DIY Disney's Frozen Arendelle Notebooks

Here is another great use for the Frozen Travel Posters available at the Disney Movie Rewards site. (I swear, I'm not getting paid to promote them; I just love that they have all this stuff available for free!)

While we do have a younger set of kids traveling with us to Disney this fall, we also have an older set. This means that the coloring pages and activity sheets just aren't going to cut it for them. They needed something a little more grown up. And I really like how these are not gender specific. I think these could easily go to a boy or a girl.

I decided to make notepads for them from some of the old paper we have lying about. (Do you have all sorts of unused school supplies that come home too?!) I put in regular lined paper, but I also included some graph paper and some 3-D drawing paper too. I made sure to cut it down to about 1/4" smaller than the covers. I printed the covers out on card stock as a booklet in Adobe Reader. If you are looking for a source for the heavy book boards for the covers, check with a local photographer. Sometimes they have it for free! You can also search for "book board" on Etsy or Ebay for suppliers. And of course, you could recycle some from existing composition books and notebooks around the house!

I loved to doodle and journal as a kid (well, as an adult too!), so I'm hoping these will be just the thing for the older kids in our travel party. And of course, they could be used as autograph books too should the need arise!

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

Disney Lunch Box Notes | Back To School

School is already underway here at the Cottage, so I thought I would re-run one of my favorite items for back to school: lunch box notes. You can print and use these notes right away. I hope you will enjoy this post from 2013:

It's back to school time and those first few weeks can be rough getting back into the routine! If you have a student (or frankly, a teacher) in your life you know how hard it can be. These sweet lunch box notes are a perfect mid-day pick-me-up. There are lots of these out there but these are my favorites. Add a little magic to your loved one's lunch.

Disney Family has a cute selection, both boy and girl themed. These are the boy selection.
Disney Stationery has lots of great notes including these wonderful Wall-E notes. Check out the link for more from Mickey and the gang, your favorite princesses, a pirate and a few dwarfs.

And finally, if your kids are a bit older and enjoy trivia from the parks (*cough*, Doc, *cough*), then here are 6 from the cottage. We hope you enjoy them. Simply click here to download them for yourself. Special thanks to Disney Trivia for the questions and answers!

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

Back To School | Unique Disney Notebooks/Journals

I have to admit I am a sucker for school supplies. I love to restock my own studio with new school supplies  when we go shopping for the kids. (And that time is now, here in the midwest. Our first day of school for the district is July 30th. I know some of you on the east coast just finished school and can't imagine going back now!)Oh how I wish I could have had access to THESE notebooks for school when I was a kid! Classes would have been even better.

Now that RedBubble is selling notebooks, all these designs (and more!) are available for you back to school shopping! And you don't even have to leave your house to do it!

You can find my RedBubble profile here, with all my designs. Simply click on the design you like and scroll down the page to find the product you are looking for! And don't forget there are tote bags and drawstring bags and studio pouched too! Enjoy your back to school shopping; until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

Disney Roadtrip 101 | DIY Lunchables

Here in the cottage we are at the stage in our lives that when the kids sleep, we let them go as long as possible. Sleep seems like the magic elixir! And on the road, it's even more true. You can make very good time while the kids are sleeping. But sometimes, when we are road tripping, that means the kids fall asleep and we end up driving right through lunch. That does not work well for this mama.

So on our last road trip, I decided to pack sandwiches for the cooler. The littles, however, don't really do sandwiches; they sort of shred them. And in an attempt to make things less of a mess in the car (always worth the struggle), I made up my own Lunchables. My friend Flora always says, toddlers will eat anything if you cut it up for them. And that holds true for our toddlers.

This was really simple and easy to prepare, and when I pulled them out of the cooler for the littles, they were delighted! I started with a disposable, square, plastic container. You can find them in the paper goods and food storage aisle at any grocery store. I wanted it to be disposable so we could toss it at the next rest stop. I then put cupcake papers in the bottom of each container to hold each food item seperately. (I also discovered that cutting off and using the bottom of a Solo cup worked for this as well!) This technique is specially helpful if you have a kid who hates for his food to touch! After that it was as easy as finding what they would eat, cutting it up and putting it in their boxes. Done and done!

If you have food allergies in your house, you know how hard it can be to find healthy foods on the road that are also safe for the whole family. This will definitely be one of our solutions to that problem. Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

Easy Disney Themed Back To School Dinner

Let's face it. The last thing we want to think about during the first weeks of school is getting dinner on the table. Ok, the last thing I want to face is getting dinner on the table! And that's true most nights. I just plain run out of energy by then. So when we tried this recipe and it got rave reviews, I knew it would be in the queue for our back to school meals this week.

