Imaginary Kitchen

I have been holding out on you guys. I know I've been all, "I bought a chair. Disney. Sharpie octopus." ....after promising BIG SUMMER PROJECTS.

Part of the reason for this is that summer always sort of becomes its own project. And, you know, you have to let summer do that, because it only happens once a year.

But ALSO, we have been working on a biggish project, only (see previous paragraph) it's taking way longer than we expected, so I haven't been able to post about it yet. Furthermore, I'm not sure when I WILL post about it, because I'd like to finish a couple of smaller, related projects first so as to reveal the whole glorious thing at once.

In the meantime, I bet there's something else around here that I can draw on with a Sharpie!

Just kidding.

Hoping the big project will be ready to post about next week. And I have some catching up on other things to do before that. Like I believe I promised two more posts about future house plans (upstairs and outside/basement) way back a long time ago. And we snuck in a small trip when my mother in law was visiting that I'll post about. And Abe is SIX MONTHS OLD today (!) so there's that.

And today! Today I have for you a post about what I want to do with my kitchen. Someday. Maybe soonish, depending on how much it will cost. By soonish, I could mean this year, but I probably mean next year.

Here's what I said about my kitchen back when I actually posted the first part of the Big House List:

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

I have thought about it more since then.

Our house is plenty big, but the kitchen itself is fairly small for a house this size, and it's not laid out particularly well.

I've mentioned that my house is kind of boxy, right? Oh, wait, it's right up there in the blog title!

Okay, so the kitchen opens up to the dining room, and the center hall, and the sunroom, but it doesn't really open up to any of them.  As we established back when we built our baby/dog gate, the doorway to the sunroom is so narrow that baby gate makers don't even acknowledge the existence of doorways its size.

The eat in area is relatively narrow.

And then there's the way the refrigerator is randomly jutting out of one wall, all by itself, totally interrupting the flow to the hallway AND making things a little cramped if more than one person is trying to use the island.

To top all of this off, I've become increasingly jealous lately of people with big islands they can put stools around. Largely because of all the pretty stools out there. Like these:

overstock.com

When we first moved in, these problems seemed like ones we'd probably just need to live with, at least for a long while. But the nice thing about not touching your kitchen at all for over a year is that you start to formulate some ideas for ways to make it more functional that never occurred to you early on. 

That plan up there was the start of it....I've become a little obsessed with getting that refrigerator off of it's weird lonely wall. But then! The inspiration! It struck!

So I knew that the refrigerator was my big problem. It needed to move. But where? Well, the place where we have lots of wall space is over here:

...uhh, it's harder to tell than I thought. This is the view from the dining room. The cabinet thing you see sticking out on the right is a built in pantry type thing. And then the big wall I mean is also on the right, by the bay window. That's the only big wall that's not occupied by appliances and counters. 

Okay, so, the refrigerator could go there. Here is where the refrigerator is right now:

See what I mean? It's just sticking out there being a pain in the butt, making an awkward little passageway into the hallway, and making it impossible for me to have a big, glorious island with pretty stools around it.

(I tried, and tried, and TRIED to find a picture to put here of an island like I want. But all I could find were unattributed or spammy seeming links. Google has failed me).

So if the fridge is gone, I can put in a big island with pretty stools! I'm thinking a fun color for said island and solid colored quartz or granite to coordinate with but not match that speckly granite we have now. In my fantasy kitchen all my appliances will be new and will match, of course. Also, my kitchen will be clean.

So now I have a big ol' island with pretty stools (so I no longer need a table in the kitchen, which is good, because I don't have room for it with my big island) and my refrigerator is hanging out over against the wall, looking weird all alone and next to the bay window, right?

No!

Because (here is where the inspiration comes in).....I want to knock that bay window out and push out the wall!

It's all PERFECT, don't you see?! Look:

(Ignore doggy paw prints on window; there will be a dog door in my fantasy kitchen, so Fiesta won't have to scratch there to get back in).

I want to push the wall out where that porch railing is now and put in two big windows. That will open that tiny little doorway WAY up to the sunroom, bringing those spaces together. And then the door out to the deck will be on the right there.

And right next to the door, on the big wall?

Will be not only my fridge but a big wall of floor to ceiling built in storage! 

Kind of like this. Only with a refrigerator:

Garden Web

I'm very excited about my imaginary kitchen. We've already had someone out to give us an idea of how feasible my big plan is (along with how much it will cost to keep our sunroom windows from just falling out of  the house one day, which is more pressing). But we haven't heard back yet, so we have no idea what the money will look like and, therefore, no idea whether we'll be 80 before we can make it a reality. But we'll see. And I'm having fun imagining it in the meantime.

