Summer Disney Series Part 1: When to Go?

What I really want to do with my life--what I want to do for a living--is I want to be at Disney World. I'm good at it.

Not really. I am misquoting Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything there.

It turns out that being at Disney World is an even less realistic career goal than kickboxing.

But I do love Disney World. And we've been an embarrassing (cough*six*cough) times in the past several years, and, what with my weakness for obsessive research and all that, planning Disney trips (and, yes, being at Disney World) is one of the things I'm best at. This is a little sad. Because some people are best at coming up with new cancer treatments or feeding the world's hungry or writing the Great American Novel. Not me! We all have to work with what we're given.

So I thought I'd spend some time this summer babbling about Disney World. Stuff that might be helpful if you're planning a first (or first in a long time) trip, particularly one with kids. I'm thinking every Monday for the next six weeks, with these topics:

1. When to go? As in, time of year
2. Where to stay? Off property vs. on
3. Disney with a baby
4. Big(gish) families and Disney
5. Saving money
6. Food: dining plan, favorite restaurants, plus bonus gluten free fun

It just so happens that the trip we just took was 6 days, so, instead of a separate trip recap, I'll do a quick one day by day with each of these posts.

Okay! So! When should you go to Disney World?

This is kind of a sad question for me, because, even though we homeschool, we are tied down to the school schedule thanks to Dave, the teacher. Thanks a lot, Dave! At his old county, he had a very special fall break, around the third week of September, so we always went then. This year we decided our best option was to take off as soon as we could when Dave finished school for the year, right after Memorial Day.

So this is what I have personal experience with: September and late May/early June.

Now, the two big things to consider when you're deciding when to go are crowds and weather. And, of course, when you CAN go, if you are tied down to a school schedule like we are. There's also cost, but that's pretty much directly tied to crowds (i.e. prices are lower when it's not crowded).

Touring Plans maintains a day by day crowd calendar, giving each day (and then breaking it down to each park for each day) a crowd level of 1-10, going out for the next year. You need a subscription ($11.95/year to see the whole crowd calendar (and to access other features like the touring plans and the lines app with wait times). We've used Touring Plans for a few trips now, and it's a great resource.

Easy WDW is a free site with a good guide to best and worst times to go.

Basically, as you'd expect, any time school is out, it's crowded. So summer, spring break, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and President's week.

So, if you can, you want to avoid those times. According to both Touring Plans and Easy WDW, September is pretty much the least crowded time you can go (I did a quick search of days rated as "1" for crowd level for the next year on Touring Plans. There are 31; 14 of them are in September). No one wants to pull kids out of school right after they start back in the fall AND it's still super hot and humid in Florida in September.

All of our trips except this past one have been in September. Our first couple of trips we felt like we had the parks to ourselves half the time. This was 2006-2007. I have pictures of my kids in front of the castle with pretty much no one else in the picture:

You have to work a lot harder these days to get this shot. There's really not a truly uncrowded time of year to go anymore. 

On the plus side, another thing to note is that Disney is set up to handle crowds so well that you can avoid long lines with a bit of planning almost any time of year. The parks can feel fairly crowded but you're still walking right on to Tower of Terror. We've gone to Six Flags on an ordinary summer weekday and only managed to get a few rides in because everything loads so inefficiently that there's nothing you can ride without waiting forever. 

So. September has a lot going for it: it's cheap (the rates for hotels are the cheapest all year, and, for the  past several years, Disney has offered the dining plan for free every September, which is a really amazing discount for a lot of families. More on that when I talk dining) and it's one of your best bets for low crowds. It's not unusual to walk on to all the rides except for the big headliners all day in September. This makes it very easy to do the big rides first thing or use Fastpasses for them and then be able to relax and enjoy an unplanned rest of your day. Or let your kids ride the Teacups 5 times in a row if they want to. That kind of thing. The big disadvantage (aside from the fact that you may not be able to go then if you have kids in school) is the weather. In our experience, Orlando Septembers are remarkably consistent: it's between 88 and 92 or so every single day, and it rains (briefly) more afternoons than not. We find the heat unpleasant but manageable....it's often cloudy, so that helps, and you're going in and out of buildings all day as opposed to just standing outside baking. But we're from Georgia. YMMV. 

