Kristen K's Pennies From Heaven! February 2015

My daughter Katie is my goth baby. She's kind of punky, has a dark and twisty sense of humor and loves scary stuff. Many times when I take her shopping her style and mine just don't click. However today we went into our local Hot Topic and we had a true meeting of the minds. The "cherries" on this dress, are little Minnie Mouse icons. I instantly fell in love and told her if she wanted it I was buying.

So - this is what Katie will be wearing on our Hoop-Dee-Doo night.

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So, I went over to one of those "other" Disney message boards and signed up to do the Fish Extender gift exchange for our cruise. I'm really excited about this because I have a thing for party favors. I can't explain it, I just love a fabulous party favor and corporate swag. It's not even about getting something, I love organizing and making party favors and I love making unique little gifts that can be sweet, sentimental, and even sometimes useful. We didn't do the FE exchange on our last cruise and I'm really looking forward to it this time. If you don't know what a Fish Extender is, just google it, it's easy to find but I don't want to send people over to that other place.

I ordered a cute Fish Extender off of Etsy, which will hopefully arrive sometime this week. I then headed over to Michaels to see if I could pick up some supplies and experiment with some ideas I have. My group has to leave "at least" one gift per stateroom during the cruise. I'm going to start making this one set of projects and if I finish and feel like doing another, maybe I'll add on. The picture below is of my first few attempts at making these little Castaway Cay Shadowboxes. I think I'm going to glue magnets to the back of these so they can live on a fridge. That way the people who get them will see them every day and be able to remember their time on the Disney Cruise.

What do you think?

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I'm so excited! Our Fish Extender came in the mail today and it's perfect, I absolutely love it and can't wait to see it hanging outside of our stateroom door. Don't you love it when a plan comes together? Oh! And that large black square on the top, that's a flexible chalk board so that people can leave us messages if we're out of the room.

As I mentioned previously I can't control myself when it comes to party favors and such. Well, I ended up in Michael's again and came out with 20 little red mending kits and some sparkles to bedazzle them into a cute Mini Mickey Mending Kit. LoL! My husband needs to keep me out of Michael's for the next 5 months, seriously.

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I have been so focused on my 60 day mark coming up, I completely missed my DCL advanced reservation window opening up on November 25th! Ack!

So this morning (when it dawned on me I was late) I logged into my Cruise Portal, crossed my fingers and tried to make some reservations. Hoorah! I wan't too late at all and I even completed my check in.

I was able to book Brunch at Palo on our Nassau day (I didn't even know they did a Palo brunch on that day, so I was very excited) and then we also have a Palo dinner on our last night (so we won't miss any of our standard dining rotation!) I also added a bike rental on Castaway Cay for Tori to enjoy while I'm taking pictures and sipping Konk Coolers.

We just have to reserve a rainforest pass for our Nassau day, and then all of that it taken care of.

We're 73 days out from leaving and honestly I'm feeling kind of nervous, like I don't have things done and should be doing more, however I think everything is right on track. I suppose only time will tell!

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Thanks Amy! I can indeed! I called yesterday to make sure that my tickets are all connected with that specific trip. They're just one day passes and I wasn't sure I had entered them correctly, but member services claims that everything is connected and I shouldn't have a problem.

Today I re-acquired funding for our Typhoon Lagoon day and the funding for 3 counter service breakfasts, as well as ordered water for the cruise and Rain Forest Passes!

71 days and counting!

I've been tweaking our plans and working on my wardrobe planning, it's all pretty close to being set. I'm not buying anything new to wear for this trip so I've been struggling with figuring out what I should bring along. I hope that we have decent weather and it's not too hot. I'm expecting mid-70s in Florida, but I'm not sure what to expect at that time of year in the Bahamas. I'm going to try an pack light-ish. I used the number of days divided by two formula, which means I only need 4 outfits for the trip, but I think I'm taking 5 since I need a nice dinner dress too.

The one thing that could put a kink into the plan right now is if I can get a Be Our Guest FastPass+ reservation. Katie and I have our fingers crossed for that one because everyone wants to give it a try and we haven't gotten in for the past two trips. Anyone that has advice for me snagging one of those BOG spots please speak up!

Here's shot of my spreadsheet I tried to pretty it up like JeffC does, it still pales in comparison, he's the king.

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