Guilt and the Guilty Pleasure – A Single Mom’s April 2011 PTR for a Surprise Birthday

[Native NYer]

Just started reading your ptr and love it!
You got an amazing deal on POFQ. Hopefully, you'll get one of the refurbed rooms

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!!

Thank you, Jackie! I hope you and your family did too!

Just started reading your ptr and love it!
You got an amazing deal on POFQ. Hopefully, you'll get one of the refurbed rooms

Thanks for joining in, Jennifer! Also, thanks for the compliment! I am having a ball writing this PTR, so I am so happy that other Disney fans are having fun reading it. I’m so excited about staying POFQ that I don’t know what to do with myself!

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

There is so much excitement in the days before the six month mark of a Disney World trip. There’s booking the trip and making park plans and booking the ADRs and then 179 days out from the trip hits and…

…nothing! There is nothing to do but wait! You pay off your vacation (unless you are lucky enough to have it paid in full already. I wish!), you do a little shopping, a little packing… and that’s it! For our last two trips, I experienced that little let down. I mean, the anticipation builds and builds, the plans take shape and then it’s like, “Now what do I do?” It was satisfying to pay a little bit of the vacation off with each paycheck for the last two trips, but at that 45 day mark when it all had to be paid up, it gave me the excitement- and-then-the-letdown rollercoaster again. Don’t get me wrong; because once I was within that two week time frame of our vacation, I was bursting with excitement! I’m sure I was just insufferable because I would talk about my upcoming vacation at the drop of a hat! “What’s that, boss? You’d like me to conduct a training class next week? Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t. That’s when I’m taking my kids to Disney World!” Or, “You said your favorite color is purple? That reminds me! I’m taking the kids to Disney World next week!”

The rollercoaster effect is inevitable, but it isn’t something I enjoy. I know, I know. “Who does?” My point is, that is why I am so glad I found DISboards! I have been able to learn so much from reading other DISer’s PTRs and TRs. Then I discovered the DISign boards and that sent me into a frenzy of planning craft projects and t-shirts for the trip! The only thing was, I was the only one that benefited from these activities. What about the kids? Granted, they don’t even know that a Disney trip is in the works, but I still want to share the fun with them. I mentioned in a previous post this thread that has Disney movie theme nights. Some of the activities are geared toward younger kids, but a lot of them are appropriate for older kids like mine. The ideas on the thread are a great way to get the kids geared up for our surprise Disney trip without having to spill the beans!

Our first Dinner and a Disney Movie Night was Alice in Wonderland (1951). Before I get to the pictures, let me say that I couldn’t remember much about this movie from when I watched it as a kid. As Chip, Minnie and I sat down and watched, it all came flooding back to me! I was singing along and getting all excited! The kids thought I was crazy! They loved the movie, though and enjoyed the activities. Also, now that I have seen the movie again, next time I will add oysters to the menu! This time, our menu wasn’t elaborate at all, but it was fun to make it.



Minnie helped me make Rice Krispie Treats. We put them in a baking pan to cool, but we couldn’t cut them into uniform squares because I used too many marshmallows. Who is going to complain about too many marshmallows in a Rice Krispie Treat? Not us! We just put the treats back into the baking pan and called it a “cake”.



Then Chip and Minnie helped by cleaning the spoon and the pot.





Minnie got a little overzealous with her cleaning



There wasn’t a Rice Krispie to be found after they were done with it! Then Chip and Minnie helped to make royal icing for our cake. Powdered sugar was EVERYWHERE!!! We iced the cake and allowed it to harden as we went on to our next project: Mushrooms! The kids and I each had Nilla Wafers, mini marshmallows and royal icing on a plate. To make mushrooms, we attached the marshmallow to the cookie with the icing. It was easy and we all had so much fun.







For dinner, we had pizza rolls.



Nutritious, right? I’ll be the first to admit that on a Friday night, after preparing a week’s worth of well balanced meals, I just want to pig out on junk food with the kids! Come on! Who else is going to admit that with me? It is liberating!

