Over the River and Through the Woods to Mickey's House We Go! And Grandma is in Tow!

Your MK plans sound so fun! I'm getting excited to read your report when you get back!!!:yay:
 
I apologize right up front for not replying to everybody. Now that I finally have an office computer, the boss expects me to get all those piles off my desk. I just don't understand his way of thinking sometimes.:sad2:

I hosted my Disney party Saturday and we had a great time. But, before I post those pictures, I thought I'd post what we did the weekend before. We made our garden larger. About ten times larger than it was before. When I was a little girl, we always always had a garden.

Let me stop and explain something before I go on. Where I live now is the same place where I grew up. My mother and daddy built their new house on acreage that they bought later on. When my dad died, we were living in a trailer and my mother suggested we move it on the spot where they used to live. So, we did. About two years later, we sold the trailer and built our log house.

After my dad died, the garden got smaller. When Lacey was younger, we planted the smaller garden and it was fun. However, as Lacey became involved in softball and Hunter was born, we just didn't have time to keep up the semi-large garden. The garden, again, grew smaller and smaller. We let the grass grown over most of the old garden area and we had just a small garden with iris, wildflowers and a few tomato plants.

Now, back to last weekend. John and I decided we wanted a garden again. It would be good to get outside in the dirt and grow some vegetables. John did a job for a guy way back last Fall and they made a deal where the guy got us a tiller in exchange for John building him a vanity. We've called him and called him and he kept promising he was getting the tiller. Friday, April 16th rolls around and still no tiller. I was p.o.'d. John was just fed up. So, Saturday morning, John rented a tiller and the garden started to take shape again.

On to pictures. You really can't tell too much from the pictures other than you can see the little patch of garden on the far side of this picture. It had our iris and garlic in it and we hadn't weeded it in quite a while so it's grown up.

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John was still kind of experimenting with the tiller and we were all over the place making rows.

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Hunter wanted to give it a try. The first time, John walked beside him because the tiller was pretty big and a bit hard to handle:

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But, he got the hang of it:

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Half of the shed in the background is fairly new (it's an add-on) and we haven't stained it yet so please disregard the shape it looks like it is in. We just haven't gotten around to bleaching out the siding and staining it. It's on our list but we haven't been able to mark that one off yet. It's right under paint the back porch and carport and spread ant poison all over the yard. The painting is done so staining the shed is coming up soon.

While I'm talking about stuff other than Disney, I believe I've told ya'll about the construction going on at the church. I drove home that way last week just to see what progress had been made. I don't want to take pictures Sunday morning because we are too busy searching for a dadgum parking place.

I don't know if you can really tell much but you can definitely tell there's some construction going on:

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Okay, so I'm going to now try and sneak in an installment about my Disney party. Be back as soon as I can.



 
My grandparents had a huge garden at their house when I was growing up! I loved it! Yours is going to be great!

Silly boss....expecting you to do work on the work computer! :confused:
 
I don't remember if it was this thread or your trip report thread that you mentioned pins from disney. I received one for free quick service dining plan. I had it applied to my reservation and still kept the regular dining plan as I had planned and saved $303.16 on my trip in July. I think they sent it because I was going to book through the website, but never did. I booked our last two trips through a travel agent. My DH was very happy with the savings.:cool1:
 

Friday afternoon, John and I ate lunch that I brought home from Sonic and then set off for Hobby Lobby (it's so nice to get off work at Noon and that my hubby is self employed and can pretty much do what he wants) in search of name badges. You know those kind like you get at seminars or the kind when you are a volunteer at church. I had an idea to use the Mickey head paint samples from Home Depot to make name tags. I also wanted to look for a helium balloon blower upper machine.

We knew that we didn't have a long time to shop around because we had to pick Hunter up from school. The line at the school goes all the way out of the school parking lot and down the highway (literally) if you get there too late. I like to get there about 2:40 ish so that I'm not one of those parked out on the side of the highway.

Anyway, we went on to Hobby Lobby and, of course, couldn't find the name badges or even the plastic things that clip on the end of lanyards. I abandoned that idea and we moved on to see what other goodies I needed. I knew that I wanted to make some cookies so I cut down the cake and cookie decorating aisle and found two cookie cutters that I liked. One was in the shape of a gift and the other a party hat.