Summer Disney Series, Part 5: Save Some Money

Truth? A genuinely cheap Disney vacation is pretty near impossible to come by and getting harder by the day. I suppose you could camp at a state park somewhere near by, eat nothing but hot dogs cooked over your campfire, and then just go to Downtown Disney, let your kids play in the lego store, and tell them that IS Disney World. But that doesn't sound like much fun.

What makes Disney trips....justifiable for us is that we don't have to fly there. With six people, the cost of airfare alone to pretty much anywhere would already be a giant chunk of what we spend on a Disney trip. We also have always either gone during free dining or stayed in a cheap place off property. But even so, the price of a Disney trip has gone up so much for us over the years, between constant price increases (on Disney's part) and constantly new and/or aging children (on our part) that yearly trips are almost certainly a thing of the past. Which is fine. It's possible it's time to branch out a bit. I have a big imaginary road trip post planned for....sometime.

But! There are certainly ways to save some money on your Disney trip and make it cheaper than it would be if you just called up Disney and said something like, "please book the best vacation ever for me." Don't do that.

Here's my list of tips (by no means exhaustive! Please add any I've left out in the comments!), in rough order from big meta-tips that will save you significant money on your whole trip to little dinky tips that will save you a bit here and there.

1. Go during the off season: It's possible I would feel less strongly about this if I weren't so crowd averse, but if there's one single thing you can do to make your vacation better in every way possible, it's going during the off season. I talk about this more in the post on when to go, but, basically, any time kids are in school is when you want to go. If you don't have kids, or your kids aren't in school yet, or they're homeschooled, or you don't mind pulling them out for a week (and neither you nor your partner is a teacher. sigh)....go when kids are in school. Disney raises the prices not just on hotels but at many of the restaurants during busy times of year, so everything costs you more AND you get less for your money, because you spend more time fighting crowds and waiting in line (the parks are open longer hours, though, when it's busy). You're also much more likely to get a really good discount during the off season, which brings us to number 2.

2. Look for discounts: Disney very commonly offers pretty big discounts. Don't book without checking for them! Some of these are only available to annual pass holders or Florida residents or Disney Visa holders or people who know the magic handshake....but plenty of them are available to the general public, too. I always check Mousesavers.com first for discounts.

Hotel discounts are very common, and seem to range from 15-40ish% off, depending on which resort and what time of year.

My personal favorite discount, though, is my beloved free dining. Disney sells a few different dining plans that you can always pay to add onto a package (you can't get it if you're staying off property or booking your room and tickets separately), but at various times of year they offer a promotion where you get the dining plan for free when you book a full price room and ticket package. Free dining has been offered every single year in fall (always in September and then for varying lengths of time before or after) for....maybe 8 years now? And it's sometimes offered other non-peak times of year, too, depending largely on how many people Disney's getting to book trips without giant discounts.

People like to bicker over just how great of a discount free dining is, and the truth it that it totally depends on what your family/travel group looks like and how you like to travel. If you have, say, two people and you like to stay in deluxe resorts, you'll probably save more with a hotel discount. If you're not into the dining plan, preferring to eat off property or cook for yourself or just to keep things super flexible, it also might not be the best discount for you. But if you happen to have a few ginormous boys in your family who eat more than seems possible and you generally stay in the cheapest on-property resort you can fit in, free dining is an amazing deal. Paying for the regular dining plan would cost our family something like $260/night. We're not going to find a bigger discount than that.

3. Save on tickets, if you can: Tickets are the hardest thing to save money on. Disney rarely discounts them, and it's one thing that doesn't get cheaper in the off season. If you book a package, the ticket price will be rolled into that, and you'll pay what Disney charges you. If you're booking the components of your trip separately, however, there are a few ways to save. You can buy from an authorized ticket seller and save a few bucks over Disney prices. I've used Undercover Tourist without incident (if you sign up for Mousesavers newsletter, they'll send you a link to get slightly lower prices on Undercover Tourist, too).

Another potential money saver is individual enrollment in Disney's YES program.  This is a series of classes Disney offers for kids, elementary through high school aged. They're offered to school and other groups, but they sometimes open them up to individuals, too. You sign your kid up for a class and buy a package that includes up to eight days of admission with the class tuition. The classes sound really cool, and I hear good things about them. This used to be a really huge discount, but I think it's a lot less substantial now. Still, definitely worth looking into.