So anyway, that was our spread, plus some apple juice (with a little food coloring in it) for our “tea”.



Minnie fell asleep on my lap during the caterpillar scene in Alice in Wonderland, so that gives me an excuse to do this movie night again! As I said, next time, I think it would be funny to serve oysters and I think it would also be cool to decorate the table with daffodils or tulips. Also, I realized that Dinner and a Disney Movie is a bit too much for a Friday night. By the time we did the activity and made the food, we were too worn out from our week to really enjoy the movie. So from then on, our movie nights were reserved for Saturdays and Sundays, unless I was planning a super simple dinner like pizza rolls Something else I observed from that night was that the kids weren’t very interested in the activities I had planned. They were more interested in helping to prepare the food – so that became our activity. We had a great time. Then it dawned on me that this would be a fantastic platform for introducing new types of cuisine! I’m very lucky that my kids are “epicurious”. We will try anything once. So far, our dinners for movie nights have been mostly American type food, but I’m really looking forward to making different French foods (i.e. Ratatouille and Beauty and the Beast) and Persian food (Prince of Persia) and so on and so on. I am going to try to get in some craft projects on nights when we have more simple dinners. So far, we have had a lot of fun on our Dinner and a Disney Movie nights and I would highly recommend doing something like this to pass time between Disney trips!

 

[Victoriasmom98]

OH Erin, your dinner/movie night sounds wonderful!!! I love the Krispie Treat Cake!!! Yummy!!!!

 

[Charleston Princess]

You are so right about the roller coaster effect!!! So, so, so true!

Your "mushrooms" are awesome!!! I am totally stealing that idea! Just too cute!

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

OH Erin, your dinner/movie night sounds wonderful!!! I love the Krispie Treat Cake!!! Yummy!!!!

Thanks, Ann! I know I keep repeating myself, but these movie nights are so much fun!

You are so right about the roller coaster effect!!! So, so, so true!

Your "mushrooms" are awesome!!! I am totally stealing that idea! Just too cute!

Aren’t they adorable? There are some really cute ideas on that thread. And the mushrooms were dangerously yummy! I could have eaten that whole plate myself!

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

Another Dinner and a Disney Movie night we did was Chronicles of Narnia – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. We also intended to watch Prince Caspian, but we didn’t get around to it that night. For dinner, we had Bangers and Mash. The “Bangers” were actually Polish Kielbasa with a homemade BBQ sauce on the side. Minnie helped to make the BBQ sauce and it was good! We always buy the bottled stuff, so this was a nice change from that. It made me want to keep experimenting with the sauces so that I would have a few in my repertoire for when it was grilling season again! But, I digress… The “Mash” was roasted garlic mashed potatoes. I’m sure you can guess what we had for dessert! Come on, you know this! That’s right! Turkish Delight!



OK, not really Turkish Delight because I looked up the recipe and #1 I didn’t have rose water and #2 it just looked like too much trouble! So I improvised. I make a package of 6oz cherry Jello according to the directions on the box and I added two envelopes of Knox unflavored gelatin to it. This was all done the night before, but I think that it would have set in about four hours in a rectangular baking dish. On movie night, I cut up the Jello into blocks and the kids sprinkled powdered sugar over them so that they resembled the Turkish Delight from the movie! Again, powdered sugar was EVERYWHERE! Maybe I should stop making recipes with powdered sugar! Also, it didn’t occur to me that the powdered sugar would start to MELT the moment it hit the moist Jello! I thought the Knox would have made it solid enough to stick! It was too funny. I was trying to quickly get pictures and the sugar was melting away. I kept saying to Chip, “Pour more sugar on there! I want to get this picture!” So that was our activity – pouring powdered sugar on Jello. Can you tell that this was a comical evening for us?

