Counterfeit Kit Challenge #3 for August 2016

This is the challenge that we were given:

Challenge #3 for August 2016 - Sounds Foreign to Me!

foreign

adjective

 UK /ˈfɒr.ən/  US /ˈfɔːr.ən/​

 belonging or connected to a country that is not your own: 

Spain was the first foreign country she had visited.

foreign languages

In honour of our German inspiration kit, and the fact that you might have had a go at understanding the kit content list, I'd like you to be inspired by foreign words on your project.

Since I haven't ventured out of the United States as an adult (I need to remedy that!), my first thought was Epcot's World Showcase. I decided to scrap these  photos from the Norway pavilion's quick service bakery, mainly because the name of the bakery sounds so foreign.

All of the supplies for this page came from my August Counterfeit kit, and I have to say I quite love this kit, and the way my pages are coming together with it. I've made a couple more inspired by Shimelle's Project 20 class, which I will share on the 24th for our member's blog hop. Don't forget, we want to see your kits and what you are making with them, so be sure to email us at  thecounterfeitkitchallengeblog@gmail.com  and let us know that you would like to participate!

Magic Monday...Disney Food Edition

Our favorite quick service restaurant at Disney World on our last trip was Flame Tree BBQ at Animal Kingdom, hands down. My mouth waters just thinking about the smoky smell drifting through the park! So, when I saw this challenge over at Disneyscrappers, I knew what I needed to scrap about:

Challenge #7 from the International Scrapbook Day crop, "Food, Glorious Food": We all know there is amazing dining opportunities in the Disney Parks! So this challenge is about getting you to scrap your food and restaurant photos.

Here is my Flame Tree bbq layout:

Once again, I used my April CKC kit (It was a big kit, I will be using it for a little while still!). I was happy to finally get that bird embellie on a page-I have had it since I received it in a 2Peas swap a few years ago, and loved it, put it in numerous kits, but never found quite the right page for it until now. I am happy to finally have it in my album!

A closer look:

Thanks for visiting my blog today, be sure to come back next Monday for a new edition of Magic Monday...I believe we will visit Hollywood Studios for a Star Wars Weekend layout! See ya real soon!

Making the Most of my March kit

I had a little time  this past week to play along with a few more of Shimelle's scrapbook weekend challenges, and put a significant dent in my March CKC kit in the process. For the first layout, I took the challenge to use Shimelle's original collection, which I combined with several cards, washi, and Thickers letter stickers from my March kit:

For the next layout, I took Shimelle's challenge to "Use Hearts" on a layout- most supplies used are from my March kit (I even used one of the awesome digital stamps from the Click kit Digital Stamps- bonus-I learned how to install brushes into photoshop, and it is soooo much easier than I thought it would be!) along with a few bits from my leftover die cuts bin (I even sneaked in an orange Chatterbox tag from forever ago):


This next layout was made for a couple of challenges from Shimelle, "Use Shaped Paper", and "Use Maps and Globes on a Project". I also used a Sketch from Sketch Savvy:

(Which, I love that Susan Stringfellow has made these sketches available for easy download, and they are fantastic for Disney pages, which she has many samples of...I think I am going to be using a bunch of these to get the rest of my Disney stories scrapped from our 2014 trip, before our next trip rolls around.)



And this layout for Shimelle's "Use Circles" challenge, and I based it on Sketch Savvy #1:

Thanks for visiting with me today-hope you enjoyed a peek at my layouts and what I have been creating with my March Kit. If you make a kit from your stash this month, I hope you will share it with us over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge!

What Do You Do When It's Cold Outside?

What do you do when it looks like this outside?

(Yes that's an inch of ice on my driveway!And on everything else-my dog doesn't even want to pee on the grass a.k.a ice needles)
My front steps are a sheet of ice:

and the plants and trees are covered:

So...I stay inside! My kids sleep in...and my poor hubby has to go to work anyway! I don't watch as he slips down the driveway, and just hold my breath and pray as he drives away. He is a good driver, and he did learn to drive up in central Illinois, so he knows how to drive on snow, but it doesn't mean I don't worry!
 As the kids sleep, watch tv, and just generally enjoy their day off school, I scrap our vacation photos and dream of warmer weather. Here are a few of the pages I have made in the last few days:

All of these layouts came from my January Counterfeit Kit (which I am finally very close to using up-YAY!) I will be linking up with Disneyscrappers for these 4 layouts. Thanks for stopping by-I would love for you to let me know how you spend your snow days!

#RockYourDisneySide 24-Hour Party, Part 1

I was thrilled, excited, and a little worried when I found out that our first day in Walt Disney World just happened to fall on the 24-hour #RockYourDisneySide summer kick-off party! I knew that there would be all kinds of fun things to do and see, but would it be a good idea to start our vacation off exhausted? We knew that it would be tough, but we also knew we had some beach days at the end of our vacation to "recuperate", and we knew we wouldn't arrive at Magic Kingdom until 4 or 5 pm, so we decided to go for it, and just see how long the kids would last. Guests were invited to "show their Disney side", and dress as their favorite hero or villian, and I have to say that I say saw some AH-MAY-Zing costumes, so good that I wasn't quite sure if it was a park character or someone dressed up. I saw a dead ringer for Cinderella, and one for Jasmine, as well. I had a red polka dot dress, so I decided just to go for it and dress as Minnie Mouse.

It was lots of fun, and even though I felt a little silly at first, I am glad I did! I saw lots of Minnies in the park!

