Practically Perfect in Every Way

Welcome to those of you joining me from Picturing Disney and those of you just hopping aboard. I am the 2nd stop on our Magical Blogorail.

Disney's Saving Mr. Banks, a film about Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers and Walt Disney's attempts to persuade her to let him bring her words to film, is being released on the 20th of this month and I, for one, am very excited!  I cannot wait to see how the film turns out.

In anticipation of its release, I, and the rest of the Peach line, are paying tribute to Mary Poppins.  I decided to have a themed dinner with my family before watching the movie!  (I apologize in advance for the not-so-great iPhone picture.)

We had a tea party to go with the movie.  We had finger sandwiches (the ones on the left are cucumber and the ones on the right are chicken salad), vegetables with ranch, cakes, and tea (with a spoonful of sugar, of course)!

To make this a full blown movie night (which are getting hard to prepare around here, but I am going to try to more often... at least themed meals!), it would be fun to tell jokes at the table, like when they have tea with Uncle Albert.  You could also draw landscapes or other pictures and tell stories of what it would be like if you jumped into them, like Bert's chalk drawings.

Thank you for joining me today. Your next stop on the Magical Blogorail Loop is Can Do It Mom AKA Mouse Fan Diane.

Here is the map of our Magical Blogorail should you happen to have to make a stop along the way and want to reboard:

1st Stop ~ Picturing Disney
2nd Stop ~ Disney in Our Blood  (you are here)
3rd Stop ~ Can Do It Mom AKA Mouse Fan Diane
4th Stop ~ 400 Miles to Disneyland

Movie Night - Peter Pan

I want to apologize for the lack of posts lately.  Things have been insane here at the Disney in Our Blood household and are only going to stay that way for awhile (all good things, though)!  So I won't be able to post as much as I would like for the next month or so, but I will try to be better until I can get to a more regular posting schedule again.  :)  For now I am FINALLY posting our Peter Pan movie night.  There are so many wonderful ideas for Peter Pan that we just didn't get a chance to do.  What we did do, though, was a lot of fun!

Activities:
So, okay, we didn't do any.  I know, I know, but our daughter just wasn't in a good mood that evening so we concentrated on the food and movie.  She's now going to school (I work there so she goes early with me) and is tired by the end of the day.  I think that has a lot to do with it.  Anyway, we were going to make pirate ship sails to go on our pizzas (more on that in the food section) and have a treasure hunt around the house.  We will definitely have to do this movie night again and do all that!  My dad is moving to Florida next month (which is one of the things that will be keeping us busy getting ready for) and Peter Pan is his favorite Disney movie, so we will probably redo this soon.  I will make a short post with some additional pictures for you once we do.  :)

Food:
We had pirate ship french bread pizzas (we would have put the sails we made on skewers and put them in the pizza), cannonballs (roasted chickpeas... SO good), pirate fruit swords, fairy dip (cream cheese mixed with sugar), and Pirate's Booty (one of my favorite snacks ever and the name was very appropriate).  :)

Decorations:
We don't have a lot of Peter Pan toys (if any, actually) so we used Ashlyn's Jake and the Neverland Pirates ship as a table decoration.  :)  I completely forgot I had gotten a blue tablecloth to put on to act as water, but I will try to remember for our next one. haha

I also printed out some silhouettes of Peter, Wendy, John, and Michael and cut them out of black poster board (you can find poster board at the Dollar Tree).  I love how this turned out!!!  I think I might also make a London skyline for our movie night redo to put under them.  That would be really cool.

I want to do another small scale movie night soon.  I know that small scale might not be as much fun to look at as some of the incredible things some people come up with, but I hope they still give you some ideas to create wonderful movie nights and memories with your family.  :)  We still haven't watched Enchanted that we got through Disney Movie Rewards, so I am sure that will be what we do!  Ashlyn has never seen Enchanted so I can't wait to see what she thinks.  :)  Have you had a movie night lately?

Movie Night - The Incredibles

I was very excited about this movie night because Ashlyn is all about super heroes right now.  I knew she would have a blast!  I had to keep this movie night simple to save some money before I start my new job in a few days (I'm getting a bit nervous!).  Anyway, this movie night is just proof that you don't need to go elaborate or buy anything major to have some fantastic fun!

Food:
We had Super Hero Subs, Dash's Fast Fries, and Frozone's Sundaes.

(I forgot to take pictures before we ate our sundaes... oops!)



Decorations:
Ashlyn wanted to bring out all her super heroes.  We don't have any Incredibles toys, so this included MetroMan (from MegaMind), Spiderman, a couple of princes (because they save princesses), and of course, a firefighter hat to represent all the real life super heroes.

I also printed out some comic action words!

I tried to keep everything within the color scheme of red, black, and yellow (the napkin looks white, but it's yellow).

Activities:
We made super hero masks!  I had a feeling Ashlyn would love this since she doesn't have any super hero dress up stuff (she uses blankets as capes and stuff... it's too cute).  I got the templates at Cutesy Crafts, used some foam and yarn I already had (one day soon I want to buy some elastic and make a few super nice masks like at the link), and we decorated them with stickers, gems, and whatever else was lying around.  Most of the stickers Ashlyn picked out wouldn't stick on the foam, hence the tape. 

