Our PB&J Adventure Book

Recycle, reuse and craft?
Crafting has always been one of my favorite things to do in my downtime and as a hobby. There's just something that sparks so much joy with dreaming up an idea, finding a way to make it happen, and seeing the end result. It's a true stress reliever, although mid-craft process can get a little tedious... the end result is always quite amazing! The feeling of seeing your finished product and in the case of Disney style, proudly wearing it around the park is truly the best feeling.
So where did all of this newfound creative juice come from? Well for starters: necessity. I ended up taking a leave from my full time job working in special education to stay at home with Ben. This leave is most likely going to end up being a permanent one because I just can't imagine life NOT being home with Ben. More on this entire topic later... but for now back to this post!

So with my own personal finances put into check, I had to revaluate my "Disney Budget". This meant that I just couldn't be out spending a ton of $$$ on every single latest and greatest Disney fashion tidbit that would pop up or ordering up custom pieces from some of my favorite shops, which I completely miss by the way. I took a good hard look at my current closet, all thanks to Marie Kondo and a "Tidying Up" binge watch. I realized that after years of Disney style hoarding, I actually had a lot of existing pieces that were never used or could be reworked/reused into something completely new.

So for every Disney trip of 2019 I've decided to get creative with our style, whether it be using an exiting piece from our closets, dabbling into DIY, or just seeing where the crafting possibilities can take us!

Disney donuts
For our March trip, I took on two different DIY attempts, the first being one from a Disney collection I've been obsessed with: the Disney DLish line. It's an entire collection dedicated to all your favorite Disney park snacks and eats. One particular look that I loved was the Mickey and Minnie donuts. So why not combine these things together and create a mommy and me style, all based off this adorable park treat? This was all literally inspired by a random 2am thought about how cute it would be to dress Ben as a giant Mickey Donut. Thoughts of pastel sprinkles, round ears, and more danced through my head. One of the first things I did the following morning was break open my "big box o felt" literally a giant plastic tub filled with felt, fabric scraps, and God knows what else... and see what I could use to craft up a donut for Ben. The second look I DIY'd was a take on the new "Celebration" confetti outfits at the parks, but more on this in another post to come!
Originally I just envisioned a simple donut glued onto a onesie...but of course, this mama went to the extreme and instead make a 3D filled donut to make everything that much sweeter! Oh and also to craft up an entire donut theme skirt for myself while I was at it, too.

So how did this look come together? Let's take a closer look starting with Ben's donut style!

Baby Donut DIY
*Disclaimer: This is barely a tutorial "tutorial". I tend to "freehand" a majority of my DIY projects. I don't know how to sew and most of my projects are held together my hot glue gun and lots of luck. So I apologize in advance if this style breakdown is a little vague or all over the place.

Materials you'll need:
- Felt
- Fabric scissors (these make a world of difference cutting through fabrics!) A large pair for large fabric cuts and a smaller pair for detailing usually does the trick.
- hot glue gun & LOTS of extra glue sticks
- paper plates (or anything circular and in the sizing you want) and pen
- polyfil stuffing
- A whole lot of faith in yourself that this will work!

Baby Donut step by step:
1. Trace paper plates onto your felt 4x, cut out.

2. Once circles are cut out, trace and cut a smaller hold in the middle as your "donut hole".
3. Using your hot glue gun, glue the inner circle (donut hole) edges together, repeat with outer edge. Leave a 2-3in opening at the bottom of the donut for filling.
4. fill with polyfil to desired "puff"

6. Use hot glue to seal remainder of donut
7. decorate with your felt frosting, sprinkles, etc

8. Cut out two, 2in strips of felt, use glue fun to attach to back of each "donut" to create the shoulder straps for outfit.
9. Optional: add smaller circular donuts for "ears"

10. Enjoy the cute!

Mama Donut skirt
Because you know mama's got to match... I had to create a sweet look to match my little Disney donut!