Another thing to remember about tickets is that Disney wants you to stay there, spending money on food, hotel rooms, and souvenirs as long as possible. As such, the longer you stay, the lower the ticket price per day is. The difference between a six day ticket and a seven day ticket is just a few dollars. One thing this means is that, just like Disney wants, it's much more expensive to hop over to Universal or Sea World for a couple of days than to spend those couple of days at Disney.

4. Stay off property: I talk more about this here, but if you're looking to do the cheapest trip possible, staying off property will need to be a part of it. Especially if you...

5. Stay somewhere with a kitchen: We cooked quite a few of our meals at our rental house this trip. This was partially to save money, but also because eating out over and over again with a 4 month old is not a whole lot of fun. But, yeah, you can save a ton of money this way. Eat breakfast, go the parks for awhile, bring lunch or buy lunch, then home for a break and dinner, back out for nighttime stuff.

6. Bring your own snacks: You ARE allowed to bring your own food in at Disney, unlike at most theme parks. You can haul in a whole lunch spread if you want, or just bring in snacks to stave off the temptation of Mickey Bars (I mean, you should buy Mickey Bars at least once, of course).

7. Don't buy water! Any place that sells fountain drinks will give you FREE cups of ice water. There is no reason at all to pay theme park prices for bottled water. You can also bring in bottles of water bought cheaply elsewhere, of course.

Next week: last week! I will talk about food, with special attention to gluten-free-ed-ness and Disney.

If you missed the first few installments, here they are:
When to go
Where to stay 
Bringing your baby
Big Families

On to day 5 of our recent trip. I don't seem to have too many pictures of this day. Ah well.

I couldn't stop taking pictures of Ari in his fedora.

We decided at the last minute to go on the "Behind the Seeds" tour of Living With the Land at Epcot.

It was really fun....well priced, I thought, and one of the few tours kids of all ages can go on.

I guess Abe must have been asleep, or I would have made him be

in the picture, too.

Abe's first time in a pool! He was completely indifferent.

Linking with:

The Inspiration Gallery
Tatertots and Jello's Weekend Wrap-Up Party
Monday Funday
Give Me the Goods Monday

If I Had a Million Dollars....(I Wouldn't Need to Draw an Octopus on a High Chair)

Before I get into the details of customizing high chairs (spoiler alert! I drew an octopus on it!), a few thoughts on the Antilop, in all its modern plastic affordability.

There is not any high chair, no matter how expensive, that really gets me excited. I get excited about totally out of budget baby clothes. I could spend a fortune on baby carriers in various amazing fabrics. High chairs? Eh. Whatever.

With my other kids, I had a chunky white wooden high chair that I'd picked up at a yard sale or something. It was nice, and it served us well, but it's long gone (no baby equipment survived the seven year gap in babies around here). So we needed something or other for Abe to sit in when he eats (which he's not doing yet (I mean, aside from breastmilk) but will soon). I thought about just getting a booster seat with a tray to strap to one of our kitchen chairs. But I seem to recall having gone that route at some point with Gus and it making for a lot of food smooshed into our kitchen chairs.

Enter the Antilop. Basic, no frills, with unoffensive modern lines....and this thing is TWENTY DOLLARS (plus five more for the tray). You can't go wrong, I figured.

You also can draw all over it with a sharpie without too much pressure to make things perfect. Because, you know....it was $20. And it's not going to be hanging out in your house for all that long anyway.

I would love to give you a full review of the Antilop, but Abe's not eating solids yet, so I can't. He likes to sit in it for short periods of time before he starts crying and insisting you pick him up. What I can tell you, though, is that the safety sticker affixed to the inside of your Antilop is so hard to get off it will make you wish you were never born.

Or at least that you'd never bought an Antilop.

Ikea, you know I love you, but, seriously: what the hell?

Here is the label after I spent approximately 3 hours (or maybe 10 minutes) picking at it with my fingernail:

At this point Dave said, "why don't you just leave the label on there?" And I was like, "NO! It's ugly! I WON'T!"

(In fact, this is precisely what I did with the sticker on Abe's Ikea crib. But it's on the inside edge, where no one but Abe ever sees it. It doesn't interfere with my attempts to photograph the nursery).

So then I googled 359 different methods for removing stickers from plastic and tried them all. None of them worked particularly well by themselves, but by the time I'd done ALL of them, the sticker was gone.

One site suggested a hair dryer to heat up the glue and loosen the sticker. Dave complained a lot about doing this, for some reason: "this is SOOOOO boring." Also, it didn't work at all.

Then there was the "put oil on it and let it soak for 24 hours" method. I couldn't wait 24 hours, of course, because I'm not that kind of person. So I waited three minutes.

