Our Birthday Bonanza PTR- May 2010~ ACK!

[jenn-]

As promised I am here with the results from several art projects I have/had going. First up will be the results of the spiral spray paint Mickey. My only regret about these is that I didn't make ones for the older boys yet. I wasn't really sure how they would turn out so I had the 3 little boys help me on some shirts that will probably be a little small for DS3 come May. Well here they are.
Mine

DD's

the 3 for DS3

Overall I am happy with the results and I might go through and make some more for the other kids. I don't think DH would wear one like it though.

Tie dying has been fun. I haven't quite gotten the technique down. Needless to say all but one of them is going to need some altering. So far I have "blinged" DD's to "fix" it. If you look back in the PTR you will see her original results. Here is her blinged out version.

The next set of pictures will all need a bleached on Mickey head outline as they are not well defined. I will post pictures of those after I get brave enough to try them. It will probably be a couple of days though.
DH's front

DH's back

DS1's

DS2's

DS3's

the back of the 3 boys'

Then when you have leftover dye that has to be used in one seating, you start looking around trying to find something to dye. In this case it turned out to be some of my DS2's white underwear. Let me explain first that DS2 wears white underwear and is larger than DS1 who wears colorful underwear. As a mom of twins you have to learn things to make laundry less of a hassle and this has been mine. Well DS2 has outgrown some of his underwear and DS1 has some doggy chewed holes in his butts, so he needs new ones. I knew that there would be an uproar from both of them if I just tried moving the white ones over (not to mention the laundry issue). Anyways I ended up doing 2 batches of them (different brands). In the first batch, I threw them in a gallon sized bags and just squirted the remainder of the dyes in on it. This was the result.

I realized quickly that there would not be enough dye to do the second batch. I decided to "experiment" with them. As I was washing out the bottles from the dyes I took the first fill out of each of them and threw it into the bag with the second batch. I was thinking I might get some light tie dyed items. Turns out they all turned a light shade of blue. They didn't photograph very well, but here they are anyways. I promise they are bluer than they look.

So that's my artistic journey update. After the bleach job I will still have several white shirts to decide what to do with, so stay tuned I am sure more crafts will follow.

 

[ljcrochet]

Everything looks great, even if the underwear looks white.
My girls have different character underwear. Easy for me to tell who's are whose. And S will not wear the Minnie ones that D has outgrown. So i'm stuck. I like your method better.
I wonder how the glue/spray fabic pant would look on colored t-shirts? I might try that . Just have to get a color that DH will wear or not make one for him

 

[mickeysmyboy]

Jumping over!

First, I'm so sorry that you've had such a bad time in your recent disney past! That's definitely NOT the way to feel the magic!

I love, love, love your shirts! They look great! I may try tie dyeing a bunch for our trip but I'm not sure if I'm brave enough! I've never tie dyed!

 

[jenn-]

Jumping over!

First, I'm so sorry that you've had such a bad time in your recent disney past! That's definitely NOT the way to feel the magic!

I love, love, love your shirts! They look great! I may try tie dyeing a bunch for our trip but I'm not sure if I'm brave enough! I've never tie dyed!

If it makes you feel any better, this is my first tie dying experience as well. So far only one of my shirts has actually turned out as I had hoped (luckily it is mine ). There is a learning curve, but I think with time and practice, it is possible. I also just have to keep telling myself and looking at the other thread, that this is not a perfect process. No two shirts will come out looking the same and that is okay. I must admit, I am not to happy with my attempted "fixes" on my 3 boys shirts. I decided not to mess with my DH's after I tried theirs. Turns out it is trickier than it sounds to paint with bleach .

 

[jenn-]

Okay after 3 not the greatest experiences in the world" trips you would think I would give up on Disney. Well I did, for about 6 months at least . About May of '08 MIL offered to watch the kids for a week in October so that DH and I could "get away". DH immediately wanted Disney and I said nope. So I started looking around at other places to go and let me tell you something, hotels and flights are EXPENSIVE! Disney with their "free to me" hotels and already purchased tickets (our last trip we had purchased 10 day non expiring tickets and only used 4 days), started sounding really good, really quickly. Even better by going in October we would catch the Food & Wine Festival I had heard so much about. The icing on the cake was when we learned we could use our DDP snack credits on the samples around the World. I was sold.