Other relatively uncrowded times of year are later in the fall (excluding Thanksgiving week), early December, post holiday break January into February (excluding President's Week), and then again after all the spring breaking is over up until schools start to get out in mid-late May. 

If we ever get a non-school-constricted trip, I'd love to try early December (low crowds + Christmas decorations!) or late January/early February. Generally speaking, you'll get pleasant weather in winter, but I also have friends who've gone during a cold snap and been miserable. At least you know what you're getting in September. Unless you get a hurricane. Which can happen. 

But then suppose you DO have to plan around school? The option we went with, and the one I'd do again, is to go at either the very beginning of your summer break or the very end. In our part of the country, schools get out in late May and start back up again in August. In the northeast, they go well into June, but don't go back until after Labor Day. So if you hit the very beginning of your summer break (if you're in one of the finished in May parts of the country) or the very end (if you're in one of the post Labor Day returning parts), you won't be competing for space with as much of the rest of the world. 

Our late May/early June week this year was mostly 5s and 6s on the Touring Plans crowd calendar. Our September trips have all been mostly 1s through 3s. We could definitely feel a difference, but it was doable. We very rarely waited longer than 10 minutes for rides, although it took more planning to avoid long waits than it would have in September. But the very next week, the crowd levels shot up to 8s, and they're supposed to stay in that 8-10 range until mid August. I wouldn't want to see a 9 or 10. It would make me cranky. Of course, the downside is, again, going to be the weather. Our May/June was pretty comparable to September....actually a few degrees cooler, but I think it's been an unusually cool spring. 

I have so much to say. I don't really know how to shut up, because Disney is a bit of an overwhelming topic, really. But, there. Shutting up. And moving on to part 2 of my ridiculously long post: trip recapping! More pictures, fewer words. In fact, no words! Except the captions.

We didn't have park hoppers this year, so it was one park per day for us. First up was Epcot. It's possible that Epcot's my favorite park. It's sort of hard to say. I love them all so very much. 

Abe about to go on his very first ride...ever! The Seas with Nemo and Friends. We were the first

ones on all day (because Dave went to get Soarin' fastpasses and then met us over there instead of us riding Soarin' first like the masses). The guy out front had to tell someone into is little walkie talkie thing: "first guests are coming in!" We felt pretty important.

THEN we road Soarin'

First Mickey bars of the trip!

World's cutest baby in world's cutest sun hat. But no Mickey bars for him. Next time!

There's a fun game in Innoventions involving this cute pig. It's supposed to teach you about investing and stuff, but I'm just in it for the cute pig.

Mid day break to swim and nap back at the house.

Back to the park for evening fun.

And of course, many posed pictures. Look how happy they always are to stop and pose for pictures for their mother!

Abe learns a lot about plants on Living with the Land.

You can sample Coke products from around the world at Club Cool. Like Beverly from Italy. It's fun to trick your kids into trying it. 

How about another picture, kids?!

Doing the Phineas and Ferb interactive....thing in World Showcase.

Norway gift shop. We're not even a tiny bit Norwegian, but he's totally pulling it off, don't you think?

We didn't buy these. Too bad.

Ending Day 1 with Illuminations. Abe's first fireworks!

Phew! Part 1: complete! Anyone have any Disney tips to share? Any topics you'd like me to cover that's not on the list (I will talk FOREVER about Disney World!) What's your favorite Lloyd Dobler quotation?

Linking with:
Give Me the Goods Monday

The Sunroom has STUFF in it Now!

We've been hanging out in the sunroom nonstop since a few days ago when we finally got it all set up with furniture. I think we would have made it a priority sooner had we realized what a lovely room it was going to be.

