Disney Travel Journals

I love to keep a travel journal for all of our vacations. I include all the info from what we did each day. On travel days I keep track of how far we drove, where we stopped to eat, and where we stayed the night. (I even keep info about what exits on the highway had great playplaces for the kids to burn off some energy.) And for the rest of the days of vacation I keep track of all the activities of the day and especially where we ate. This is helpful for when I am doing my scrapbooking and for when I am planning future vacations. My travel journals are done for my sake, but I want my kids to begin keeping travel journals as well. I love to hear about the things that they think are memorable about each day. The places that they enjoy and things they liked to eat are sometimes not what I thought they would enjoy. I couldn't find a travel journal that I liked anywhere so I set off to make my own.

I found a design on the DIS boards and used it as a template. The Disigner had completed her book on Microsoft PowerPoint so that is what I used for my book. I changed the book quite a bit to make it match up exactly to our trip. I had to duplicate some of the pages since we spent 2 days at Epcot and 2 days at Magic Kingdom. And it helped since I knew where we were going to eat each day and what things we would do at the parks. I didn't give the kids their books until the end of the trip, so I had to keep track of their favorites each night so that I could help them fill in their books at the end of the week. On the bus ride back to the resort each night I would interview the kids about their favorite rides, snacks, foods, characters, and attractions. I recorded their answers in my phone and then we completed their books together when we got home from vacation. I will make Travel Journals for our next vacation too, but I will probably design them differently and will most likely use Microsoft Publisher. 

Disney Activity Books

Since we drove to Disney (from Ohio) I needed lots of things to keep the kids busy in the car. One of the things we do on long car trips is "Car Gifts". I collect cheap toys and special treats and wrap them up in wrapping paper. Then, every few hours on the road, the kids get to open a new gift. I usually alternate edible and non-edible gifts. The edible gifts are typically ring pops, those fun suckers that you see at the checkout aisles, mini M&M tubes, and other candy that they are always begging for when we are shopping. The non-edible gifts include things like Crayola Color Wonder items, sticker books, little toys or junk from the dollar store, and activity books. For our Disney trip I decided to make a Disney themed activity book and get it spiral bound to make it extra special!

For these books I found many of the activity pages on the DIS boards. I also got the covers from a generous Disigner on the DIS boards. Then I created a few pages myself and found some other things on the internet that I wanted to include. I included different things in Kaylin's book then I did in the boys' books. Her book had pages about the different countries in Epcot, some Disney madlibs, and had a license plate game. The boys' books had mostly coloring pages and mazes, since they weren't reading yet. I printed the pages on extra thick paper so that I could print on both sides of the page and not have it bleed through. I then had them bound at Office Max. I wrapped them up with a new box of washable colored pencils and they were the first gift that they opened on our trip. The kids loved these books and I was very happy with how they turned out.

Disney Autograph Books

For our 1st Disney World trip back in 2010, I bought the kids autograph books from Disney World for $10 each. They looked great and the kids loved them. But, I wanted to add a picture of the kids with each character on the page facing that character's autograph. We ended up with about 45 autographs and with that many pictures in the book, it became very wide and doesn't really close. Here is what their books looked like from our last trip.



So for our 2013 trip I wanted to use autograph books that had room to add pictures. I didn't like anything that I could find online and didn't like the prices that I found on etsy, so I just decided to make them myself.

I got the autograph book covers from the wonderful Disigners on the DIS boards. But for the next trip I will hopefully be able to make them myself. I found blank 5x7 index cards at Office Max and had them bound right there at Office Max. I also had them laminate the front and back covers (I had the kids names on the back cover). There was plenty of room to add pictures on each page and the papers were thick enough that the sharpie markers didn't bleed through the pages. Yea! And, these books cost a little less than the $10 that I paid last time for their books. I wasn't really looking to save money by making my own but just wanted something for a similar price that would work better for how I was planning on using them.

First Post

I kept meaning to start this blog. But every time I think about sitting down with the laptop, I think of 100 other things that need to be done first. I also hate seeing things on my to-do list day after day and not getting them done. So, here I will begin a project that I have wanted to start for some time. Since most of my posts will be about Disney vacation planning, this project is mainly for the friends of mine who are planning Disney vacations. Even though I have only been to Disney World twice, I have spent months and months planning each one and really love making vacations special. On our last trip I spent way too much time on projects to make our trip extra special. I will start by posting pictures of what I made and explain how they can be recreated. After I finish with the Disney posts, maybe I will move on to some other loves of mine: organizational projects or ideas for family fun.