I also picked up a couple of tubes of the pre-colored icing, a decorating tip and a coupler. Then, John reminded me that I already had some of the tubes of icing in the cabinet at home. I totally forgot about that so I put the others away. That would turn out to be a boo-boo.

They had one helium tank and it was $34.99. I didn't really want to pay that much so we decided to go to Toys R Us and Wal-Mart to see if they had one. If not, I'd come back to Hobby Lobby.

We didn't find anything else that we needed in Hobby Lobby so we checked out and ran by Dollar Tree to get another table cloth, two gift bags and a few other things, one of which are some oatmeal cookies that John thinks are better than homemade ones.

By the time we left Dollar Tree, the bad weather that the Weather Channel had predicted was starting to roll into the area in the form of a rain shower. They were predicting golf ball size hail, heavy rain and possible tornados. Not the best shopping weather but I had to get my errands run. As we were driving to Hunter's school, we saw a car slide and hit the truckl in front of them. Of course, they were following too close and weren't paying attention to the fact that the truck had put their brakes on. Some people just don't know how to drive when it starts raining. :sad2:

We picked up Hunter from school and headed for Toys R Us. While we were waiting for school to recess, I called Toys R Us and they had the helium tank for $24.99. As we pulled into Toys R Us, it had started raining a little harder so we made a dash into the store. I bet you can't guess where my first stop was......












........the bathroom. :rolleyes:

After the pit stop, we found the helium tank and that's when we heard the skies open up and the storm officially started. We knew that we couldn't make it to the car without being drenched. What else was there to do but wander around the store. Hunter loved it. He was able to look at each and every video game in the store, play a little guitar hero and look at the movies too. Once the rain let up, we paid for the tank and ran out to the car.

Next stop was the Wal-Mart Bakery. I needed a cake for the party. I wanted to go with classic Disney. The only problem was, there were no cakes with just Mickey on them. They had the surfing cake like Dana had at her party. They had a Cars cake. They had a Tinkerbell cake (which I wanted but it didn't go along with my "theme". They also had several Winnie the Pooh cakes, a Hannah Montana cake and Princess and the Frog. None of those were what I was looking for. So, I looked through the book again and found a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cake. It was kinda sorta like I wanted so I went for it. Especially since it was getting late in the afternoon and I had to place my order soon. Thankfully, the girl working in the bakery was a client of my former boss so she changed the cake up a little to incorporate balloons like I wanted.

After the cake was ordered, I bought all of the other stuff I needed to make my snacks. There's a McDonald's in Wal-Mart and Hunter suddenly was hit with hunger pains as we passed. While I went to get the rest of my groceries, he and John sat in McDonald's. I finished up and went back to get my boys so we could head to the house.

Friday evening, I folded clothes and did a little prep work and made one batch of sugar cookies cut out in the shape of gifts. My plan was to do more the next morning and ice them too. Why, oh why, didn't I do some real cleaning that evening I don't know. Probably just laziness on my part. That, and the fact that the storms were raging outside which made me want to do nothing.

Saturday morning, I got up about 8:00 a.m. and started doing chores. Everything was done with the exception of sweeping and I wasn't about to do that until the last minute. Another round of storms swept through our area about 9:15 a.m. while John was making a donut run for he and Hunter. I started trying to decorate the cookies and the icing didn't come out very well. I massaged the tubes thinking it just needed to be warmed up and loosened up. It came out but it didn't look good at all. I tasted it and it tasted a little old. I opened another one and it didn't taste right either. Those cookies and all the icing went into the garbage can and I moved on to Plan B.

Plan B included me baking more cookies. I knew I needed to cut them in shapes that needed no icing. That meant I needed Plan C. Plan C was pulling out my Mickey head shaped egg/pancake mold.

So, after Plan A, Plan B and Plan C, I ended up with these:

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Not as elaborate as I wanted but still pretty cute.

Time flew by but I finally had all of my food done and we moved on to blowing up the balloons they sent. Those suckers were the dickens to tie because you had to fill them up all the way in order to get the ears to pop out. And, the balloons themselves were thick. I had an idea that I wanted the balloons to look like they were popping out of a gift bag.

All too soon, it was 1:00 p.m. and time for John and Hunter to pick up the cake. While they were gone, I put the finishing touches on the tables.