This was our spread for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – including our “Turkish Delight”







We had fun that night, even if we didn’t get to our real activity, which was going to be playing hide and seek. I’m really enjoying these Dinner and a Disney Movie nights because we are always getting silly and creating these great memories. As I said in my previous post, this is really helping to pass the time until our vacation. I am sure that we will continue these nights even after our trip because they are too much fun!

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

A few weeks ago, Charlie and the Chocolate factory came on the Disney Channel, so I decided to do a Dinner and a Disney Movie night for that one too. There are a lot of food references in that movie besides the chocolate, so this was an easy night to plan. There was so much food, in fact, that we divided it up into a snack, lunch and dinner!



In honor of the bad nut Veruca Salt, we had a snack of walnuts with a little squirrel standing over the bowl.



For lunch we had tomato soup, in honor of Violet Beauregard and the first course of the new Wonka gum she chewed.



We like to eat pretzels with our soup. If you squint your eyes, the pretzels almost look like a Hidden Mickey! OK, that was taking it too far. I admit that For dinner, we had two more courses of the four course gum – roast beef and baked potatoes.





In honor of Charlie Bucket, we rounded out the meal with a Bucket family favorite – cabbage!



For dessert, I cheated a little bit because I didn’t want blueberry pie (the last course of the gum) so I made blueberry covered individual cheesecakes!




We also had Wonka candy to snack on during the movie



We didn’t have anything to represent Mike Teavee or Augustus Gloop, but I had the idea to have the kids design candy wrappers on the computer, print them out and cover Hershey bars with them. Maybe we could also also put a Golden Ticket in one and the person who gets it wins a prize. I might do that when I actually buy this movie. Can you believe that I haven’t gotten this movie yet? I mean, as much as I love Johnny Depp, I should have gotten it a long time ago. But it is always on TV or cable, so I haven’t bothered. Another activity I thought would be fun would be Willy Wonka’s Parlor Tricks. Make a rhyme out of anything, just like Willy Wonka made up a rhyme for chewing gum. One of my favorite quotes from the movie: “Chewing gum is really gross! Chewing gum I hate the most!”

 

[Charleston Princess]

I really like your idea of doing jello instead of Turkish Delight. I have tried the real thing before and quite frankly, I thought it was kind of gross. I am not big on rose flavored food. I don't know how Edmund could like it as much as he did!

 

[tinkerbells mum]

i'm loving your PRT, just found it. we're staying at POFQ the same time you are we get there 2nd April leave 9th April and we're doing 1900 Park Fare on Sunday 3rd as well we've got an 5.35 ADR. it's English mother's day that day and as we're from England and my mum will be with me and my DD we are taking her there as her suprise mother's day present. i'm so excited about it all, looking forward to hearing the rest of your plans xx

 

[CyberFey]

Today, Disney released a general public discount on room rates – and the discount included the dates of our stay!!! I had been waiting for a discount ever since I started researching this trip. A Disney vacation during peak season is expensive!

He recalculated the cost of my package and the discount was...eh... it was an OK discount. I expected that, though, since we were staying at a value resort. So the small discount didn’t bother me. I knew why I had really called. I asked how much the package would be if I upgraded from Pop to a moderate resort. Happily, it wasn’t much more! So now, the kids and I are spending our nine day, eight night vacation at...



Port Orleans French Quarter!!!




I am beyond thrilled! POFQ was the resort where we were supposed to stay on the trip that got cancelled! Now we will still get to stay there! It is all falling into place! And get this: because of the discount, my upgrade only cost $147.26 more than the original package at Pop! Amazing!!! Can you tell I’m excited?!? I’ve used about ten exclamation points in this paragraph alone

Then I went on the April Code Watch thread and shared the good news.

OMGOMG!!! You can call to do that?! I was thinking I couldn't.... OMG I LOVE YOU!!!

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

I really like your idea of doing jello instead of Turkish Delight. I have tried the real thing before and quite frankly, I thought it was kind of gross. I am not big on rose flavored food. I don't know how Edmund could like it as much as he did!