Here's a little secret that my friends and family know. I don't go to Disney for the rides and shows. I go to Disney for the FOOD! This might be why trips 1 and 2 weren't so great. Unfortunately this trip came about and planned less than 4 months out so some of the harder ADRs were booked. This is one reason why I am glad they switched to the 90 day ressies. It gives us semi last minute planners a chance at the good places. I was still able to get into plenty of good restaurants and try things I wouldn't want to take the kids too. BTW in case you didn't notice this was my second trip in little more than 5 years that I ditched the kids to go to Disney. I'm such a bad mommy... . If it makes anyone feel better the stipulation for MIL watching the kids was that she was wanting to take DD to Disney with her in November, so she wasn't to distraught over me going without her and the others are still too little to notice.

So the cast for this trip is pretty small (just the way I like it).

That's us.

Our first day in the parks we hit Animal Kingdom. Is it bad that I don't remember much other than getting to see Nemo for the first time? It was awesome BTW. We ate at the Flame Tree where we both had wonderfully boring salads and got carrot sticks for dessert. I know lame, but sometimes you have to decide where you want the extra carbs and where you don't.

After lunch we shot over to MK and caught the parade while we waited for the highlight of my trip to arrive.

I got to meet one of my online best buddies in person . That would be me and my buddy Lisa in front of the castle (she's also known as ljcrochet on these here boards). I think we freaked my DH out a bit by how much we talked , but when you chat with someone every day, it really doesn't matter that you have never met them in person. Also as a transplant to the south(me), I don't think my DH had ever heard me speak at full speed before. Unfortunately our time with Lisa was short as she had the MNSSHP to attend to and they were kicking us out of the park. But we would get to meet again the next day.

For dinner we tried our first of several new restaurants. We ate over at the Grand Floridian Cafe. Service was less than stellar, but not as bad as we have had locally. We had some yummy steak and asparagus for dinner, followed by a chocolate fruit fondue for me, and a I think a cheesecake thing for DH.

I promise I was only going to dip one or two pieces of fruit lightly in the chocolate and then eat the rest plain, but it didn't happen . Just too yummy. We didn't get nearly the sugar buzz as we did on the last trip as we weren't still in the induction phase of Atkins any more.

After dinner we shot over to Epcot and got some of the rides in over there. We actually hit 3 parks in 1 day . We were pooped when we went to bed that night.

The next morning we headed back to MK to meet up with Lisa again. They were only there for a very short trip so we had to make the best of it. We walked around with Lisa and her family for a little while mainly in Toontown (I think that's the area with Mickey's house).

Her daughters are adorable little cuties. Sydney caught the eye of one of the cast members passing by and they got to talking. Turns out she picked the right girl to befriend. She told us to follow her. She ended up taking us to the head of the line to meet Mickey and Minnie in the judges tent. Very Disney magical for us. All too soon it was time to say good bye to Lisa for good , and we went our separate ways.

DH and I got to go enjoy one of the best deals on the DDP for counter service at Cosmic Rays. We each had the chicken, ribs, mashed potato, green bean combo, hold the potatoes, double the green beans. We also spotted that they had a sugar free brownie that we tried and LOVED. Realize we hadn't had anything that tasted a brownie in over a year, so our taste buds might be skewed a bit. Everything was yummy.

After our day in MK, we hit the monorail again and went back to the GF for dinner. This time it was to 1900 Park Faire to eat with Cinderella and family. I must admit I didn't find the food to be that great there. Part of the problem came from their lack of lower carb options. I wasn't great of taking buffet pictures but here was my first plate and the couple of desserts I tried, neither were worth their carbs.

And with that we are through day 2 of our gorge fest and my hands hurt from typing so you will have to come back to see the rest of the food porn tomorrow.

 

[ljcrochet]

Sounds like you had a great time with your DH and got to meet up with me.