Ew! So we finally found the one thing coconut oil doesn't magically make better.

Really, it worked a little, I guess? I went at with a scraper for awhile and made some progress. The Beagle was VERY interested in the high chair once it was coated with coconut oil, incidentally.

Next I sprayed some Windex on it. Why not?!

I learned that Windex and coconut oil smell terrible together.

OMG: this isn't better!!! At this point, I was ready to return the $20 high chair to Ikea and spend a million dollars on a high chair if necessary, just to not have to deal with this goopy mess anymore.

But I persevered. Next up: Goof Off wipes:

These kind of, sort of worked, if I rubbed really, really hard.

Finally, I read a tip on using WD40 to get rid of sticker residue:

Success!

Ignore the part where there's an octopus. I haven't gotten to that yet. Just admire the stickerless plastic (it's kind of scratched all to hell from the scraper, but you can't see that in the picture).

Okay! So! Is plain white plastic any fun? No, it is not. It needs someone to come along and draw on it with a sharpie.

A little while ago, Anu over at Nalle's House put some Moomins on her high chair, and it looked ADORABLE (spoiler alert again: mine is not as adorable):

Moomin High Chair at Nalle's House

So this was my inspiration. I considered a lot of different ideas. Maybe a pattern of some kind? (paisley? arrows? hexagons?) Maybe another whale?

But I've always been a little bummed about the lack of octopuses in Abe's nursery, so I decided to go that route. I sketched out an octopus that I was pretty happy with and spent some frustrating time trying to cut out a stencil-like thing from it:

Then I gave up. I was having a very hard time, and I was still going to have to figure out how to get those inside lines for the legs on there anyway...it wasn't all outline.

I tried to sketch it out in pencil first, but I couldn't see the pencil lines at all. Frustrated again!

Finally I just threw caution to the wind and started drawing right on the plastic with the sharpie.

And. Well. This isn't the most....professional looking thing I've ever done. But it's cute enough. And, hey, the high chair was only $20!

The octopus looks a little angry. And kind of like he's boxing.

Linking with:
The Inspiration Gallery
The Shabby Nest's Frugal Friday
Liz Marie Blog's Inspire Me Please
Tatertots and Jello's Weekend Wrap-up Party
Monday Funday
Home Stories A to Z's Tutorials and Tips
Hookin' Up with House of Hepworths
Give Me the Goods Monday

Summer Disney Series, Part 4: Disney World and the Big(gish) Family

I know that four kids is nothing compared to what some people have, but, for Disney purposes, anything other than your standard two adults and two kids means you have to do a little extra planning. Mostly when it comes to picking a hotel room. So I'll focus primarily on that and then toss in a few extra thoughts about travel with more than two kids at the end.

On paper, you have plenty of options for places to stay at Disney with five people, and things don't really start to get limited until you hit six. In actual practice, though, most of the options that become unavailable to you once you have that pesky fifth person are all the cheapest hotel rooms on property. So while you still have lots of choices, they're largely pretty expensive choices. A standard room in a value resort or in any moderate other than Port Orleans Riverside sleeps up to four people. A standard room in most of the deluxes, on the other hand, sleeps five. I've seen some heated threads on the Disboards where people like to talk about the gazillions of choices you still have for your family of five....but this presumes that you also have gazillions of dollars.

There ARE some good, non-gazillion-dollar-costing, places to stay with your family of 5 or 6 or more, but finding them isn't necessarily as simple as getting on Disney's website and plugging in how many people you have. It pays to get a little more creative.

A note: Disney doesn't count kids under 3 as people, so you if you have a kid under 3, you get an extra person in your room.

Okay, so! I'm going to try to break this down as simply as I can, but it's a kind of big, sprawly topic (and I'm sure I'll leave something out, so feel free to jump in in the comments with any options I'm not thinking of!). Let's start off with a category for, specifically, parties of exactly five (or five plus a baby under 3 in a crib). You have a fair number of options that go away once you hit six people.

If you have exactly five people....

1. Port Orleans Riverside

This is a moderate resort (i.e. the middle category, price-wise), and there is one section of the resort that offers rooms with two queen beds plus an extra pull down bed suitable for a younger kid to sleep in. I believe they recommend them for kids under 10. This is likely going to be your cheapest on-property option for 5 people. I haven't stayed here. We almost did once, but wound up having to cancel that trip. The downside here is that you have five people in one not so big hotel room.