Thanks, Jackie! I have wanted to try Turkish Delight ever since I was a kid, but when I found out it was such a laborious process and it was made with rose water But yeah, it seems like it would taste a little perfume-ie

i'm loving your PRT, just found it. we're staying at POFQ the same time you are we get there 2nd April leave 9th April and we're doing 1900 Park Fare on Sunday 3rd as well we've got an 5.35 ADR. it's English mother's day that day and as we're from England and my mum will be with me and my DD we are taking her there as her suprise mother's day present. i'm so excited about it all, looking forward to hearing the rest of your plans xx

Thanks, tinkerbells mum and thanks for joining in! That is amazing that our dates overlap, we’re staying at the same resort and that we will be having dinner at the same place on the same day I’m convinced that the people on DISboards have great taste What a wonderful surprise for Mother’s Day!

OMGOMG!!! You can call to do that?! I was thinking I couldn't.... OMG I LOVE YOU!!!

Hi, CyberFey Yeah, you can totally do that! The CMs are really accommodating about finding a way to make discounts apply to packages – even if you are already booked! This is why I love DISboards. We can learn something new every day! I know I do! So, do you have a trip coming up in April too?

 

[Native NYer]

I love your Disney dinner and a movie ideas. So creative!!
If I could cook, I'd try it with my nephew

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

I love your Disney dinner and a movie ideas. So creative!!
If I could cook, I'd try it with my nephew

Thank you! I'm having a great time thinking of ways to tie meals into the movies! And here's a sneak preview of my next post for you: our next movie night is all frozen food! All I had to do was turn on the oven! I bet you and your nephew will have a blast if you try out some movie nights

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

The next Dinner and a Disney Movie was actually more like “Some Chocolate and a Disney Cartoon” We watched Mickey’s Christmas Carol – a childhood favorite of mine – but it was only about 30 minutes long. So we watched some non-Disney Christmas movies that day too.

For Mickey’s Christmas Carol, I got some gold coin chocolates that tied into the cartoon.



We munched on those chocolates as Scrooge McDuck counted his coins. Here is the aftermath:



Not a coin in sight! Chip and Minnie really enjoyed the cartoon (we’ve watched it a few times since then) and Chip pointed out characters he recognized from The Wind and the Willows, Sleepy Hollow and other Disney cartoons.

Next we watched Elf. I know it’s not a Disney movie, but it is one of my favorite Christmas movies! It has some of the best quotes of any Christmas movie, such as: “I just like to smile! Smiling is my favorite!” Also, on occasion, I have been known to tell my kids I love them by singing it the way Buddy the Elf does: “I love you! I love you! I LOVE YOOOOUUUU!” I won’t spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but one of the best quotes has to be Buddy saying to the department store Santa, “You sit on a throne of lies…You don’t smell like Santa. You smell like beef and cheese!”

For our activity, we cut out paper snowflakes as we watched Elf.



Well, actually, Chip changed his mind about making snowflakes with us and ended up going on the laptop to make his Christmas list. That’s still a Christmas activity, I guess BTW, his list consisted mostly of video games for the Xbox and the PC! What ever happened to toys? My little boy is growing up… into a gamer!

Later that night, we watched a movie about a little boy who still wanted toys and board games and bb guns! Yes, we watched a classic! A Christmas Story! This movie is my all time favorite Christmas movie Again, not a Disney movie, but we don’t have a lot of Disney Christmas movies Anyway, A Christmas Story is truly a classic in my family. It has become a tradition for us to watch it on Thanksgiving and then many more times after that until Christmas Eve. It never gets old. “I can’t put my arms down!” “Stuck? Stuck. Stuck!” “You’ll shoot your eye out.” OK, I’ll stop I can get carried away quoting that movie.

I decided to make this meal as easy as possible because we were decorating.







