Matching shirts! Gotta have? Or make it stop?

I'll admit, the first few times we went to Disney World, I thought the whole matching shirt thing was kinda corny. Some were cute, but the plain boring ones with just some black screen printing were just blah.

But then my daughter saw the tie dye Mickey shirts and I did think those were pretty cool. She begged us to make them and I said okay. I looked up instructions online and bought supplies. The kit came with more than enough dye, so we decided to make a set of rainbow shirts, and then some in just red and green, since we were going at Christmas time. Thought it would be cute for a Christmas card photo in front of Cinderella's Castle. Easy peasy. Done.

And then my crafty brain started thinking of other ideas. And we ended up making 4 more sets of shirts, one for each park with it's icon on it. See the post here with those shirts.

So yeah, safe to say we were hooked! It was cute and we got so many compliments. Disney is a place where we can just let lose and be silly, and matching shirts fit in perfectly with that mentality. I finally got the appeal of the shirts! And it did make it easier to spot our family members in the crowd!

So for this last trip we started planning shirts way in advance. And Pinterest was awesome for ideas. SOOOO many cool things there! Click here to follow my boards! I have one board dedicated to all things Disney! We settled on five sets of shirts.

The first was our holiday shirts, a design I came up with all on my own! :) We've become really good at making our own stencils and really adding lots of cool touches to our shirts! This one was done by stamping the wreath with a couple different shades of green then adding the Mickey berries with puffy paint!

This next one was so easy to do and looked so so cool. It was my favorite! Just masking tape and fabric spray paint! After that I added the Mickey head in black.

This next one was inspired by a print I saw on Pinterest. Thought it was so so cool. So we kinda took it and made it into coordinating shirts. We made our own stencils and used metallic fabric paint. Not everyone got what the numbers were, but some people did and that made it all worth it! :) (The years the parks opened, in case you are wondering!)

Saw the silhouette idea on Pinterest, but we gave it our own twist! Each person picked their favorite character and then a quote from the movie!

And lastly is another design we came up with on our own. I originally had a different idea for a Peace, Love, and Mickey shirt that I had seen on Pinterest, but my very creative hubby came up with this idea. And I loved it! We've gotten some great compliments on it! This one was tricky though. Lots of different stencils and lots of steps, with plenty of waiting in between for the paint to dry. But so worth it!

Art of Animation was A. MAZE. ING!

Be prepared for a TON of photos!

When we originally booked this trip, way back when, we were booked for Pop Century. But then my parents needed to postpone. I was really bummed...but then I realized something awesome. Art of Animation would be open for the new date! SWEETNESS! So we rebooked for a Cars suite. And then my parents needed to back out completely. Bummed again. We couldn't afford the suite on our own....well...we probably could have, but it cut $1200 off our package to switch to a standard value resort room. And that's just too much of a savings not to. I was bummed to not be able to stay at the new resort. But then, they changed the projected opening date for the standard section at Art of Animation! The Little Mermaid rooms were supposed to open mid December 2012, but then it changed to mid September! Woo Hoo!!! I made the switch and I was so so excited!!

We arrived and were simply blown away. Even the lobby is breathtaking with all the drawings on the wall and the way the front desk area is lit up.

Our room was ready, so we headed over. The walk wasn't exactly short, but we didn't care. Room was so fun!

The resort is breathtaking. SOOOO much attention to detail. Every morning and evening, we had to walk through The Lion King section. Very very cool with the character statues, elephant graveyard, and foliage. Really felt like we were somewhere else.

The Little Mermaid section was so bright and colorful. We loved posing with Ariel's treasures and of course, the statue of Prince Eric!

The Cars section was amazing...like walking into the movie. We were instantly transported to Route 66 and Radiator Springs. Cars is one of our family's favorite movies, and we were in heaven!

And lastly, Finding Nemo. Very colorful and fun. The pool was awesome. Loved the giant scuba mask!

We had lunch at Landscape of Flavors and it was so so good. The variety of meals was wonderful. I had the portuguese sausage and it was really good. The decor in the food court was really pretty. A really great place to eat!

I think the only downside to staying there was the buses. Maybe it's because the resort is new and filled to capacity when we were there, but the buses were crazy packed. Our first night at Magic Kingdom, we took one look at the never ending bus line and hopped in line for Pop Century. We had a bit of a walk, but it wasn't bad. If you walk through Pop and take the Generation Gap bridge over (if that's even what they're still calling it.....), it's pretty convenient. In our opinion, far better than standing in line for an hour waiting for a bus. We did this several nights. It was just easier. And the views from the bridge were so so pretty :)

Been busy....

I feel awful! 2013 started out quite awesome for me and my career, so many other things took a back seat, including this blog. I had big plans to write all kinds of posts about our most recent trip. But I just didn't have time :(

BUT I have plans to get back to it! I love this blog and I love sharing my experiences and helping others plan their Disney trips!! So i promise to get back to it very very soon!!!