2. Any deluxe resort except Animal Kingdom and Wilderness Lodge

All of these rooms have two queens plus a daybed. They're also all really pricey. And you're still putting a lot of people in one hotel room, albeit a bigger one than Port Orleans.  But you're in a deluxe resort, which means nicer theming and, generally speaking, better location and/or transportation options.

If you have five or more people....
(listed in order, roughly, from cheapest to most expensive)

1. Off property (up to....lots of people): the cheapest way to go. Your options here are virtually endless. You can get a 2 room suite that sleeps 5 or 6. You can get a 6 bedroom house with a private pool that sleeps 14. The advantages here are price and space. The disadvantage is that you're not on property. More on pros and cons here.

2. Two rooms at a value resort (up to 8 people): we've stayed in two rooms at Pop Century three times now, and it's worked really well for us. You need to request connecting (not adjoining) rooms. We've always gotten connecting rooms (with a door in between) no problem, and we've always been told that they will guarantee that we get them because kids outnumber adults in our party. However, I've heard horror stories of people going at very busy times of year and not being given the connecting rooms they were promised. So, if it will ruin your vacation to be stuck in totally separate rooms, proceed at your own risk. The advantages here are price--this is probably the cheapest way to go for on property accommodations for six or more and that you have a fair amount of space and two full bathrooms. If you have two adults and 4 or fewer kids, you can request a king bed in one of the rooms (and 2 doubles in the other), but the king rooms are rare and hard to come by; we've had mixed luck trying to get one. Keep in mind that these are small rooms; there's no space for a rollaway and not much floor space, so if you have kids who can't or won't share a double bed well, you want to figure out the configuration ahead of time.

3. A family suite at All Star Music or at Art of Animation (up to 6 people): All the family suites are, I believe, exactly the same square footage as two rooms at Pop or another Value resort. In fact, the family suites at All Star Music ARE two value rooms that have been converted into a family suite. But you pay a little more for a suite at All Start Music than for two value rooms, and you pay quite a bit more for Art of Animation. The advantages are that you're really and truly guaranteed rooms that connect to each other, and that you have a kitchenette with a microwave and fridge. At Art of Animation, you're also staying at the newest resort on property. I hear it's pretty fabulous.

4. Cabin at Fort Wilderness (up to 6 people): These cabins have two rooms....a bedroom with a full size bed and a bunk beds, and then a living area with a full kitchen and a murphy bed. A step up in price from the family suites, but you get a full kitchen.

5. DVC resorts: Disney Vacation Club is Disney's timeshare program, but they also rent out the rooms that aren't being used by members on a per night basis. There are studios, 1 bedrooms, 2 bedrooms, a few 3 bedroom "treehouse villas" at one resort, and grand villas. There are quite a few DVC resorts, and some of them have really great locations adjacent to deluxe resorts like the Contemporary or Animal Kingdom Lodge. Oddly, both the studios and 1 bedrooms have a maximum capacity of 4 (with some exceptions....I believe a lot of the newer DVC resorts can accomodate 5 people in some studios and/or 1 bedrooms), so you're looking at at least a 2 bedroom with your biggish family. Renting these rooms directly from Disney is crazy expensive (you can often get discounts. But they're expensive even with a substantial discount). But the other option, besides renting directly from Disney, is to arrange a rental with a private timeshare owner by renting points from them. Disney uses a points system to keep track of things, and if an owner isn't going to use all the points in a given year, s/he can rent them to someone privately and then make a reservation for the person who rents them. This is substantially cheaper than renting from Disney, but it is a little more complicated and comes with fewer protections for you as the buyer. I have friends who have gone this route and been very pleased. We've never done it, largely because it would mean no free dining (you have to book a full price package to get free dining). There are lots of places online that will help you arrange all this point transferring. I can't personally vouch for any, but here are a couple of popular ones:

David's Vacation Club Rentals
Mouseowners.com

6. Two rooms at a moderate or deluxe resort (up to 8 or 10): hey--if you can afford it.....actually, if you can afford this, I'd go with a 2 bedroom at a DVC instead. You get a full kitchen that way.

Okay! That's all I can think of! Well, you could also camp at Fort Wilderness. I know nothing of this. It sounds hot.

A few other things to think about:

1. We were surprised to learn on this trip that the parent swap passes (what they give you when one parent waits with your baby so that s/he can go back through and ride without waiting when you switch off) is only good for three people total. I.e. if you have more than two kids, they won't all be able to go again with the second parent. I'm not sure if this is new or if we'd just never noticed before since it didn't affect us. Now, in practice, they always let us bring our extra kid through. I don't know if we got lucky, or if it's unwritten policy to do so. I'm sure the policy is designed to keep people from bringing enormous groups including aunts, uncles, and random passers-by through with their parent swaps, not to punish little children for having too many siblings. But, anyway, something to be aware of.

