From The Parks. (You should follow his blog. It'll get you through till your next trip.) I have been the lucky beneficiary of said photos for some amazing scrapbook pages. And when I was looking for something special for my Polynesian spread, I realized he had taken exactly the photo I needed to create my own page embellishment. 

If you're a digital scrapbooker, chances are you are somewhat familiar with Photoshop (or Elements). I realize "familiar" has a wide spectrum. I'll try to make this as simple as I can. This tutorial uses CS5 on a Mac.

Tutorial:

I would recommend starting with a copy of a digital photo of an icon or sign that has very simple edges. Cleaning up an intricate image can be time consuming and a bit frustrating. Simple shapes are easier to use. I suggest a copy so that if the worst happens and you have to just delete and start over, you haven't lost your original. I speak from experience. And remember, you can always hit [Command+Z] to undo.

1. Open your image in Photoshop. Check to see if the image is locked (there will be a small padlock icon next to your image in the layers palette if it is). If it is locked, click on the image in the layers palette and drag it onto the paper icon (create a new layer) - circled in yellow in the picture below. This should create a duplicate image with no lock. You can now drag the locked layer into the trash (circled in red).

2. Using your quick selection tool (circled in red in the picture below), click on the image you want to use. You should see "marching ants" - a dotted moving line - around the image. If it didn't select all that you wanted, just continue clicking on the areas it should select until everything you want has been enclosed. 

You will notice that the tool didn't select it perfectly and added a bit of white space I don't want (circled in yellow in the image above). That's fine. It will easily be edited out later. Don't worry about it.

3. To get rid of the rest of the image, use the shortcut [Command+Shift+I] - this will invert the marching ants and you should now see them around your selected image and the perimeter of the original image. Hit delete. You should now see just your selected image and a transparent background.

4. To get rid of the marching ants, click on the Marqee tool (circled in red below) and then click on your image. The marching ants should now be gone.

5. Now we need to clean up the edge of this image, specifically the part I've circled in yellow above.

6. Zoom in on your image until it reads 100% (in the image below, it's circled in yellow in the bottom left corner). Then select your eraser tool (circled in red in the image below). You may need to adjust the size of the eraser tool. To do this, pull down the menu circled in green. The number refers to pixels. If you want a larger eraser, slide the size slider to the right. For a smaller eraser, slide it to the left. Now you can begin erasing the part of your image you do not want. I recommend a smaller eraser near the edge of your image. It gives you more control.

7. Once you have an image you are happy with, go to "Save As" in your File menu and save as PNG. I like to reopen the PNG once I've saved it to make sure it looks like I want it to. When reopened it should look like this:

The bounding box shows you exactly what will come up when you are scrapbooking. And you're all set! The image is ready to be used as a scrapbooking embellishment.

Photoshop can be confusing, so let me know if you have any questions about this tutorial and I will try and clear things up as best I can. For those of you who need to know: this image was taken in the Polynesian room of It's A Small World. Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!