The thing that bothers me most about our floor plan is how closed off the den is from the kitchen and the rest of the house. It feels like a big, lonely expedition to go hang out in there, so I never really do unless it's specifically to watch TV. But the sunroom connects to both the kitchen and the den. And it has a doorway and an open window into the kitchen, so the spaces feel very connected. So now it's like the open to the kitchen family room we never had!

Here's what's going on in there (in HERE, because I'm in the sunroom right now!)

Here's another shot, with a cozy family moment involving a jigsaw puzzle:

The leather couch is from my mom. She was replacing this one and offered to us awhile back. It sat in our garage for a long time, then we finally brought it in here, where it sat some more, sort of lonely and unused because it was pretty much the only thing in the room.

I knew I wanted wicker chairs in here and I sort of half-heartedly looked around for some for awhile. Ikea and Target had some for around $100 each that were....okay. Not quite as substantial as I wanted, really, but they would have been okay. And I could usually find some on Craigslist that I would need to spray paint. And spray painting wicker is not much fun.

Saturday I was doing one of my casual "let's see what they have on Craigslist RIGHT NOW!" things and came across the chairs you see up there. The guy said he had won the set with the chairs, loveseat, and coffee table, and was selling the chairs and coffee table (still new in the boxes) because he didn't have room for them. And they were pretty much exactly what I wanted, so here they are! We paid $150 for the two chairs and the table. I don't want the table, so I'm selling it to my mom for $25. The chairs are $200 each on Target's website, so I'm pretty pleased with our post table selling price of $62.50 each. They're much nicer than the $100 ones I was considering.

They were kind of a pain to put together:

But once we did, they looked great and are pretty comfy. And they came with nice neutral cushions that I can fancify with some colorful throw pillows:

The trunk that we're using for a coffee table used to be in our den. But I want a big ottoman with storage for in there, so this came in here.

And, lastly, we went ahead and moved the kitchen table in here, even though we don't have anything to replace it with yet. The sunroom's only a few steps from the kitchen, so it doesn't really matter. Once we have a kitchen table again, I want this one mostly to be for non-eating activities.

There is, of course, much left to do in here. We just bought the paint today and are hoping to start on that tomorrow. And we need to hem all the drop cloth curtains and buy blackout fabric to line them with. It's been fairly cool and/or cloudy so far this summer, but this room is pretty much unbearable for much of the day once we start getting 90 degree sunny days. I'm hoping curtains the block the morning light will fix that (and then we can open them back up in the afternoon when the sun's on the other side of the house).

And that overhead light/fan still doesn't work. So I'm sitting in the dark right now.  So those things are next on the list.

The Big House List, Part 1: Downstairs

Aww....summer. If you are us, summer means a couple of months of two adults being home. Summer is the best part of Dave's job. We love summer. Except that it's really, really hot. But you can't have everything.

Summer is, theoretically, a good time to knock out projects. Last summer, Dave built a fence. We thought that maybe Dave should build a deck this summer, but I think we're leaning toward leaving deck building to professionals. Building a deck would likely take all summer, and there are so.many.other things to do here. It would be nice to do more than one of them.

So, in the interest of motivating ourselves to get moving, and because we've never done it before, we're putting together a massive list of Things to Do. House things. It is, of course, all subject to (and likely to) change over time, but it's good to have a starting place. Or, well, a somewhere relatively near the beginning place, at any rate, since we've already done things before even making a list. We're pretty impressive that way. Not everyone can do things that aren't on a list.  Well. Maybe everyone can, actually. Anyway. List!

Foyer/Stairwell

*find big mirror to replace prints on squirrel wall

*finish squirrels

*replace plastic bins with nicer baskets

*sign over front door

*rug

*paint bannister

*something fun for stairs (runner? Paint somehow?)