This was my gift/door prize table:

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See the red cup and container on the table. When I couldn't find the name tags, I came up with a different idea. I would have everybody put their name on a Mickey head and put it in the container. I would then pull out names during the party and award door prizes. This is one of the reasons I have a miscellaneous box in the top of my closet. All year long, I buy little things on sale or clearance and use them as gifts. I had a small Disney princess photo album, a small Mickey photo album, a Mickey washcloth and a Tinkerbell washcloth and a set of Mickey coasters and tennis balls that I bought at Mickey Mart last trip.

I ended up changing the table decorations a little and adding our mug/drink glasses we got at Epcot to the table:

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I snapped a couple of pictures while John and Hunter were going to get the cake. The centerpieces were a snowglobe of the Magic Kingdom train station and two of John's Mickey trophies purchased at MGM Studios. Excuse me, Hollywood Studios. The little Mickeys were cut out with my Mickey paper punch.

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The above pictures are pre-cake and pre-punch.

I even had a balloon in the bathroom. I have a wooden bear on the corner table and I had him holding a balloon:

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I looked at the clock and almost had a heart attack. It was 1:20 and the party started at 2:00. I hadn't even taken a shower yet. I don't think I've ever taken a shower, dressed and dried my hair so fast. Thus, I had semi-wet curly hair pulled back with barrettes for the party.

When I got out, John and Hunter were back with the cake. It really wasn't what I wanted but it was the only cake with a semi-classic Mickey on it.

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John snapped my picture as I was trying to get stuff arranged.

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Everybody started arriving and the fun started. I deliberately kept my party down to just a few people so it would be more intimate. Two of my guests didn't get to make it because they had a meeting out of town. We chatted a bit about upcoming trips (two families there have vacations planned that overlap our's).

Then, we moved on to playing the bingo game that came in the big red box. We played one round and it became quite lively with everybody calling out what they needed to win. I gave out a door prize to the winner and then gave up the calling position to Hunter so John and I could put the food out.

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Let's move on to the more yummy aspect of this party. The food!

I made Mickey shaped pimento and cheese sandwiches and Mickey shaped cream cheese sandwiches. Here's one plate of them. A few have a little crust on them because the cutter was a little too big:

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We also had ham sandwiches that were in the shape of triangles. The dips were cucumber/dill and the old favorite, Ranch. I made a cheese ball but instead of forming it in a ball, I put it in a Mickey cake pan:

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Also on the menu were fresh fruit and fruit dip:

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Pic of the guests standing in the food line:

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Mama waiting her turn. You know how us mothers do, wait last to get served even though everybody tells us to get in line:

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The kids watched Nemo while we ate. Guess who was the first one to ask if we could cut the cake? The men!

When everybody was finished eating, I passed out the goodies to everybody and we talked about upcoming trips and visited since we hadn't seen each other in a while. I also gave out four more door prizes much to everybody's delight. Oh, and I had the guests fill out the card registering them for the free necklace.

The party turned out just like I wanted it to. There were enough people there to have fun but not so many people that we couldn't talk with each other and visit.

Thanks Disney!

 
Hi Lisa!!:goodvibes

Your MK plans look great!! Your trip is getting so close!!:yay:

My parent's always plant a big garden every year...there's nothing like tomatoes fresh from the garden!:thumbsup2

Your party looks like it was so much fun!! Love the Mickey shaped cookies!! Yum!!;)
 

OK, What in the world is Hunter doing pushing that tiller with no shoes on? :eek:

Now, that I've gotten that off my chest, :laughing:, let me say that your Disney party looks as if it turned out great. All your Mickey shaped food looks great---I especially love the Mickey sugar cookies! :thumbsup2
 
For some reason, I am not able to use multi-quote or even a quote. What's up with that? So, let's see if I can just post to you guys:

weezy26nm: I liked the food part the best!

Angies1274: I love fresh tomatoes too! We also planted corn, squash, cucumbers, peas, string beans, egg plants and all sorts of peppers. I can't wait to start seeing some of our seeds sprouting from the soil.

MHTeacher: By the time we let Hunter run the tiller by himself, the ground had been broken up pretty good and we had already schooled him on not getting his feet close. Did you notice in the other picture that John's shoes were at the end of the garden? We ALL shed our shoes. That dirt felt sooooo very good.

The Mickey cookies turned out much better than the gift shaped ones I made. They were easier too!
 
Your party looks so great Lisa! I love all of it. You did a fantastic job.

It looks like you had a quite a few people at your party. When you said just a few I was expecting 3-4. Looks like a full house of folks having a good time to me. That Bingo game is fun isn't it?