This Shrimp and Prosciutto Pasta recipe from the Grand Floridian Cafe can be found over at Magical Recipes; just follow the link above.  I love the site and have found several great recipes there for our family meals. And one of the best things about this meal is that it took me under 30 minutes from start to finish. It was simple and still full of flavor. And at this time of year, you can get most of the ingredients locally (especially if you live in an area where shrimp are prevalent!). Even better, the whole family liked it! Any time we can get a little Disney magic to the table in under 30 minutes, I'm all for it!

I hope your back to school preparations and activities are going smoothly these days. And for those of you who still have time with your kids this summer, remember those of us who have already sent them back! Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

DIY Disney Back To School Lunch Ideas

It's hard to believe it's that time again! We are all headed back to school this week here in our neck of the woods. And because, apparently, I need a certain level of chaos in my life to be fulfilled, we are also heavily into potty training right now. In lieu of all this, I thought I'd run a few of our back to school posts from last year. Enjoy them!

Lunch Box Notes

 It's back to school time and those first few weeks can be rough getting back into the routine! If you have a student (or frankly, a teacher) in your life you know how hard it can be. These sweet lunch box notes are a perfect mid-day pick-me-up. There are lots of these out there but these are my favorites. Add a little magic to your loved one's lunch.

Disney Family has a cute selection, both boy and girl themed. These are the boy selection.

Disney Stationery has lots of great notes including these wonderful Wall-E notes. Check out the link for more from Mickey and the gang, your favorite princesses, a pirate and a few dwarfs.

And finally, if your kids are a bit older and enjoy trivia from the parks (*cough*, Doc, *cough*), then here are 6 from the cottage. We hope you enjoy them. Simply click here to download them for yourself. Special thanks to Disney Trivia for the questions and answers!

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

Disney DIY Back To School Lunch Ideas

It's hard to believe it's that time again! We are all headed back to school this week here in our neck of the woods. And because, apparently, I need a certain level of chaos in my life to be fulfilled, we are also heavily into potty training right now. In lieu of all this, I thought I'd run a few of our back to school posts from last year. Enjoy them!

Lunch Sacks

I think one of the best things that Disney (and especially Pixar) does is create an entire world you can believe exists. I love the detail that goes into these movies. And one of my particular obsessions is Disney's fictional brands: Lightyear Tires, BnL, Dinoco, etc. So for this particular project I thought it would be fun to make take-out sacks for those lunches that require disposable packaging. (Our field trip days are always like that!)

These are two of my favorite fictional restaurants, Tiana's Palace, from The Princess and the Frog, and Gusteau's from Ratatouille. I created a couple of PDFs using some custom shapes and Adobe creative suite. The font for Tiana's Palace is Edwardian Script. You probably already have it on your computer. The font for Gusteau's is Futura. It's one of my favorites. If you would like to download these free PDFs, you are welcome to use them! You can find Gusteau's here, and Tiana's Palace here. And to find the info on the Arendelle Chocolatier bag, head on over to this post for all the details.

To print, simply load the bag into the left side of the printer bottom down, bottom fold facing away from you. Don't worry about it looking upside down, it should be. Also, ignore any cropping warnings you get. It should print out properly, but I would recommend running a test copy on paper before putting your bag through. And if you need more visual instructions for printing the bags, check out Geeky Paper Ideas. There was a small learning curve with loading the bags for me. One went in flawlessly, the other was eaten. Ah well. Not everything is sprinkled with fairy dust!

I'd like to design a few more of these in the future, but until then, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

DIY Disney's Frozen Arendelle Notebooks

Here is another great use for the Frozen Travel Posters available at the Disney Movie Rewards site. (I swear, I'm not getting paid to promote them; I just love that they have all this stuff available for free!)

While we do have a younger set of kids traveling with us to Disney this fall, we also have an older set. This means that the coloring pages and activity sheets just aren't going to cut it for them. They needed something a little more grown up. And I really like how these are not gender specific. I think these could easily go to a boy or a girl.

I decided to make notepads for them from some of the old paper we have lying about. (Do you have all sorts of unused school supplies that come home too?!) I put in regular lined paper, but I also included some graph paper and some 3-D drawing paper too. I made sure to cut it down to about 1/4" smaller than the covers. I printed the covers out on card stock as a booklet in Adobe Reader. If you are looking for a source for the heavy book boards for the covers, check with a local photographer. Sometimes they have it for free! You can also search for "book board" on Etsy or Ebay for suppliers. And of course, you could recycle some from existing composition books and notebooks around the house!