2. Think about how to handle different age groups/different interests in advance. Are you going to split up some, having younger/too short kids go off with one parent? Or all stay together (which can make for a lot of waiting for shorter kids or a lot of kiddie rides for older kids)? Gus has a pair of light up drumsticks from the gift shop outside Rock n' Roller Coaster specifically because I felt guilty that he had to wait on his taller brothers so much one year. Often there's a younger kid appropriate ride or attraction near the bigger kid ride, but certainly not always.

This has taken me FOURTEEN YEARS or so to finish writing, and it will only be useful for approximately .002% of the population. Oh well!

If you missed the first few installments of this epic series, you can read about what time of year to go here, pros and cons of staying on property here, and tips for bringing along a baby here.

Next week I'll talk about what you can do to save a bit of money on your vacation.

And now a few highlights from day 4 of our recent trip, AKA the day we finally made it to the Magic Kingdom:

We took the boat instead of the monorail from the Transportation

and Ticket Center in the morning. Here is Gus on it.

It was crowded.

 New Fantasyland!

 You have to make your kids sit in the Dumbo for a picture. It's the law.

 Ari selected this Mickey fedora as his souvenir for the trip, because he's AWESOME.

And then I took a perfect picture of him wearing it with the "Gentlemen" sign in the background

because so am I.

It's everyone (except me) on the monorail.

Linking with: 

The Inspiration Gallery
The Shabby Nest's Frugal Friday
Tatertots and Jello's Weekend Wrap-up Party

Rainy Independence Day

We were supposed to see fireworks Wednesday AND Thursday nights. But then it rained. A lot. For forever. So we didn't see any. We could hear them from our house, though. Which is, I suppose, something.

Here was our alternate plan for a rainy 4th:

1. Make cookie cake
2. Take pictures of baby in red, white, and blue outfit
3. Have friends over and light sparklers in between rain showers
4. Watch Monsters, Inc. in preparation for seeing Monsters University today
5. More sparklers and spinny light up things in between rain showers
6. Bed

Master Bedroom Progress: Cane Chair

The other day I woke up and nudged Dave and pointed to the corner and said, "do you remember what an awesome chair we have now?"

My friend Kristi and I went to yard sales the other day (I keep talking about "my friend Kristi" here, and I also keep trying to get her to write a guest post. Like maybe about her fabulous fireplace makeover. Or her lovely newly finished basement. Kristi?)

We didn't find a whole lot at garage sales. I found a ceramic sea shell. She found a poo poo panda for her three boys:

It poops jelly beans! Brown ones.

But then we went to the thrift store, and I spotted that cane chair (I googled. I think I can call it a "barrel backed cane chair"). It was $40, which isn't nothing, and I thought, "I am not sure where to put that chair. Maybe if it's still there when we leave I'll get it."

Then we were looking at paintings, and Kristi told me a story about how, recently, she was at a thrift store and found a painting of a collie. "Or maybe it was a sheltie," she said, and how she hadn't bought it and now she wished she had.

I meditated on this cautionary tale for a minute.

"I think I'd better go get that chair," I said.

So I did. I brought it home, and I realized that--duh!--I have the PERFECT place for it. In this corner of my bedroom. "We can sit in the chair and put our shoes on," I thought to myself.

I love my chair. I know it's fashionable to paint and reupholster such chairs these days to make them more modern, but mine's staying how it is. Reupholstering and I don't get along, for one thing. And also I love it just the way it is. The green is lovely....more of an emerald-y color than the olive you might expect from a chair of its vintage.

Here's how that side of my bedroom is looking now:

You might notice the boat picture I was so fond of is gone now, replaced by that gold mirror. It didn't really seem to fit in anymore with all the other stuff going on in there. I'm thinking maybe sunroom for the boat picture.I bought the mirror at the same time as the chair, thinking I might paint it and hang it in the foyer. But then I realized I could hang it there, and I wouldn't even need to paint it! Perfect!

Linking with:
Tatertots and Jello's Weekend Wrap-Up
By Stephanie Lynn's Sunday Showcase Party
Tuesday's Treasures at My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia

Summer Disney Series, Part 3: Bringing Baby

(If you missed the first two parts of the big Disney series, you can read about when to go here and about staying on property vs. off here). Basically, I'm writing a series this summer with tips that folks planning their first (or first with kids) Disney trips might find useful.