 

[jenn-]

Sounds like you had a great time with your DH and got to meet up with me.

See I told you they were adorably cute!

 

[jenn-]

Okay we made it through 2 days of our yummy trip to Disney. On our third day we hit Epcot at opening. We had never done a rope drop before. We raced with a bundle of other people over to Soarin' where we quickly snagged out FPs and hopped into line. We made the first flight of the day. Then we toured future world and road the renovated Mission: Earth (the ride in the big ball), which was quaint. We stopped in and met the big guys in the Character Spot .

Then we headed over to the Food & Wine Festival as it opened. I had nothing planned for us to eat for lunch but snacking around the world. So that's what we did.

We started off our snacking right away with some shrimp and a cheese sampler. Both very yummy.

We continued our edible journey with a tuna steak thing that DH mainly ate because I like my fish a little more cooked (it was meant to be this rare). DH sampled a glass of wine from the same booth. I don't drink the stuff .

As I only took a small bite from his tuna, he only sampled a small bite of my lamb (not his favorite food). It was very good, but of course as a sample size, it just seemed too small.

After that we popped in and out of a few of the shops before heading back over to the future world side. During the last year we had discovered that most sugar free ice cream had fewer carbs than regular ice cream so we decided to see if the ice cream shop happened to have any sugar free ice cream options, and we lucked out that they did. We split a double scoop of butter pecan ice cream. I love ice cream and this was no exception.

As we had been grazing all day long when our reservations came up for Chefs de France we weren't very hungry, but we cleaned our plates anyways . This was the third new place for us to eat (I think I left out that 1900 Park Faire was also new). I was really glad we didn't have the kids with us since the service was very slow. DH started off his meal with a bowl of french onion soup.

My non adventurous DH had steak and green beans.

I had the lamb legs (yep the lamb chop earlier left me craving it), ratatouille, and carrots. I think my meal was definitely the better of the two. It was delicious.

We finished off our dinner with desserts that had way more carbs than we should have eaten. DH had the creme brule which he scraped off most of the blackened sugar, and I had the fruit flavored sorbets. I enjoyed my ice cream from earlier in the day more in comparison to them. I had asked the waiter about sugar free options and I think we had a language issue since he seemed to have no idea what I was talking about. I got lucky later on in the trip with this request.

So there we go with our third day of food gorging. Day four coming up next.

 

[jenn-]

I have been so busy the last couple of days. I decided to do another round of Mickey tie dye shirts. I was going to do 4, 2 for DD, 1 for me, and 1 for DH with the left over dye that I had. DH didn't like the colors so we invested in another kit with camo colors. Well he only had 1 more shirt left and the boys were out so I had to stop and buy more shirts. I got another pack for the 3 boys. After I spent several hours stitching Mickeys yesterday, I had to wash the new shirts last night, draw and stitch them this morning. Then I wrapped the rubberbands for them. OUCH! I tried really hard to get them tigher than I have before and my thumb paid the price. I ripped off the top layer of skin right below the cuticle. I don't know what to do if this wasn't tight enough. I got them all dyed so now I am in a waiting pattern again. Hopefully I will have some successful shirts to show off tomorrow. I will be back after dinner to show off another day's worth of food pics from the Oct '08 trip.

 

[ljcrochet]

I can't wait to see the shirts. I'm sure they will look great.

 

[jenn-]

Now that I have a belly full of ice cream I am ready to tackle the rest of the October 2008 trip.

On our fourth day we journeyed over to DHS. Once again we made the rope drop. It's so nice not having the little kids slowing us down. We ran like herded cattle and snagged at FP for Toy Story Mania! Even getting there first thing landed us with a later afternoon return time.

We quickly cut back across the park and practically walked onto the RNR. From there we tried to figure out what to do. Some how or another we ended up making the decision to try Tower of Terror. I am terrified of heights so why in the world I decided this was a good idea, I have no clue. We made it quickly through that one's que as well, which is good since I probably would have chickened out if I had had to much time to think about it. I survived the ride and found it to be quite fun. DH on the other hand hated the feeling of falling and won't be riding it with me again. Hopefully I can talk DD into it next time.