I loved to doodle and journal as a kid (well, as an adult too!), so I'm hoping these will be just the thing for the older kids in our travel party. And of course, they could be used as autograph books too should the need arise!

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

DIY Disney's Frozen Take-Out Sacks

I recently posted about the Disney Movie Reward site where you can download all manner of cool Disney printables. In that selection of things there is a PDF bundle of Frozen Travel Posters (they also have a bundle of Planes travel posters!). I LOVE this sort of thing and knew I needed to find a way (or several ways) to use these gorgeous graphics. As I was looking at this poster for the Arendelle Chocolatier, I realized it would look great printed on my take-out sacks!

If you missed the earlier back-to-school posts (can you believe it's almost time for that again?), we have printable designs for Gousteau's, and Tiana's Place. These chocolatier bags will fit right in! I also think they would make a great presentation for some lovely chocolates (and maybe some wine!) for a Disney fan. And if you are throwing a Frozen party in the near future (perhaps to bring back summer?), these would be great as goodie bags!

In order to print these on white kraft bags (mine are 6x11"), I had to turn the image upside down. Once you have downloaded your PDF files, open them in Acrobat reader. Once you have it open, select "view" and then "rotate view" until your image is upside down. Load the bags in the printer, centered, and right side up with flap facing back. I printed "current page" at 50%. I love the way these came out. So simple and budget friendly! Just a reminder that if you are printing for the first time, I would recommend doing a test run on paper before loading your sacks to see if the layout is the way you want it.

Have fun with this idea! Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

Disney Park Map Project Round Up for Earth Day

Since it's Earth Day, I thought it would be nice to do a round up of all the Disney Park Map posts I've done in the last year or so. As we all know, Jimminy Cricket wants us all to be responsible with our resources and think about our environment! These projects are a fun Disney way to incorporate the three Rs into your Disney trips: reduce, reuse and recycle!

First up, make a Disney park map gift bag!

Or you could make some fun coasters from ceramic tiles and your Disney park maps.

You could use them as an insert for an insulated travel mug, so you always have a little Disney with you.

You could also insert a Disney park map into a three-ring binder for an instant Disney boost at work or at school!

You could decoupage an ornament for the holidays, or create this orb ornament.

You could decoupage a candle for your home (or a gift!) with Disney park maps too.

And finally, you could use your Disney park maps to make a block puzzle suitable for your coffee table or your next road trip box.

What ever you decide to do, we hope you remember to reduce, reuse and recycle those maps. Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

DIY Disney Themed Paper Take-out Sacks | Back to School

I think one of the best things that Disney (and especially Pixar) does is create an entire world you can believe exists. I love the detail that goes into these movies. And one of my particular obsessions is Disney's fictional brands: Lightyear Tires, BnL, Dinoco, etc. So for this particular project I thought it would be fun to make take-out sacks for those lunches that require disposable packaging. (Our field trip days are always like that!)

These are two of my favorite fictional restaurants, Tiana's Palace, from The Princess and the Frog, and Gusteau's from Ratatouille. I created a couple of PDFs using some custom shapes and Adobe creative suite. The font for Tiana's Palace is Edwardian Script. You probably already have it on your computer. The font for Gusteau's is Futura. It's one of my favorites. If you would like to download these free PDFs, you are welcome to use them! You can find Gusteau's here, and Tiana's Palace here.

To print, simply load the bag into the left side of the printer bottom down, bottom fold facing away from you. Don't worry about it looking upside down, it should be. Also, ignore any cropping warnings you get. It should print out properly, but I would recommend running a test copy on paper before putting your bag through. And if you need more visual instructions for printing the bags, check out Geeky Paper Ideas. There was a small learning curve with loading the bags for me. One went in flawlessly, the other was eaten. Ah well. Not everything is sprinkled with fairy dust!

I'd like to design a few more of these in the future, but until then, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

Easy DIY Disney Park Map Binder | Back to School

This is one of those fantastically easy projects that makes me think, "Why didn't I think of that?" But alas, I did not. This idea comes from a good friend, The Blue Fairy, who has the Disney Bug almost as bad as me! Thanks sister!