Before I get into tips on making traveling with baby a little bit easier, there's the whole question of whether you should take your baby at all. People have very strong feelings about this. Other people do. Me, not so much. Bring your baby; don't bring your baby--I don't care! But if you read discussions about this topic on various Disney message boards, you will feel very judged no matter what you ultimately decide. Your worth as a human being has a lot to do with whether you travel to Disney with an infant or not. It doesn't really, though, so you needn't worry overmuch. Either way, it will be okay.

Now. Your baby will probably like Disney World just fine. But s/he probably won't like it any better than a trip to the local zoo or, say, a bowl of applesauce. It is colorful and exciting and there's lots to look at and you're always moving. But it's also hard to get a good nap in, and it's often hot, and there aren't many good places to get down and stretch your legs. So your baby can probably take it or leave it.

You don't really take your baby to Disney World FOR your baby. So, then, why might you do it?

*Because you want to go Disney World, and you happen to have a baby.
*Because you want to take your older kids to Disney World, and you also have a baby.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. If you think your Disney trip is going to be a once in a lifetime sort of experience, you'll probably want to save it until your kid is older and will get more out of it and make precious lifelong memories and all that. Of course, the problem with that is that it's hard to say whether it's going to be a once in a lifetime thing until you've done it. You might decide once is plenty, or you might want to go back over and over. If you have a choice in these things, I'd actually recommend a pre-kid Disney trip to check it out and see which kind of person you are. But sometimes we fail to plan ahead, we humans. In short, I pretty much think the presence or absence of a baby in your life should have little impact in your decision to Disney or not to Disney. (and babies are free until they're 3, so there's little to no financial downside to bringing one).

Okay! So you've decided to bring your baby to Disney World. Yay! Now--WHEN? I've traveled with 2 different babies at three different ages (I'm classifying "baby" as under 2 for the purposes of this discussion). We took Gus when he was 9 months old and again when he was 1 year, 9 months, and we took Abe when he was 4 1/2 months old. I'm sure personality plays a role in this, but 9 months was by far the easiest of these ages. Nine month olds are old enough to enjoy and be actively interested in their surroundings, but they're generally not walking yet and are more content to be confined to a carrier or stroller than an older kid. My 4 month old was fine, but he really didn't much care that he was surrounded by magical excitement, and he had a hard time getting to sleep with so much going on. My close to 2 year old was all over the place, and we spent a lot of time trying to keep him from running off in every direction. I think older but still pre-walking baby is kind of the sweet spot. I wouldn't let the fact that I had a young toddler stop me from going, but if I had a choice, I'd plan my trip for either pre-walking or post 2 years old, when they start to get  little bit of sense to go with their mobility. At this point, we're thinking we'll try to get a trip in at some point between when Abe is 2 (or at least very nearly 2) and 3, but we're happy to skip the year he's 1.

What going to Disney World with a one 

year old looks like

Of course, if you DON'T take your one year old,

you don't get this picture. Goofy is SO BIG.

Now--tips! And just kind of random thoughts, I guess.

1. Be flexible. Be very, very flexible. And take your time: Our first Disney trip with a baby was also our first Disney trip, period, so for a long time I didn't know anything different. But this time around I had a couple of strollerless trips under my belt, and it was a bit of a shock to realize just how different a trip with a baby is. Babies slow you down. A lot. You have to park the stroller, you have to do parent swaps if you want to ride everything, babies need to eat and sleep and have their diapers changed. You won't do nearly as much with a baby as you would without one. Accept it and be okay with it, and this is no problem.

2. Strollers: You can either bring your own or rent one from Disney. I am, historically, a big fan of the Disney strollers and not worrying about hauling my own around. But this last time we brought our own for a few reasons: we were staying off property and driving everywhere, so we didn't need to worry about folding up a stroller on the buses and all that. Also, Abe wasn't really big enough for the Disney strollers yet. They don't have any padding, and the seats aren't adjustable, so they don't really work for babies who aren't sitting up well on their own. Another reason to bring your own stroller is that it costs a gazillion dollars these days to rent Disney strollers. Single strollers are $15/day, and double strollers are $31/day (MUCH more expensive than we started going....I know we paid well under $20 for double strollers then). So you can easily BUY a stroller for the cost of renting one for a week. Another option is renting a stroller from a private company in Orlando. I've never done this, but I hear good things. Perhaps an option to consider if you fly in instead of driving, so you don't have to haul the stroller on a plane.