This is our first view of the Castle, as we walked down Main Street, USA:

 

Beautiful, and with an extremely crowded park. Despite the crowds, we were able to ride lots and lots of rides with no more than a 25 minute wait for anything, thanks to the fast passes that I had prescheduled. At this point, the kids weren't interested in meeting the characters, they just wanted to ride the rides! So, after a few castle shots, and one of Caitlin and I by the Mickey clock,

we headed to Adventureland.

We "got spit on" by the camel:

(Which felt really good-it was 98 degrees out still!)

And we headed to the Pirates Of The Caribbean for our first fast pass:

As soon as Eric saw how many people we were able to bypass with the fast pass, he was hooked! Pirates is a really dark ride (and cool, so that felt great!), so pictures inside were next to impossible, but here are a few from our phones:

Eric and Cecilia tried out the "pirate look":

After which we headed to Tortuga Tavern for dinner, quick-service style.

I had the taco salad:

 

I have to say, this was my least favorite meal at Disney World. I must be spoiled by all of the excellent choices for Mexican food that we have here at home, because I was a little disappointed by this meal. The toppings bar was fun, and it was great to choose how much lettuce, cheese, and tomatoes I wanted, but, the meat and shell weren't hot enough for me (I like hot food piping hot, and this was far from that). And I would have liked the option of guacamole on the toppings bar. But all in all, it was still pretty good, and we were starving after the seven hour drive from Atlanta, so this definitely filled me up and refreshed me for the rest of the night.

While we were eating, we made the decision to tackle as much of Adventureland and Frontierland the first night, and save the majority of Fantasyland and Tomorrowland for our second day at Magic Kingdom. We saw the Swiss Family Robinson's Treehouse ( I remember seeing it when I was ten, so I was excited to go through it again to see if it was how I remembered it-it wasn't scary at all this time ;-)  ):

And we did a couple of the "mountain" rides: 

Splash Mountain:

(Hello goofiest picture ever! Can you tell Eric hates getting wet on rides?I just didn't want my ears to fly off)

And Big Thunder Mountain (no ride camera, but a few shots I took as we were walking up to the ride):

And I think this is where I will leave our Disney story for now, since this is getting to be a rather long post already.

Dinner at The Derby (Hollywood Brown Derby)

During our 5 days at Disney, we only did one table service meal (there are so many fantastic snacks, and who really wants to sit around eating for a couple of hours while you're at Disney world, anyway?) I have to say that this was a fantastic meal, though- everything I tried was excellent! We tried out one of the signature restaurants in Disney's Hollywood Studios, The Hollywood Brown Derby.

The Hollywood Brown Derby Dining Room:

(photo from the My Disney Experience website)

I loved the light fixtures and caricatures on the walls:

Instead of ordering entrees for the adults- we ordered several appetizers and desserts, so that we could try a variety of things. 

I ordered the "Portsmouth Lobster Bisque

with a Lobster Fritter and Jalapeño Oil":

 

  

and the 

Blue Lump Crab Spring Rolls

Snow Crab Claw, and an Asian Slaw with spicy Miso Aïoli:

The spring rolls were the best spring rolls I have ever had, and the soup was so yummy I almost forgot to take a picture!

Eric ordered the famous Cobb Salad (the Cobb Salad was made famous by the original Hollywood Brown Derby in California)

with Finely Chopped Greens, Turkey Breast, Bacon, Egg, Tomatoes, Crumbled Blue Cheese, Avocado, Chives, and Cobb Dressing:

 (photo source)

I thought it was very good, except for the blue cheese-not a big fan of that!

And he ordered the

Andouille-crusted Prawn

over Black Diamond Cheddar Grits, Wilded Greens, and Ancho Oil:

 Also very good-especially the grits for this southern girl! If you try them, it will totally change your opinion of grits! Creamy perfection!

Even the kids' fish and chips were great!Caitlin had a Cobb salad too, but she wished she had left off the blue cheese-she thought it tasted like perfume.

My favorite part of any meal is dessert, so we ordered a couple of Dessert Trios:

The desserts we chose:

Chocolate Sphere with Hazelnut Praline Chocolate and Orange-White Chocolate Mousse,

Milk Chocolate Crémeux with Mojito Concoction on Almond Rocher, Amaretto Flan and Opalys White Chocolate Whip with an Almond Cookie; Brown Derby Original! Mini Grapefruit Cake, Double Vanilla Bean Crème Brûlée, and the Warm Blueberry Cobbler with Crème Fraîche and Orange Blossom Honey.

This was the most popular dessert with the kids:

 

And, while I agree that it was very good, my favorite was the Warm Blueberry Cobbler-so yummy!

Or, maybe, it was the Mango Margarita-so refreshing on a 97+ degree day!

Have you done table service meals at any of the Disney parks? What were your favorites? I would love to know!

Mickey Mouse Pancake Fail...or...Daddy Makes The Magic Happen!

So, when I planned the whole "Magical Morning Surprise", my plan was to make the kids Mickey pancakes for breakfast, to add to the excitement, memories, whatever. However, a little practice might have been a good idea ;-) . When I actually went to execute my plan, my pancakes were looking nothing like Mickey! In fact, they just came out like rather odd, deformed circles. Luckily, I married someone that has more patience than I do (at least while cooking!), so Eric took over and brought my idea to fruition. His Mickey pancakes looked great:

And the kids loved them-they ate them (ears first, of course!) without even needing syrup on them.

I will, however, be purchasing a Mickey waffle maker soon, so I can make a Disney breakfast, too!