After that we had pretty much hit all the big rides for the day. The park had only been open for a few minutes and we didn't know what to do next. We looked at the show schedule and saw that we could make the next showing of Beauty and the Beast, so we headed over there to get a good seat. Now something I haven't told you about this last week in October is that the weather was COLD in the morning and evening and pleasant during the day! The seats at the outdoor theater metal and they were freezing. We also got there much earlier than we needed to, but ended up with decent seats even though we were kind of far back (honestly we picked seats getting hit with sun when we sat down...lol). After our behinds were thoroughly froze we got to enjoy the play.

After the play we started on our hunt for lunch. Unfortunately DHS is not known for its food choices. All of the TS options were filled with carbs so we were sticking to CS to make it until our dinner out of the park later on. I remembered that there was supposedly somewhere that served a great salad but I couldn't remember for the life of me where it was. I thought it was in the cafe outside Columbia Harbor House, but I didn't see any signs of it. We finally found food at the Backlot Express. We had to do a bit of subbing on their salad which left it less than interesting, but it was food. Although the salad left something to be desired, the dessert was surprisingly good. It was a sugar free strawberry parfait that came in second on our favorite sugar free dessert list from the trip.

Continuing on with our day we decided to hit the Lights, Motor, Action Extreme Stunt Show. We had been wanted to see this each trip, but had never been able to coordinate it with our schedule. Again we showed up much earlier than we needed to for the end of October, but we couldn't think of anything else to do. We had a good conversation with several of the people while waiting in line. It took what seemed like forever for them to start the show after they started to seat us. Finally we got to the fun exciting stuff.

I found the show to be very fun to watch and recommend everyone get a chance to see it. I do suggest ear plugs for the little ones with noise issues though as it is quite loud.

We finally got to go redeem our FP for TSM to see what the fuss was all about. DH loved the ride. I found it so so. Not really my thing, but cute.

We finished out our day at DHS watching the high energy afternoon parade and then slipping over to watch Indiana Jones. All said and done I thought we had a very complete and successful day at DHS.

Knowing that the TS options at DHS would suck for us, I had to hunt for other options. I decided to give the Cape May Buffet over at the Beach & Yacht Club a chance. DH and I had eaten there on our honeymoon but the only thing that stood out in my mind back then was that it seemed expensive. Having the DDP makes me not see dollar signs every time I eat. I snapped only a few pictures of the food there, which we found to be very good.

This was only our second buffet situation and the first one had no real desserts we could/should eat. This one was worse. Not even something I thought I could modify and look crooked at and pretend would be good for me. I decided it was time to be brave and ask the waitress if there were any sugar free options and was pleasantly surprised when she said "yes." (Guess we should have asked at 1900 Park Faire). She said it would take a few minutes as they only brought them up from the bakery when they were ordered. So we got another round of food and waited for our dessert. This is what came out.

It had beautiful presentation. Wonderful color. Unfortunately it tasted like cardboard . Oh well, not all of our adventures in sugar free eating could be good. Even though it wasn't the greatest tasting stuff, we ate it.

We finished off our night watching Illuminations at Epcot where the sun had gone down again, and I froze my behind again. We went looking for a blanket but just couldn't spend the money for a few minutes of warmth. As always it was a great show.

Well day 4 was a lot fuller than I thought. I guess day 5 will have to wait until next time.

 

[mickeysmyboy]

Great update! Sounds like you had a great day at DHS, even with som less then impressive meals! I hate that DHS has no good CS options! We've never eaten at Backlot, well I got a soda there once, but have heard it's by far the best option there. We've eaten at ABC Comissary twice. The second time it was far better then the first. I just like that the comfortable table and chairs and a little AC when it's getting warm out!

Can't wait to see the shirts! Sorry about your thumb! That sounds like it hurt!

 

[jenn-]

I can't wait to see the shirts. I'm sure they will look great.