While I was getting the supplies ready for the masks, Ashlyn requested a coloring page.

We also created our own super heroes, complete with choosing names and super powers!

It was a great time!  I'm thinking our next movie night will be Peter Pan, which gets released from the vault on February 5th!  YAY!

Movie Night - Robin Hood

The other day we had our first movie night of 2013... Robin Hood!

It had been awhile since we had seen this movie.  I don't know why because I absolutely love it!  Here's what we did.

Food:
We had Robin's fried chicken, Hiss's colessssslaw, Maid Marian's jeweled fruit, and crushed grape ale (aka grape soda).

I think the perfect dinner for this movie would be some type of stew because that is what Robin burns near the beginning of the movie, but honestly we weren't feeling that for dinner.  :)

Decorations:
Here was our dining room table.

We already had the calla lily plant and I added some leaves on the table (from Ashlyn's Brave birthday party... the greenery by our TV was from the party, too) and a bouquet of fake flowers and rocks I put together from the Dollar Tree.  I thought it actually turned out really pretty and like it was picked from Sherwood Forest.

Activities:
We did some archery,

colored a picture,

and made Prince John/King Richard's crown.

 Everyone tried on the crown.  Even the animals.

Poor animals.  ;)

It was a lot of fun and we all loved the movie.  Like I said, it had been a long time since we've seen it so it was kind of like new to Ashlyn.  Our next movie night, coming up in a couple of weeks, will be The Incredibles!  Ashlyn has been playing super heroes a lot lately so I know this will be a blast!  I already am collecting some awesome ideas.  :)

Movie Night - Polar Express

I did have intentions of having another movie night this month (The Santa Clause) but a bunch of stuff got thrown on our plate all at once and it just didn't happen.  I was very excited for our Polar Express movie night, though!

Food:
I wasn't too worried about making dinner match the movie since it was all about the hot chocolate and cookies! 


Decorations:
I got this cute printable from It Works for Bobbi!  It says "The bell rings for all who truly believe.  May the magic of Christmas remain in your heart and the sound of the bell in your ear.  Merry Christmas."

I also combined a couple of dollar store decorations to make a little garland for over our couch.

I added a bell to our regular dining room table decorations.

I also put a snowflake tablecloth on and used snow themed plates and napkins.

Activities:
We did make some cookies for dessert and for Santa's upcoming visit.  This year we made chocolate chip bars and chocolate crinkles.  :)

I printed out a few worksheets for Ashlyn to do (from Living Life Intentionally).

Our big plan was to create our own Polar Express.  A good friend of mine took a ticket she found on Pinterest and personalized it for each of our families.  I absolutely love them!!  And apparently I forgot to take a picture after I had them cut out.  lol  We already watched the movie in our pj's so the plan was that while I read Ashlyn her bedtime story and did everything else in our regular bedtime routine (though a little earlier than usual), Aaron would get some hot chocolate ready and make sure the Christmas station was on in the car.  We would hand Ashlyn her ticket (I had them hidden under her pillow so I could "find" it when I hugged her goodnight) and then we would all get in the car to go look at Christmas lights!  Alas, it started pouring rain before we could do this so we ended up not.  :(  I was disappointed, but at least Ashlyn didn't know what was planned so she wasn't upset or anything.  Anyway, it's definitely something I want to do another time! 

So ends the last movie night of 2012!  Be safe, whatever your plans are, and I hope you have a very merry Christmas and a fantastic New Year! 

Movie Night - Elf

For our first Christmas movie night, a DIOB Facebook fan suggested Elf.  I love this movie and knew we could have a lot of fun with it.  And we did!

Decorations:
I turned our living room into a candy cane forest (I'm not sure how noticeable they are, but there are two giant candy canes on either side of the entertainment center).

Here's a close-up of the printable I had up there.

We put window clings on the family pictures we have above the couch.

Food:
We had Coney Island chili dogs and Elf Elbow macaroni and cheese.  For snacks we had Keebler Elf cookies

and a variety of sugar.

The quote on the card is from the movie and says "We elves try to stick to the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns, and syrup!"  And no, we didn't actually eat any syrup.  It was just a prop.  ;)

Aaron had the "World's Best Cup of Coffee."

I would have, too, but my stomach still just wasn't feeling it.  This would be SO fun to have a coffee and hot chocolate bar with different creamers, marshmallows, etc. to put in.


Other really cute ideas would be to eat spaghetti for dinner since that's what the family is having the first night they have Buddy there.  A snack idea I really wanted to do but just didn't have the energy for yet was to make cupcakes with maple buttercream frosting (my friend Jamie at Momma's Playground gave me a recipe and it is very good).  Pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes with a small piping tip to make it look like spaghetti.  Then you have "spaghetti" with a maple syrup flavor (if you haven't seen the movie yet, Buddy eats his spaghetti with syrup on it.  Also, you should go watch it.  We really like it).  :)


Activities:
Okay, so we didn't do anything related to the movie because what Ashlyn REALLY wanted to do was decorate her room for Christmas.  So I got together all the decorations she's picked out at places like the Dollar Tree the past couple of years and she decorated her little heart out.  :)  We did sing a couple of Christmas carols, actually.  So that goes with the quote "The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear."