One thing that I had forgotten about over the course of our stroller-less years is just how often you have to get your baby into and out of the stroller. Actually, I think it was less of an issue with Gus, because he was stroller averse and wanted to be in the baby carrier the whole time. But Abe was fairly content in the stroller much of the time and napped well in it....except that we constantly had to get him out of it to take him onto a ride or into a building. In general, your stroller has to stay outside when you go inside. There are cast members hanging out outside the buildings to stop you from bringing your stroller in. This is true even in many of the big pavilions at Epcot with multiple rides and shows inside (you can bring a stroller in Innoventions, though, and I highly recommend you do...air conditioning!). So a baby carrier as a stroller backup is essential. Gus rode everywhere in the Ergo when he was 9 months, but we hadn't started using it much with Abe yet when we went, so I wound up using the Maya Wrap a lot, which was not as happy for my back.

9 month old baby (with 3 year old brother) in

Disney stroller

Four month old baby in his own stroller

9 month old baby in Ergo

3. Taking breaks: all the guidebooks tell you that, particularly if you have small children, you must take an afternoon break. On our first trip, with a 5 year old, a 3 year old, and a 9 month old, I dutifully attempted to follow this advice for the first couple of days. We'd go to the parks early, get out right after lunch, and go back to hotel for our relaxing afternoon naps. Then we'd spend an hour trying to force the older, not used to napping, kids to nap before giving up ("but the books say that even if you don't nap at home,  you'll be so tired that you'll do it here!"). Meanwhile baby Gus had been napping in the Ergo whenever he felt like it all morning and was perfectly well rested. Then, just as the books instructed, we'd attempt to stay out late, taking advantage of the relative cool while our napless, out past their bedtime older children melted down over and over and made us all (except the dozing baby) miserable.

On this trip? We totally rocked the afternoon break. We went back to the rental house where the older kids swam or watched TV while the baby took long naps in the quiet bedroom. Then we stayed out late with perfectly happy older kids and a baby who could snooze in the stroller.

All of this to say? Refer to tip #1. Afternoon breaks are great....except when they're not. Maybe your normally non-napping children will sleep like stones all afternoon and wake up ready to shut down the Magic Kingdom with the late parade and fireworks. Maybe not. Maybe your baby will be so overstimulated s/he won't be able to sleep at all until you get him or her back to the hotel. Maybe she'll sleep anywhere and everywhere.  Be ready either way, and be prepared to alter plans based on how your kids react.

4. Rides: If you've never been to Disney with a baby, you might be surprised by how much there is for them to do there. Babies can go on any ride without a height restriction which means there are far more rides they CAN go on than ones they can't go on. In Magic Kingdom, for example, the only rides you CAN'T take your baby on are Goofy's Barnstormer, Big Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Stitch's Great Escape (you don't want to go on that anyway), and Tomorrowland Speedway (no babies under 12 months). That leaves, by my quick count, 18 rides babies of all ages can go on, plus all the shows and other attractions.

For the rides you can't take baby on, you can get a parent swap (just go up the cast member at the entrance, produce your baby or toddler for their inspection, and ask for one), so that one person can go on while the other person waits with the baby, then the other parent (plus up to 2 other people) can take their turn without waiting in the main line. This is a time suck, but you don't care because you're following tip #1.

5. Feeding Babies: I have nursed babies all over Disney World, and I have never had a bit of trouble. Each park has a baby care station where they have things like private nursing rooms, diapers and formula available, and all that, but I've never seen the inside of one. I can't really imagine that anyone hauls their hungry baby across the park to get to a particular location, but, if you've forgotten some essential baby paraphernalia, or you happen to be near one and want to duck inside for some quiet, I'm sure they're lovely.

It's generally pretty easy to find a bench to plop down on to feed your baby, but there are also some nice spots in each park where you can enjoy a leisurely show or something and feed your baby at the same time. There are long shows in each park that are perfect, and some of the longer lasting rides, like the Peoplemover in Magic Kingdom and Spaceship Earth in Epcot, are great, too.

Mostly, though, it all comes back to tip #1. Stay flexible; have a great time!

Next week: Big(gish) family specific advice

And now, the more self-indulgent portion of the post: Day 3 of our trip: Hollywood Studios:

 Tower of Terror--scary!!!

 We have a thing for pictures of all of us in 3D glasses on every trip. Toy Story Mania

 Abe with Betty White (because same birthday! As I love to

point out weekly). I think this picture would have been less

weird if Dave had just stood up and owned up to being in the 

picture.

 It was Star Wars Weekends while we were there. We didn't, like, wait

in line for pictures with anyone, as that would have taken too long, 

but I did take this while Abe and I were waiting for everyone else

to finish Star Tours.

What? Huh? When did we have time to go to NYC in the middle 

of our Disney trip?! We're amazing.