I really like the way this turned out. I'm all about recycling last year's school supplies if possible, and this is an easy trick to do just that. You could even change it out throughout the year. It requires two park maps (the same or not) and some adhesive vinyl (or really big stickers). I cut each map (in this case Animal Kingdom) to 9" wide. The spine is the remainder of the map (in this case Expedition Everest), cut to a width of 1.25". At this width they slid in easily with no bunching up. I used dark red Silhouette adhesive vinyl and the free font Waltograph to create the name on this binder. I sized the name to 8.675" wide. I adhered the stickers to the outside of the binder so I could easily change out the maps if I wanted to later in the year.

This project took me all of 20 minutes from start to finish. That's a project anyone can do. And Jiminy Cricket would certainly give this one his seal of environmentality. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

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

DIY Disney Lunch Box Notes | Back to School

It's back to school time and those first few weeks can be rough getting back into the routine! If you have a student (or frankly, a teacher) in your life you know how hard it can be. These sweet lunch box notes are a perfect mid-day pick-me-up. There are lots of these out there but these are my favorites. Add a little magic to your loved one's lunch.

Disney Family has a cute selection, both boy and girl themed. These are the boy selection.

Disney Stationery has lots of great notes including these wonderful Wall-E notes. Check out the link for more from Mickey and the gang, your favorite princesses, a pirate and a few dwarfs.

And finally, if your kids are a bit older and enjoy trivia from the parks (*cough*, Doc, *cough*), then here are 6 from the cottage. We hope you enjoy them. Simply click here to download them for yourself. Special thanks to Disney Trivia for the questions and answers!

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

DIY First Day of School Mickey Breakfast | Back to School

For Doc, school is nothing to celebrate. Although he loves hanging out with his friends, getting an education stopped being a celebration the first day of Kindergarten when he reported, "You know what they want you to do first thing?? WORK!" Welcome to the world baby boy! Nevertheless, we try and put as positive a spin on things as we can. Here are some ideas for a fun breakfast for that first day of school:

Mickey Egg Sandwiches (from Alexis Jellison) - All you need is a cookie cutter and you're golden.

Mickey pancakes (from Deacon Dance) - just pour three circles on the griddle.

Mickey Waffles - just like in Disney World! Yup, you can make these at home for as little as $30.00.

And consider serving your masterpieces on Disney dishes, or even having your OJ out of a Disney mug for a change. I hope your school years are off to a magical start! Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!

DIY DIsney Momma Planner | Back to School

I am an organizer. I love organization and I love to know what is coming and who is going; it would appear that I am currently the ONLY one in the cottage who's like that. There's still hope for the little two, but I'm not holding my breath!

But as we have expanded our family, I have found it more difficult to keep all the details straight, even with my smart phone. And since school is upon us here in the midwest - Doc starts back this week - it's time for this Disney momma to get organized!

I had never used a Mom Planner before. There are tons of them out there and amazing resources on Etsy if you just browse around. There are also all sorts of free printables out there. I started by searching Pinterest for Mom Planner and Blog Planner. You don't have to customize your pages like I did to get a personalized planner. But I am picky and I wanted mine to have everything I needed, and nothing I don't. I also wanted to include some blogging resources, as my inspiration seems to strike no matter where I am or what I am doing. 

So I started a list of what I needed in my planner, and printed out enough pages to last 6 months. Here's the final breakdown:

1. A monthly overview including those items that happen only once a month (and are really easy for me to overlook). I also wanted a place for special events that month and cards to send. I wound up designing my own pages for that:

2. A weekly to do list. I needed to be able to put my week on paper and see a reasonable list of things to do. I also wound up making my own of those pages, and printing them front to back so I didn't have even more bulk than necessary:

3. Meal Prep. We are members of a vegetable delivery service called Green Bean Delivery. I needed a way to be more conscious of using the vegetables we received. This downloadable meal planner was the perfect thing for me. Check out her shop; she has the cutest downloads!

 4. A place for all those recipes that sound amazing but I just can find when I want them. I converted a pretty file folder in to a folder for this planner and then printed out the recipes for the week (along with our invoice for our veggie box) so I can get to them when it's dinner time.

5. And finally, a place for my running ideas for the blog. I will admit that this is a bit of overkill, as I already have a binder for the blog; but this makes me feel like I won't miss an idea once I have it. I found this printable list at My May Sunshine.

6. The Cover. I had some old cardboard lying around from a photographer friend. I used that for the back and front of the notebook. I cut out my mushrooms and title using the Silhouette SD. I adhered them to the cover and then covered it with packing tape, as I knew the beating it was going to take! I used my Zutter machine and some 3/4" binding rings to put it all together. I am IN LOVE with the final result. I've been using it to about two months and feel like it really helps me to stay focused even on those wild days. I took a couple days to get it all together, but it was totally worth the effort!

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