*finish painting stairwell

Library

*more seating: I'd like to figure out a nice looking way to replace the lone plaid chair with a loveseat so that more people can read/hang out in here. Maybe move chess table more into the middle of the room, in front of the shelves, and put a loveseat against the window. or even two armchairs by the windows.

*paint piano and bench fun color

*make cushion for piano bench

*finish photo wall above piano

*find a way to hide Milo's amp (build box around it maybe?)

*bigger rug?

*deal with lighting situation in some way or another (overhead lights, ideally)

*organize books somehow or another 

....it was at this point in my list making, when I got through with not so short lists for two of the most "finished" spaces in my house, that I began to realize that we'll never, ever, ever be finished. Which is fine. 

Dining Room

*gallery wall next to kitchen

*curtains

*work on top of buffet....maybe a seasonally changed out vignette of some sort?

*find card catalog for storage

*not sure about table and chairs. Maybe a different style chairs eventually and/or painted a fun color

*rug?

Kitchen

Scenario one (unrealistic, maybe someday scenario)

*move refrigerator to another wall to make room for a big island with seating

*open up doorway wider between dining room and kitchen

*built in storage along wall where table is now?

*all of this moving appliances about would necessitate new counters

Scenario two (the one that we can actually work on)

*come up with fabulous command center organization plan

*paint

*build farmhouse table (current table out to sunroom)

*get chairs for said table (maybe mismatched wooden chairs all painted the same fun color? Aqua?)

*build cabinet for cleaning supplies/vacuum

*chalkboard wall near hallway

*new (matching) appliances. Ours are all mismatched and nearing or at the end of their life expectancies, so it's going to happen sooner or later. Probably very soon, now that our home warranty's expired ;)

Den

*sectional sofa

*paint fireplace

*paint walls

*something fun on wall around fireplace (wallpaper or stencil)

*new tv stand

*shelf behind sofa

*more pictures on walls

*rug

*make/find big ottoman with storage for coffee table

*lighting—preferably overhead

Hallway

(this is straight ahead of you as you come in the house....the den, kitchen, basement stairs, and half bath all go off of it)

*paint (or wallpaper; it might be a fun little space for wallpaper)

*pictures

*build storage for baby stuff/books

Hall Bath

....this is a really long, skinny room....tons and tons of wall space. I don't have a clear idea of what to do in here, but it needs to be....something.

*paint (I would love to wallpaper in here, but the walls are textured, so I don't think it would work without major prep work)

*replace fixtures

*towel rack

*replace lighting (vanity light and overhead)

*paint cabinets

*stuff on walls

Sunroom

It's looking a little better than this now.....more on that soon.

*paint

*coffee table (maybe the one from the den)

*move kitchen table out here for crafts/school/puzzles/eating/etc

*get some wicker chairs for more seating

*hem/cut curtains

*line curtains with blackout fabric

*do something fun with curtains (stencil?)

*replace cruddy windows

*replace or repair ceiling fan light

Also, whole floor stuff....we need to refinish the floors at some point and replace all the windows on the back of the house (the ones on the front are all new vinyl ones; on the back they're the original wood, single paned ones)

The lists are just as long as longer for the rooms that are more finished, oddly....I guess it's because I know exactly what else I want to do in those, whereas plans are still vague in the largely untouched rooms.

Next up the upstairs! And then the outdoor spaces...yard and porches.

We're Home!

Ha! I was so sneaky that maybe you didn't even know that I left. Unless you're on instagram. I am not usually one to pay as much attention as I should to internet safety, but I thought that, since figuring out our address is probably a kindergarten level internet sleuthing assignment, it might be better not to make a grand announcement about exactly which days we'd be gone (although, in this age of portable electronics, and what with our failure to stockpile gold bullion, there wasn't much left behind to steal anyway. Would Home Alone even be possible today?!)

Anyway, we went to Disney World!

I took lots of pictures (and when I got home, I played around with the filters on photoscape that I had never even noticed before. fun!)

