Adventure In The Great Wide Somewhere

I'll be the first to admit: I do NOT know how to successfully apply for the #DisneyMP. Sure, I made round two last year, which is both an honor and an incredible way to make friends with a great big beautiful group of Disney fans, but that's not quite the same as serving on the panel. I did pick up a few different ways to NOT make it onto the panel. Here's hoping I've learned from these mistakes and that they might help you in your application adventure! Ignore Social Media My peaceful, lazy Labor Day weekend is about to give way to the exciting adventures of the #DisneyMP search. If you've caught the Disney Parks Blog last Thursday, you noticed that Leanne's lovely article  finally let us peek behind the scenes. Yes, it's that time of year again. Disney Park Moms Panel Search 2015 begins next Tuesday the second of September at 10am EST and runs through Friday the fifth of September at noon EST. Let the spell checking commence! A whole week early w

With so much riding on picking out the perfect vacation (time, stress, money) it always made sense to me to stick with what we knew. Growing up, our vacations alternated between Walt Disney World and beach condos. Until one day, during my junior year of college when I agreed to chaperone a high school Europe trip. That trip taught me many things, but mostly that I wanted to see more than just a part of this world. As a fan of all things pixie-dust related, I wanted to follow Disney and set to sea with the newest cruise ships. How do I go from my beloved home away from home at Walt Disney World without finding myself adrift? The "fish out of water" feeling sent me straight to the DVR/library/discussion boards/Google for more information. Armed with entirely too much information, much of it contradictory opinions on what I "must do" for a fabulous first cruise, I finally shipped out on my first cruise. Guess what? We didn't do most of the things on that list

Welcome Wordless Wednesday Blog Hoppers! Spot the hidden Mickey in the old Palo dishware. Thank you to Focused on the Magic for hosting!

Time to stock up on Mickey Bars, Oxford commas, and patience. The best guess, based on rather cryptic Seinfeld tweets from the Jedi Master himself, is that next Tuesday morning the applications for the 2015 Disney Parks Moms Panel will open. I'm excited, yet calm. (Which is a good thing considering that review of round one often stretches over a month.) Will there be multiple choice questions? A lightning round? Videos? Skype? It's really wide open as the panel application process continues to evolve under Gary Buchannan's leadership. I plan to dream pixie dust dreams and enjoy every minute of this year meeting the most magical ladies (and men) in the world. Who else is applying?  

Welcome Foodie Friday Blog Hoppers! Chocolate Chip Pecan Mickey Pancakes (GF and Vegan) Location: My Kitchen! Cost: The Cleanliness of My Kitchen Magical breakfast for one! My kids love making pancakes at home because they get to be in charge of creating their very own culinary magic. The chocolate chips may have something to do with it, too. I love mixing up our own pancake batter at home because it's easier to mix our own than to find gluten free vegan pancakes anywhere outside of Disney. Honestly, there is no telling how much milk or vegetable oil went into these. They seemed to taste pretty awesome regardless of exact measurements! Ingredients: 1 cup Bisquick Gluten Free mix 1 cup almond milk 1 egg substitute (your choice. We like 1 TBSP Chia Seed to 3 TBSP hot water.) 2 tsp. vegetable oil 1 tsp. vanilla extract 1/2 cup pecan chips 1/2 cup chocolate chips (Vegan and GF)        or blueberries Earth Balance to grease griddle The joy of getting

Welcome Wordless Wednesday Blog Hoppers!  For the record, the old bride and groom Mickey Ears ROCKED! Thank you to Focused on the Magic for hosting!  

As a child walking into Disneyland I seriously considered running away from home and hiding out in Fantasyland for the rest of their life. I figured Aurora wouldn't mind if I slept in the castle. In this magical wonderful place that inexplicably smelt of hot buttered popcorn and ice cream cones and hope, everyone feels welcome and at home. Sharing the magic of family togetherness and memory-making with other people is a real treat. Nothing comes quite so close to the idea of living everyday in Walt Disney World or onboard the Disney Magic. Nothing is quite so fun as meeting for coffee with a friend to discuss port adventures, kids clubs, and amazing destinations. Then, I applied for the panel last year. Everything changed. I belonged to a few different Disney discussion forums, but somehow, meeting fellow super fans among the Disney Parks Moms Panel hopefuls made the whole community come to life for me. Maybe it was the mystery of figuring out the tweets. Maybe it was the

Winter season break becomes a little more magical for Oncers (fans of the ABC show Once Upon a Time.) Aside from my usual hanging on the #OAUT twitter tag for hints about the spring episodes, I can enjoy something fairytale with a lovely touch of the whimsical. Galavant boasts a score by musical phenomenon and Disney Legend Alan Menken (everything from The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast to Tangled ) and lyrics by Glenn Slater ( Tangled and the stage adaptation of The Little Mermaid ). "Huzzah And Tally-Ho! Sit Back And Here We Go!" Serious? I don't think so. Seriously fun? I'm betting on it! I love that it doesn't take itself too seriously and I'm definitely going to watch it. Will you be tuning in to see this offbeat musical epic adventure?

It's the most wonderful time of the year! Disney Parks Moms Panel applications should open sometime in the next fifty-five days. Everyone is full of hope and pixie dust. And everyone is already having fun driving themselves crazy over twitter. Specifically over the twitter account of Gary Buchanan. Gary, also known as the Jedi Master of the Moms Panel and the Social Media Manager of Disney Parks,  rallies the hopeful guests during application season (which is fast approaching.) He tirelessly puts a face and a smile on the search team. He made getting the world's most magical rejection letter easier to bear. Kuleen wrote an perfect blog post about Gary the other day. His unbridled enthusiasm leads to fun and hijinks often characterized by late night, Red Bull fueled twitter-fests. While a normal person would look at Gary's tweet about the munchkin coroner visiting The Great Movie Ride as an interesting bit of trivia, #DisneyMP hopefuls jumped right into research

I wish... more than anything... more than jewels... I wish... more than the moon... That it was Christmas so that I could watch one of my favorite musicals glow in the light of this new theatrical release. So that, as Kylee puts it, we can see the real story. (We love our DVD of the original Broadway production, but being a theatrical production, does look "staged" rather than "real." Hasn't stopped Kylee from watching it a dozen or so times, but still.) undefined on Disney Video After years of voting this on our, "I wish it were a major motion picture," list, many of my theatre friends seem (quite) put off that Bernadette Peters is not playing the witch (as she did in the original Broadway cast in 1987.) It seems my theatre friends who are upset may have forgotten all the wonderful high school and community theatre productions they either staged and starred in over the years. I haven't. They were wonderful, beautiful and heartbreaki

No need to send a search party, we survived the first eight weeks of homeschooling! I consciously made the decision to step back from my blog and focus on working through the growing pains of our brand new lifestyle. Crazy Hat Day at VBS #DisneySide After only a week, I'd learned quite a bit . After two months, it's quite incredible to see how things I worried about (difficulty balancing the kids differing curriculums) never materialized and other things that I never considered (like spelling difficulties) took center stage. Here are the twenty random things we learned during our first forty days of homeschooling! 1.) Let It Go. 2.) Seriously, something's got to give and I am okay with priorities shifting. 3.) Schedules are necessary. My kids need to know on certain days they will be doing certain things at certain times or they will never get anything done. Likewise they do best knowing camp is in three weeks and a friend is coming over tomorrow afternoon.