Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Happy Anniversary Curt!

Curt, these 30 years have been magical ... I look forward to the next 30! I love you so much.

Monday, June 25, 2012

Disney Cruise Line Fish Exchange

As I mentioned a few posts back, I will now explain the Fish Extender exchange I participated in on our recent Disney cruise. I signed up to participate in it on the DIS Discussion Forums. Just scroll down and find the Disney Cruise Line Forum and then go to the Disney Cruise Meets. You will then click on your ship and year you are sailing ... then click on your cruise date. If you are a long way out from your cruise then it may take awhile for the Fish Extender list to get started. In the mean time enjoy meeting your fellow cruisers and ask any questions you have.

When they start asking who is interested in being in the Fish Extender then that is the time to speak up!! When you get within about a month of the cruise they will finalize the list and possibly split it if there are a lot of people participating. That is what happened on our cruise. I was happy it was split since I was making a mini album and didn't think that I could get 35 done! :)

You can find "how to's" on the boards for how to make the Fish Extender ... that is what I did. I should have started it a lot sooner than I did cause I don't think I finished until about a week before we left! Here is mine:
All the staterooms have a metal fish outside the door. The cruise line uses this to clip any messages for you they may have. We use it to hang the fish extender! Throughout the cruise ... even possibly up to the last night ... you will have something put in your fish extender. It was so much fun to come back to the room and see what we received. However, I enjoyed delivering the gifts I made to all the staterooms in my group. It certainly helped us learn our way around the ship. :)

While I put off sewing the fish extender, I totally embraced making my mini albums. I made my own happy mess ...
 
 
Here is the final product. 
 
 
 
 
After this point the pages just repeat the three shown above. Then I decided to personalize the back cover:
I wanted to mention that the idea for my mini album came from the very talented Laura Denison. You can find it on her Ustream through her website ... The Paper Trail. I just took her idea and Disney-fied it. :)

I hope this explains the Fish Extender well enough. Like I said earlier, the DIS Discussion Forums are where you need to go if you have questions about cruising with Disney. If you already have your reservation then join your cruise group through the Disney Cruise Meets and happy cruising!

Thanks for dropping by ...


Sunday, June 24, 2012

Birthday Cards ...

I had a few birthday cards to make for this weekend. My nephew turned 30 and so I made this card to celebrate:
 
The other card I made was for my sweet friend Robyn who was turning 50! She is just so beautiful ... inside and out!

Happy birthday girl!!

Disney Fantasy Cruise - Day 7

Okay, how cool is this!!! This totally made my day at Castaway Cay.

I had to hold on to that wonderful feeling cause we found out our stingray excursion was cancelled! We were both looking forward to that so much, but I guess the water was too choppy or something. It was overcast a bit and a bit rainy when we first woke up.

We walked to the tram that would take us to Serenity Bay - the adults only beach on Castaway Cay. Curt is NOT what you would call a beach person, however, I did get him to sit at the edge of the beach with his feet in the water. I went in about waist deep, but that was all. It was kind of rough out there. I could not believe the number of shells I kept digging up. Sheriff Curt made sure I kept them on the beach since it was announced they would appreciate us not taking the shells. Oh how my scrapbooking page will suffer without that shell ... ha! Wow, this island was so gorgeous and we had a fantastic time at the beach.

 
 
 
 
See my awful sunburn from the St. John excursion.


We stayed on the beach for a few hours then went to eat at the buffet. I had my first hamburger of the trip! Now, I've got to tell you the funniest story here. Curt is not a seafood lover ... besides Long John Silver's fish, he will not eat any seafood. They had the hamburger patties, chicken and mahi mahi in buffet covered dishes to keep them warm. There are place cards in front of each dish. Well, Curt and I sit down at a picnic table and I'm putting my hamburger together while he digs into his meal. He says "Cheryl, you have got to try this chicken! It is just so tender and tastes great." I look up and over at his plate and see the "chicken" he is eating. It doesn't look like chicken to me and after tasting it I was very happy to inform him that he was eating the delicious mahi mahi!! Bahahaha! He was such a good sport about it and even tasted it again saying "Now I can taste the fishy aftertaste".  Ha .. he just cracks me up!!!

We decided to do some shopping and walk back to the ship to check out the AquaDuck.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
When we got on the ship it was empty! We went immediately to the AquaDuck and enjoyed riding it three times in a row. We would have done more, but there are 70 steps to climb up each time!! The first time we jogged right on up those steps, the 2nd time we marched right on up, the 3rd time we were waving the kids behind us to just pass us (and pray for us)! After enjoying the heck out of that ride we decided to go to Satellite Falls on the top deck. This is for adults only and is totally relaxing. We sat in the pool up there for a while and laid out on the beach chairs before figuring we had better go and get ready for the get together for the AllEars group in the Tube. This was a fabulous event and many thanks to AllEars and MEI Travel! There was a small buffet and free drinks for everyone.




Doesn't it look delicious ... and the mojoito I had was the best ever!

Curt and I found out we got an honorable mention for our door decoration and with the raffle tickets we collected we also won a prize.
At the end of this wonderful event we were thrilled when Captain Mickey entered the room for pictures! *Squeal* *Squeal*
 Below is our picture with Deb Wills of the AllEars group. She is such a sweet person!
Now off to our last dinner. Of course, when we are all together there was all this grumbling across the table from me. Seems some people felt there was just too much seafood on the menu tonight. Curt, Ryan and Gail were complaining so we asked Gavin to get them the kiddie menu (with crayons).
They did finally order from the adult menu and were glad they did. It was sad to say good-bye to our new friends, but we had some packing to do! We also had to say good-bye to our head server, Gavin, and his assistant, Carly ... they were awesome! The picture below was taken the night before ... loved those ties and shirts!
We didn't see the show on this night. I was under the impression we could watch it on our TV, but was wrong. We were packing all our stuff to get in the hallway by 10:30PM.
I'll leave you with this fun picture ...
This was in Ooh La La which is one of the nightclubs in the  Europa district. In the evenings the Europa district is adults only and consists of four nightclubs. We only went to The Tube (London theme). There is also the Irish bar named O'Gills Pub, Ooh La La (French boudoir theme), and Skyline (cosmopolitan lounge) has several European skylines. On our next cruise I plan on spending some time in Skyline!

Tomorrow we dock at Port Canaveral and the cruise is over! We booked a few more days at Disney World so we wouldn't have to go cold turkey leaving immediately ... plus I'm so excited to see my sweet scrapping buddy, Karen, and her hubby, Guy. These two are the most adorable and sweet cast members Disney has. They were so sweet to offer to pick us up from the port and we are looking forward to spending the day with them. Thanks for dropping by ...