Great update! Sounds like you had a great day at DHS, even with som less then impressive meals! I hate that DHS has no good CS options! We've never eaten at Backlot, well I got a soda there once, but have heard it's by far the best option there. We've eaten at ABC Comissary twice. The second time it was far better then the first. I just like that the comfortable table and chairs and a little AC when it's getting warm out!

Can't wait to see the shirts! Sorry about your thumb! That sounds like it hurt!

I can't wait to see them either. I have to say the waiting is the hardest part. I am going to stick my boys in the bathtub and start rinsing them as soon as I get them dressed. I would love to do it before bath time, but I am pretty sure they wouldn't appreciate little tie dyed behinds. I should have the photos of a couple of my "fixes" at the same time as I have been waiting for another tie dye load to fix one and wash the other.

 

[jenn-]

Can someone come over here and please tell my dryer to hurry up already?!? I wanna see my shirts all done. Well maybe by the time I am all done sharing day 5 from Oct it will be done and I can snap some photos of the new shirts. So far I liked what I saw out of the washer.

On our last day of our trip we headed back to Epcot. Epcot is our favorite park. Team that up with the F & W Festival and it makes it extra special. This particular morning we decided to venture in and see what was going on in the demonstration pavilion for F & W. We got there just in time to snag numbers to see one of the cooks. In this case it was Todd Winer.

He cooked us up some Kobe beef strip steak and a Kobe beef dumpling with some sort of an carrot slaw. OMGs it was good. DH really enjoyed the wine that came with the meal, so he had mine. I really did try to like it since it was high end stuff but . Todd had some excitement when a flame got a little out of control. Only his wife realized right away that something wasn't right. The announcer said he was the first one to try to burn down the building .

We toured Epcot very casually that day. We spent time on the Ellen ride and walked around the shops. Lunch was at the Biergarten. This is not my favorite place to eat, but DH loves it. I think he is fondest of the honeymoon celebration that they did for us. Again with this being a buffet I wasn't great at snapping pictures. Add to that there were very nice strangers giving me looks and I was doubly shy about it. I didn't even snap the dessert plates.

After we ate our main courses we went for the dessert area to once again find nothing we could eat on the line. One of the sous chefs was out though so I asked him about our options. He offered us a sugar free cheese cake or the sugar free brownies we had had before. I paused trying to decide. I knew DH would want the cheesecake so I asked for that for him. I told him that I would go with it too as we had had the brownies already and as much as we loved them wanted to try something new. Well when he brought out the cheesecake he dropped off a little bag with a note that said "enjoy these later" with 2 of the brownies inside! I that guy. I might have to decide that I like that place more.

Even though we had fully stuffed ourselves at lunch, we still had a couple of snack credits to use. After rolling ourselves around the world showcase for a few minutes we decided to snack again. I got some little scallop dish which I only found to be so-so.

Then we headed over to Canada to get a bowl of cheddar cheese soup for DH.

This little bowl of soup caused quite the tiff between myself and DH. Apparently I wasn't listening to him when we were in the line to order as he was wanting me to ask if the soup had potatoes in it (big no no on the low carb). Well I never heard him say it so I just ordered it up. Sure enough potato filled. He was not happy with me. He only ate a couple small spoonfuls before he threw it away.

We caught Off Kilter for the first time as well. We enjoyed the music so much that I bought a CD that I listen to frequently. Epcot was to be a short day that day as we had bigger plans for the evening. We were headed to Cirque Du Soleil .

After a quick run back to the resort for a freshing up and clothes change, we headed off to DTD. Amazingly enough we had to think about food again! We had already decided to go to Wolfgang Puck Express. We ended up with a wonderful meal from them. We did have some slight confusion with the whole sugar free ordering though. First off we had to convince them to sub out mashed potatoes with a salad and then they had to bring the chef from the main part to figure out what we were asking for. We would have been happy with those brownie things (I think they should be standard around Disney myself), but he was going to create something. Our main dish arrived. A half chicken with a big ol' side of salad.

Then our dessert showed up almost immediately. It was a sugar free berry crisp with pumpkin flavored sf ice cream on top.