Another activity I really wish I thought about in advance is to make a gingerbread house!  It is one of the things Buddy says he wants to do with his dad, so this would be an awesome thing to do for this movie night.


We will be having 2 more Christmas movie nights over the next few weeks.  One will be Polar Express, but I need help from you deciding on the third.  What are some of your favorite Christmas movies you would like some ideas for?

Brave is Released on DVD/Blu Ray Today!

To celebrate Brave being released to video today, here are some ideas from Ashlyn's Brave birthday party that could easily be used for a movie night.

Will-o-the-Wisps ~ cotton candy

Standing Stones of Callanish ~ carrots and ranch dressing

For more ideas, check out our Brave movie night and the rest of Ashlyn's Brave birthday party.  While you're at it, check out my friend Jamie's blog for some Brave movie tickets you can print out for your movie night.  I'll definitely be using these next time!  Are you going to be buying Brave today?

Movie Night - Spookley the Square Pumpkin

This is our last Halloween movie night!  We had DVR'd Spookley the Square Pumpkin when it aired on the Disney Channel.  It is such a cute movie!  Ashlyn loved it and it let us talk about how you shouldn't treat someone badly because they are different from you.  Fun with a lesson built in... love it!  Anyway, we did a bunch of pumpkin related things, which would make these ideas great for The Nightmare Before Christmas and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown as well.  Here's what we did.


Food:
All pumpkin themed, of course!  Dinner was a pumpkin shaped pizza from Papa Murphy's.

We had pumpkin pie smoothies

and mini pumpkin pies for dessert.

Activities:
Since our house is all decorated for Halloween anyway, we didn't worry about that.  We had a couple of fun things to do, though.  First, before dinner, we went around to our neighbors and handed out some of the mini pumpkin pies as well as some dog treats since many of our neighbors have a dog.  I punched holes in the paper plates and ran some ribbon through it to dress them up a bit.

We also carved a pumpkin.  Ashlyn helped clean it out.  She kept saying how gross it was, but she had a lot of fun doing it.  Aaron tried to do a T.A.R.D.I.S. carving I found a template for, but it didn't quite work out, so here's Ashlyn's pirate pumpkin that she did last week.

Well, that's the last of our Halloween movie nights for this year!  We will probably only have one movie night in November, but I'll spend that time getting really great ideas ready for our month of Christmas movie nights in December!  Send your requests in now!

Movie Night - Sleeping Beauty

Now, I've already done a Sleeping Beauty movie night, but there really was nothing to it. It was one of the simplest ones I've done and since it is one of my daughter's favorites, I wanted to do it again. Ashlyn helped decorate with her toys.


We went to a place called Plaster Palace to do some painting before the movie. We were hoping to find Aurora or something, but ended up having to paint Belle in Aurora colors. haha It was a lot of fun, though.


Something fun that I didn't take pictures of was berry picking. Here are some instructions for making a paper basket, but we already had one Ashlyn made from around Easter that worked perfectly. I hid little pom poms around the house and Ashlyn took her basket around and picked the "berries."

For dinner we had some wonderfully yummy brunch-type food. Sausage quiche, roasted potatoes, and strawberry and chocolate pancakes.


For dessert, well, I completely forgot to plan a dessert! Hubby had to run to the store for something anyway, so he picked up some pink and blue cupcakes! They were huge so they were like mini birthday cakes.


I would normally have let Ashlyn dress up in her Aurora dress and tiara for the movie night, but I'm pretty sure Prim would have thought it looked delicious. :) Our next movie night in a couple of weeks will be Snow White!

Movie Night - Dumbo

We just had our Dumbo movie night.


I focused on the Circus theme for our decorations and everything. It actually ended up being perfect timing, but I'll get to that. :) I found these really cute decorations at Target and couldn't pass them up.


I found these window clings and Ashlyn decorated our back door.


Dinner was hot dogs and macaroni and cheese (hot dogs just seemed like a good circus food). I made a cake for dessert, topped with a modeling chocolate Dumbo, and lined on the bottom with animal crackers. Now, before I post this picture... please don't laugh (or at least don't tell me you did). I can make cute cake pops and can pipe on cookies or cakes really well, but I cannot just straight up frost. Let's leave that up to Peeta Mellark, shall we? And, apparently, I can't work with modeling chocolate. But Ashlyn liked it, so it was worth it. Okay, so... just scroll past it really quickly. ;)


So, before I even started dinner, Aaron called me on his way home from work to tell me that while he was passing the mall, he saw there was a carnival set up in the parking lot! How perfect! So after dinner and the movie, we headed over there. Ashlyn's favorite was the Ferris Wheel, but there was also a Dumbo-type ride!


It was a perfect ending to the day. Now to figure out what our next movie night will be! :)