Let me back up a little bit to how I got the idea for that meal. Minnie and I went to a craft store that day to get some new ornaments and cookie making supplies. Then she saw these adorable Christmas themed Chinese take out containers. Of course I had to get one of each design. Then I thought: Christmas + Chinese food = A Christmas Story! So for dinner we had microwavable Chinese from the freezer section!




Bourbon Chicken



Broccoli and cauliflower out of a steamer bag



and potstickers



It took me about 10 minutes to make the whole meal – only because I had to fry the frozen potstickers. Easy peasy! I put the meal in the plastic containers that we usually get when we order Chinese take out because I couldn’t bear to use the Christmas containers for the food I don’t think they are for hot food anyway. I planned to put cookies in them as gifts, but the containers are so cute! I don’t want to give them away!

I think we’ll just do one more Christmas themed Dinner and a Disney Movie this coming weekend. Unless a Christmas Carol (with Jim Carrey) happens to arrive from Disney Movie Club soon, the only other Disney Christmas movies we have are The Santa Clause movies. So, should I make Osso Bucco? Yeah, right! I don’t have time for that the weekend before Christmas! I already decided I’m making breakfast for dinner

 

[Charleston Princess]

We love Elf, too! Just the other night we were watching it -- love when Buddy gets all excited that Santa is coming to the department store!

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

We love Elf, too! Just the other night we were watching it -- love when Buddy gets all excited that Santa is coming to the department store!

That is a great scene! We always laugh through that whole movie

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

[FONT=Lucidia Sans Unicode"]I'm starting to think my best ideas come to me when I'm eating my lunch at my desk. I was passing time on allears.net, looking up dining tips, and I kept seeing T-Rex being mentioned. That was a restaurant I had to nix during the early planning stages because I thought I didn't have time to do it. Now that my other ADRs have been set, I started thinking that maybe I could squeeze one more table service meal in. I logged Into the Disney World website to see if there was any availability. Wouldn't you know that my work computer has an outdated browser? I couldn't view that part of the site! Personally, I find it unacceptable that I work for a communications company and we still use Internet Explorer 6!!! Anyway, I didn't let that stop me. I called T-Rex directly and got an ADR for dinner on April 5th!

That is our AK day and last I checked, AK closes at 6pm that night. My original plan was to hop to another park after AK closed, but we'll do that after seeing how we feel after dinner. I think it would be good if Tuesday was more of a "take it easy" day. We have breakfast at Tusker House before park opening that morning, so we might be tired by dinner time. We might get a second wind though, because I heard the birthday celebrations there were kind of a big deal When I mentioned that the kids would be celebrating their birthdays, the woman who took my reservation said that they have a Birthday Sunday or something like that (I was too excited about scoring the ADR to remember clearly ) and that the servers sing Happy Birthday! The kids are going to love this!

So with the addition of this meal, I'll need to pay for a meal OOP, so I'll pay for Crystal Palace since that is our cheapest meal I gotta tell you, though, that I am still very seriously considering that AP. I could get TiW and I could take the kids to WDW for the holidays next year. We'll see... I'm looking to make a decision by mid-January [/FONT]

 

[Charleston Princess]

You get your best ideas at your desk at lunch, and I get my best ideas while drying my hair in the morning.

Hurray for scoring a T-Rex ressie -- it looks like so much fun! I want to take the kids there sometime!

I have thought about getting an annual pass as well in order to be able to fit in a Christmas trip next year. Decisions, decisions!

 

[Tink-erin-belle]

You get your best ideas at your desk at lunch, and I get my best ideas while drying my hair in the morning.

Yeah, I guess inspiration can strike anywhere

Hurray for scoring a T-Rex ressie -- it looks like so much fun! I want to take the kids there sometime!

I have thought about getting an annual pass as well in order to be able to fit in a Christmas trip next year. Decisions, decisions!

Thanks! I am so excited about T-Rex!

I really think the math will work in my favor if I get APs for us. I REALLY want to go back to WDW for Christmas next year.