Like of just stuff around WDW:

And of the kids of course:

And occasionally I'm even one of them (with my double chin. But, look! Dave has a double chin from that angle, too, and he's skinny!):

I have, in years past, written exhaustively detailed trip reports and posted them on disboards.com. I am not going to do that this year (though I might have to tell the story about how I got called a bitch right there in the Magic Kingdom, when I am so not. Honest! Non-confrontational to a fault--that is me. This woman had issues). But I am thinking of doing a summer Disney post series. Because I've been to Disney a lot of times, and I like to talk about it. Still  mulling over ideas, but maybe a two parter or so mini trip report and then some posts on stuff like traveling with a baby, on property v. off, bigger families and disney.....that sort of thing.

Not all the time, though! Dave doesn't go back to work until 8 weeks from today, so we're hoping to knock out a bunch of house projects. Cheap ones, especially, because we just gave all of our money to Disney.

Now I'm going to go catch up on all my blogs and find out what some of you guys were doing while I was gone!

Garage Sale Herb Garden + General Garden Updates

A two part post about things that are happening on the outside of my house.

So, as you might recall, awhile back we built a garden bed and planted some stuff in it. Back then it looked like this:

And now it looks like this:

This is why I keep attempting to grow things even though I am a somewhat reluctant gardener. All of that stuff (except the strawberries) came from teeny tiny seeds! (Well, and the strawberries, too, at some point in their history, I guess. But I didn't grow them from seed). The front there is carrots and one square of strawberries. And then beans along the side. In the back, by the netting, getting ready to climb up it, are watermelon and cantaloupe. It's hard to see them in this picture, but there are also purple tomato cages in there! I just planted the tomatoes. Very late, because square foot gardening guy says they're supposed to climb the netting, too. But we were all out of netting. So we were going to plant them elsewhere in the yard, with the cages. Only we didn't get around to it. So finally I was just like, "there's room in the bed; why don't I just stick the cages in there?" And I did. I hope not too late. It was still May, so I think we're good.

We just put the mulch down a few days ago, because it was looking like this around the edges:

Weedy!

And if there's one thing we have plenty of, it's mulch:

In fact, I'd like to go ahead and make the mulched area bigger, and maybe put up a little fence around it (it is not unheard of for us to look outside and notice a naughty little beagle sniffing around in the garden bed), with an eye toward future garden expansion. I envision maybe more raised beds, maybe some berry bushes, maybe a trellis with something or other growing up it, maybe a fun collection of planters, sort of like this one:

source

But for this year I'm just going to be happy with my one bed out there. And how could I be unhappy with it when it's so close to making way too many beans for us?

And already provides us with the occasional strawberry that we get to eat before something else does?

And part 2.

We planted basil in the garden bed, but it didn't make it. But I'd been thinking of doing a container herb garden closer to the house anyway. So when I came across a big metal tub the other week at a yard sale (for $5), it seemed meant to be.

We attempted to hammer some holes in it for drainage:

But that was too hard.

So Dave drilled holes in it instead:

And the drill bit only got stuck once:

(I thought about painting this, by the way (see: colorful container garden inspiration pic above), but I also like it metal colored, and, all things being equal, it's easier to not paint than to paint).

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it, but we have a lot of mulch. So we filled up the bottom with that:

Then topped it off with potting soil:

And then we stuck the plants (that we bought at a local garden store) in there. I hope we spaced them out okay, so that they have plenty of room but will fill in and look pretty. I have no idea. I probably should have researched a bit more. Oh well.

Let's see if I can remember what's in there. Basil is the tall stuff. Some kind of mint. Lavender. Lemon grass. uhh, something else. I'm planning to make prettier markers for them than the ones they came with, so you'll find out then. It will be a big surprise!

Linking with:
Craftionary's Friday Link Party
Inspiration Gallery
The Shabby Nest's Frugal Friday
Tatertots and Jello's Weekend Wrap Up
Monday Funday
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