Disney Highlights!

We had a wonderful time at Disney World! Here were some highlights! We took on Disney World with a 2 year old and a 3 year old!

Magic Kingdom was of course... magical, and the girls had a wonderful time exploring. They were all new to the theme park "thing", so I felt like it took us the first day to catch our stride. We spent most of our day in Fantasyland and the adults enjoyed seeing the new addition to the park as well. (Which included Beast's Castle, Gaston's Tavern, the new Ariel ride, and the Snow White mine train ride which was still under construction at the time we were there.)

EPCOT was our second full day at Florida, and admittedly - turned out to be our favorite! We found plenty to do for preschoolers there, they had art stations and a number of rides that were preschool friendly. (Living Seas & the Nemo ride was one of our favorites!) The girls also loved seeing the World Showcase. The highlight that day was the Princess Lunch at Akershus, which also could be said to be the highlight of the entire TRIP! It was wonderful, and will be a must do on our next WDW vacation as well!

Our next day was spent at the beach, and we again had a fantastic time. It was the girls' first time seeing the ocean for them both, and they were definitely awestruck by it!

On our final day, it turned out to be a bit of a rain day, so we took to Downtown Disney and tried to get some last minute shopping in!

We had a wonderful time at Walt Disney World and cannot wait to go back! In fact, we started talking about our next trip the minute we got home and decided we needed to squeeze in one more trip at the end of the year! I'm excited to begin preparations for our next WDW trip in 2014!!

A bit of nostalgia - Disney World style!

I'm a bit nostalgic writing this post… over 2 years ago, I started this blog to capture our adventures at Walt Disney World when Bella (my little Cupcake, for those that only read the blog and don't follow our YouTube Channel, beingmommywithstyle) was only 9 months old! It was her first trip to WDW and I was excited to share it with her. At the time, I was not on YouTube full-time yet, and only took limited video of the trip. Oh how I wish now I had the camera out more during that time, and caught all those precious moments on film… but alas, at least I have pictures and a few videos.

And I'm back now, after a short blog hiatus - to share a Disney trip once again. This time with BOTH girls (Natalie, "aka Peanut" was "on" the last trip… but no one knew it yet, ha!), Natalie's first visit to Walt Disney World and the first vacation there that Bella would remember. I knew this would be an exciting time, and I was so thankful that I would now have more extensive videos to look back on in years to come.

We ventured to Disney World in Orlando the first week in April 2014, and the trip went marvelous… I will be sharing a separate blog recap post for each of the "Day in the Life" YouTube videos. These will be videos that I will look back and treasure for some time, and I'm excited to be able to share them with you. I will also be doing a blog recap of my YouTube Travel Prep series and traveling with toddlers. It was an adventure, but an extremely fun one at that!

Preschool Alphabet Letter Crafts: A through Z!

For the first 26 weeks of Preschool at Home, we completed an alphabet letter craft for each letter of the alphabet! I came across the idea of these adorable things on Pinterest one night before starting our preschool at home endeavor, and decided we would do the coordinating craft letter to match the 'letter of the week' each week!

I thought it worked perfectly and it was a great way to reinforce the letter of the week, as well as an additional way to talk about things that started that letter. Some of Cupcake's favorites were the 'I is for Ice Cream' craft, 'L is for Lion', 'T is for Tree', and 'X is for Xylophone'! I helped with the cutting and some marker work for details, Cupcake was in charge of glueing the letters down to the page, picking out background paper colors, and arranging everything together. By the end of the first 26 weeks, she had become a pro at putting the letters together!

26 Letters in detail:

A is for Alligator

B is for Bear

C is for Cat

D is for Dog

E is for Elephant

F is for Fox

G is for Giraffe

H is for Horse

I is for Ice Cream

J is for Jaguar

K is for Kangaroo

L is for Lion

M is for Mouse

N is for Nest

O is Owl

P is for Parrot

Q is for Quail

R is for Rabbit

S is for Snail

T is for Tree

U is for Umbrella 

V is for Vase

W is for Watermelon

X is for Xylophone

Y is for Yak

Z is for Zebra!

Check out our Preschool at Home project on YouTube, where we work on preschool projects at home to increase readiness for going to school!

www.youtube.com/beingmommywithstyle

New Dress Up Storage & Organization!

Tah dah! Everyone at our house is now a princess... due to our wonderful new dress up organization for the girls' dresses and accessories! It works as great storage when the items are not in use and gives them easy access to use things during play time!

We had originally seen a dress up station on Wayfair.com, but my husband thought it was something he could tackle and do himself. We came across blogger Jess, that had that same thought on "Craftiness is not Optional", which even contained a link to another site by Ana White that had some plans for similar designs! He went to work on ours and came up with a design that would work great in our play room.

My husband put it together over a few weekends, with some additional work time being added on it by using a router on all of the edges to give them a rounded finish - so there were no sharp corners in the girls' play area. We picked out paint at Lowe's (Valspar "Plum Burst" 4002- 10B, in case you're looking for it!) - and made our own stencils on some card stock using a font in the word processing program on our computer. I think it turned out beautifully!

The top shelf has storage space for tiaras, cowboy hats, and the pirate hat... if it was ever not in use!

Lots of room to hold the ever important dresses & tutus!

The bottom has a bin that is a great little cubby for purses, shoes, and jewelry:

It has been a great addition to the play room! I will do an updated playroom organization video soon!

Here's the reveal of the dress up station to the girls for the first time - and a mini tour of their dress up items (so far, ha!) in their collection:

The girls loved it, as you can see here!

Cupcake looking all grown up in her Rapunzel costume!

Peanut enjoying the dress up selections!

Great job to Daddy and Grandad - and a very special thanks to Craftiness is Not Optional who was a great help in giving us inspiration for ours, and the plans by Ana White that she linked on her page that gave Daddy a great place to start for ours!