Thanks for sharing your party. If you're ever looking for the name card things again, Walmart sells them too. I noticed them when I bought the ID holders for our countdown calendar a week or so ago.
 
What a fun party! You really worked hard to put on a nice one, and it shows. The food looks terrific.
Your garden is going to be great, but lots of work! My mother always had a big garden too, but I stick to some tomatoes, herbs, and a few squash or eggplant. I'm LAZY!
 
Your party looks so great Lisa! I love all of it. You did a fantastic job.

It looks like you had a quite a few people at your party. When you said just a few I was expecting 3-4. Looks like a full house of folks having a good time to me. That Bingo game is fun isn't it?

Thanks for sharing your party. If you're ever looking for the name card things again, Walmart sells them too. I noticed them when I bought the ID holders for our countdown calendar a week or so ago.

I usually go all out on party decorations but I kept this one pretty low key. But thanks for the compliment.

We had four complete families at the party and then my other two guests couldn't come. There were actually more people there than what is in the pictures. Most of the kids were in Hunter's room playing PlayStation games.

The bingo game was fun especially since we are all Disney fans.

I looked for the name tag things at Wal-Mart but couldn't find them. But, then again, they were changing their craft department around and there was some stuff in baskets and buggies so they could have been there.

What a fun party! You really worked hard to put on a nice one, and it shows. The food looks terrific.
Your garden is going to be great, but lots of work! My mother always had a big garden too, but I stick to some tomatoes, herbs, and a few squash or eggplant. I'm LAZY!

Thanks! We did have a lot of fun. Everybody that was there was family. Some I hadn't seen in several months but have chatted with via internet and phone. So, it was nice to visit with them

Oh yeah, I know the garden is going to be a lot of work. Especially since we tilled up a spot that hadn't been tilled in so long. I'm expecting the grass to start popping out just any time now.
 
I brought my lunch with me today so I could get caught up on my Dis subscriptions. My goal is to add another pre-trip installment and catch up on my reading. Sounds like a lot to do in just an hour. Maybe, I'll start on my lunch early so I'll have my hands free during the lunch hour.
 
My goodness!!! Everything at the party looked awesome!! How did you do the cheese-Mickey?!?! The cookies turned out great. What is in the cream cheese sandwiches (besides the obvious, I mean ;) )? How do you make the pimento & cheese sandwiches? Am I sheltered to not know the answers to those questions? They just sound so good & I've never had them before.
 
Yay!! I'm glad you have a new computer at work!

You're Disney party looks like so much fun! Between you and Dana, you've convinced me that on our last Disney night before we leave, I'm going to get a cake. I can't take it anymore! I must have cake! Sorry, you know me and cake! I love the idea of having the cheese ball be in the shape of a Mickey head! I am definately going to have to go in the home store in DTD and buy me some stuff like that.

I really wish I had pics of our church when it was renovated. I may have to do some digging and see if I can find some. At one point the whole front of the church was completely open. You're pictures are bringing back the memories. I went out to lunch last Sunday and was telling some friends about your church being renovated and we all recalled the months that we went through it.
 
It looks like your party was great fun!! Thank you for sharing with us. I LOVE the Mickey cheese spread......lol. The sugar cookies look yummy too with the different colored sugar on them. I have enjoyed reading your pre-trip report, can't wait til you take your vacation and do a trip report on it. Caribbean Beach was the first resort we stayed at onsite and we loved it. Hope you all have a wonderful vacation....not too much longer to go!!
 
o wow! the fooood loooooks sooooooo goooooooood, make more for me please!:rotfl: party look like it turn out swell:)
 
Lisa your party turned out GREAT :thumbsup2:goodvibes. I swear I could have reached in and got me a strawberry :rotfl2:. It looks like everybody had a good time at the party.

Hunter seems to be having a good time with that tiller. I hated doing garden work growing up :eek:. I swore that when I was grown I would never do gardening again. Now I would love to have a garden and grow some fresh veggies. I don't have the time nor the area to plant a garden, so I am out of luck :sad2:.
 
It looks like your going to have a nice big garden, my garden is nowhere near that big but I have flower beds on all sides of our house I love being out in the yard in my bare feet too it does feel good under your feet you'll have to show us pics after everything starts coming up!

Your party looks like so much fun and now I really feel the need to make River a Mickey shaped p&j sandwhich I wish I had a Mickey shaped cutter!
 












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