Unfortunately the dish was warm therefore the wonderful ice cream on top was melting rapidly. Luckily the kids weren't with us to see mommy and daddy eating their dessert first . It was delicious. I think this dessert was the winner for all of the ones we had. We also had wonderful service from WPE. When they saw we were getting up to go the head chef came back out to make sure that we had enjoyed our meal. Of course we told him we had and thanked him profusely. Then we were off to the Cirque.

Before we could get from WPE to the Cirque we spotted a curious pair walking around DTD. As it was the day before Halloween there were plenty of people in costume but these two really stuck out. They were from the Cirque troupe. As there is no photography allowed inside the building finding this great photo op outside was wonderful. DH posed with the guys.

We really enjoyed the show and wished it wasn't so expensive. It would cost a small fortune to bring the whole family. Maybe DH can take DD on the next trip and we can take the rest of the boys one at a time.

That was the end of our trip. We departed Disney first thing in the morning on October 31st. We have 4 kids that were expecting us to be there to go trick or treating with them after all. We made it just in time to get them in their costumes and take them around. The very next day my left for a week at WDW with her grandparents (hence why she didn't feel disappointed we went without her).

I do believe my dryer stopped! I will hopefully be back this evening to show ya'll how the shirts turned out.

 

[raider97]

Thought I would stop by and say Hi!! Your pre-trippie is going great. You did a great job on your shirts.... can't wait to see how the latest ones came out.

Stephanie

 

[jenn-]

Okay, I admit it I was too busy surfing last night to come and post about the tie dye results. I will probably regret not doing it last night as I sit here with 4 kids trying to get my attention while I type. Just FYI, when you rip the skin off your thumb, it hurts for days later. I must admit the results were almost worth (my thumb still hurting days later deters from the results a bit). Anyways I am going to start off with one that I had to "fix". This was DH's original shirt in which his Mickey bled to much to be recognizable. Here is the before shot.

And here is the after. I took the Mickey head design I had been using and cut it out of the paper leaving the inverse in the cut out. I then used the spray paint from my other project to fill it in. I wish I could say it was my idea, but DH gets total credit for that. He is happy with the results.

The rest of the pictures are all from the most recent batch. They will go, front, back, repeat.

One bad thing about using some of these dyes is that you have only 45 minutes before they start to loose the strength. Needless to say I had an almost full bottle of black, and quite a bit of green left that was this way. I also only had a little bit of fuchsia and purple left. So as I realized I was going to need to use all of this up, I ran into the house and threw one of my shirts into the soda ash that was still in the bucket. Then I went back out and finished doing what I was doing.

I knew I didn't have the time it would take to stitch another Mickey head, not to mention no will to do it, so I came up with something quick to do. A good old fashion bullseye. I really like how it turned out, even if it isn't Disney related.

I still have a bit more dye to use that hasn't been mixed yet, so watch for some more creative use of tie dying to appear. I am officially done with this exact style though.

 

[jenn-]

Sorry I have been missing, I have been on a trip. I wish I could say I left my house for this trip, but this was one of those emotional rollercoaster kinds of trips, so even though it has absolutely nothing to do with my Disney planning, I need to get it out somewhere.

On Wednesday my MIL called and asked I could shoot someone's wedding. My immediate response was, "uh, NO!" I have no real portrait experience short of telling my kids to look at the camera. She told me that she had told the bride to be that I was a great photographer and that I would be able to do a good job. Well I will admit to snagging a few really nice pictures over the years, but they are always inanimate objects. It is easy to snap something that doesn't move. Anyways during the conversation I hummed and hawed over it and finally told her I would think about it.

The wedding is set for a week from today, so I didn't have much time to think. If I was to do this, I was going to have to order a new camera. I knew I was going to have to dive into the dSLR land. My DH had been trying to get me there for a long time. So I spent Wednesday figuring out which new camera I was going to get, and psyching myself up for the task. The couple had 1 more person they were going to try so I wasn't committed yet.

Thursday I nagged MIL to get me a committed answer so I could get my camera ordered, I had seen it on Amazon and I get $3.99 overnight shipping but it had to be done by x time. I finally got in contact with the bride and she sounded like we were good to go so I went to order the camera, but DH told me to talk to FIL (not married to MIL) first.

So I call up FIL and he has found a $500 rebate if we buy this camera at the same time as this new expensive printer he was looking at and he had found a store on eBay that was an authorized dealer that had both. Well overnight shipping would have been $90! I called the shop owner and he said it would probably be Thursday using their standard free shipping. So we forked over the extra $30 to get 3 day mail so the camera won't be here until Wednesday.

I have no experience with a DSLR. I had really expected to have the weekend and whole week to figure out how to use the camera. Well now if I was lucky I would have 1 day, not including the time it took to charge the battery. I wasn't happy, but how do you turn down a $500 rebate (even split in half). So I got the camera ordered, I ordered a different lens as well, and started looking at cases and other stuff. I was getting excited.

Friday I convinced FIL to come watch the kids so I could go to the local camera shop and scope out the size of some of the bags. I found one I liked, but wasn't paying their prices . Same one online is $20 cheaper. I also went and found an outfit for the wedding as none of my casual dress clothes fit anymore (thank you Atkins). Found an adorable long skirt and shirt on clearance that I thought would be perfect.

Friday night came and the phone rang. At first I had no idea who it was but kept talking trying to figure it out, cause he seemed to know me. Turns out it was the groom to be. They had heard back from one of the photographers that had originally told them they wouldn't be available. Turns out she would be after all, and they were going to go with her. He said that since he dropped the ball on letting me know sooner that I was welcome to come and also shoot the wedding for the agreed upon price (I had quoted between $100-200), but I wouldn't be the main photographer. I told him I would get back to them on that.

I was heartbroken. I had really worked myself up to thinking I could do this and now it was ripped away from me. As he was talking on the phone it was all I could do to hold it together. As soon as I got off the phone I . Of course my overly curious kids wanted to know what was wrong and Brandon (the littlest one) asked what was "broke". That's his way of asking where I got hurt since every injury is something "broke" with him. I finally pulled myself together and told DH what was going on. I was more pissed at myself for spending all this money for nothing than he was. Like I said earlier he has been trying to get me to buy a DSLR for a while now, but we hadn't been looking at the moment. He thinks I should shoot it still. I told him I was going to sleep on it and to quit talking to me about it.

I woke up this morning feeling better about it and pretty sure that I will NOT be shooting the wedding. Nothing worse than having 2 cameras pointed at you and not knowing where to look. I am thinking about asking if they are going to have a rehearsal and dinner and offer to come shoot that and maybe the set up of the wedding, but I'm not sure. I would love to recoup some of the money, but I don't want to feel like second fiddle.

Now I am thinking of taking some classes with my new camera so if this ever comes up again I will be confident in my abilities.

On the Disney front, I have washed my last set of spiral spray paint Mickey head shirts, but they are still drying, so no pictures yet. I am also trying to duplicate a technique that Tinker_ has tried which will involve color blocker and tie dye. Wish me luck on that one. I am only to the halfway point and it isn't going great so far. I think I tried making it harder than I should have. Oh well, only one way to learn.

 

[jenn-]

So far this summer I have spent a lot of time tie dying. One might think this is a normal creative outlet for me but it isn't. My real passion comes in the form of photography and digital scrapbooking. I have been addicted to photography for about the last 10 years and will finally be getting my DSLR on Wednesday (well that's what Fed Ex says so far). I can't wait to learn how to use it.

I have been digitally scrapbooking now since June of 2006. I will have to come through and share with ya'll all my Disney related pages. I have a few. For now though here is my latest DISboard tie dying experience page.

 

[ljcrochet]

That layout is great! I love the mickey head in the center. You are making me want to make some shirts for the trip.

 

[mickeysmyboy]

I LOVE your scrapbook page!!! So cute!! Where did you find the directions for the shirts? I just, after being inspired by you , tye dyed a regular round designs for the first time ever late last week for the party we had this weekend. Now I may try to do Mickey for our trip! It may take me the next 5 and 1/2 months to do 10 shirts and get something I'm completely happy with