Materials you'll need:
- Basic skirt. One of my favorites is this basic from Amazon. These skirts come in a variety of colors and are fairly inexpensive. Perfect for crafting up Disney style ideas!
Basic Skirt *Amazon Affiliate link*
- 2 yards of fleece or felt fabric for frosting
- colored felt for sprinkles
- fabric scissors
- straight pins
- glue gun and glue sticks

Skirt step by step:
1. Lay out your skirt on a flat surface so you can get the whole front or back laid out.
2. Using straight pins, attach the fleece material to the waistband of the skirt.
3. Cut fabric to fit the outline of the skirt. This is where you can embellish the "frosting" look of the skirt
4. Glue "frosting" part to the skirt starting at the top nearest to the waistband. Attach the rest by glue, working your way slowly since the fleece can get bunched up easily when being attached to the base skirt.
5. Cut and attach felt "sprinkles" to the skirt.
6. You're done! Take note that if your skirt has elasticity to it, to be aware that if you glue your fleece to the waistband it will alter the stretch of the skirt. You may need to glue the material nearest your waistband a little looser to accommodate.
Phew, okay, so I know the above wasn't the most detailed explanation, but again, I tend to be a total "do it as you go" type of crafter. This always tends to drive PB insane because he and his engineer mind always are about solid measurements, directions and rules. I'm literally like "hmm, this looks like it needs more glitter!" type of gal.

The finishing touches
As much as I've cut back on my Disney style budget in lieu of crafting on my own now. There's still a few pieces and items i'll always try to prioritize for my budget. ForeverDreamDesign ears is one of them! The creative force behind the shop is Jocelyn and she's the sweetest! She first reached out to me right after Ben was born to gift us a few newborn felt ears and we instantly fell in love with her shop! Her shop specializes in simple, yet utterly magical Baby Mouse felt ears. They're easy to wear on a little one's head and they add just the right amount of Disney style to any outfit! You can definitely say I'm obsessed since I've been ordering them for Ben for almost all of his Disney trip looks! This trip was no exception and we ended up with the most adorable set of donut ears for Ben (& myself, too!).

The sweetest end result!
So there you have it, our Disney Donut style breakdown! I didn't expect to actually write up a entire (barely) tutorial about this look, so I lacked the necessary photos and basic instructions for the details. But I hope that for those that were curious, that this helps inspire you to get in touch with your own creative side and dream up something magical!

I'm hoping to do a few more style breakdowns of our Disney parks style in the future, with hopefully a little more organized detail, too. Thank you for bearing with me on this crafting journey! Until then, take care! 💜

A month of firsts
Our March can be summed up into one word: Firsts. Yes, a whole bunch of firsts happened within our March aka Ben's 15 months. Some of the firsts we encountered were good, others bad... but in all the "firsts" have accumulated into another month of memories and joy!

First flu
March kicked off much the way our prior February began, with another trek back to the happiest place on Earth! Since our weekend was short, we decided to fly down from the Bay Area to SoCal, which marked Ben's 3rd airplane trip. Ben is becoming quite the lover of moving objects, be it cars, trains and of course, airplanes. So our little guy was more than excited to be on an actual plane for our trip down!

As a mama and passenger in general, we all know how icky and germy planes can be. One of the first things I do when we sit down on a plane is bust out my anti bacterial wet wipes and scrub down every inch of our seat, table, windows and pretty much any surface Ben might get a hold of. All of that prep though didn't seem to help with whatever might have been in the air, heck it could have even been something before our flight, because our poor little guy ended up catching the FLU!
That's right... Ben caught his first flu. The morning we were supposed to head to Anaheim from my sister's place in L.A, Ben began to throw up. We chalked it up to possibly being something not sitting right in his tummy, so we decided to just rest for the day in our hotel room in Anaheim. Our little guy seemed to perk up a bit that evening, but took a turn for the worse the following day. After getting some air outside of the hotel around Downtown Disney, we noticed Ben looked flushed. Low and behold his temperature skyrocketed to a fever so we rushed him to Urgent Care per advice from our at home on call nurse. Sure enough, the Dr. ran a flu swab on Ben and confirmed that our little guy had the flu.

I've touched upon our flu encounter in another blog post, so if you want to read more about "Getting Sick at Disney" along with our thoughts on battling the flu, read all about that HERE.
Long story short, Ben was protected by his existing flu shot. This meant that even though he caught a strain of the flu, his shot protected him from more serious complications like a hospitalization (or worse). Another plus was because he was diagnosed so early with his flu, he was able to take Tamiflu to help ease his symptoms. This drastically cut down on recovery time, he was feeling back to himself in just a few days as opposed to the 2 weeks it could have dragged on to be.
Overall, we're thankful that we had taken the necessary precautions advised by our Dr. to protect Ben from a worse outcome with his Flu. We're also thankful that our own flu shots kept both PB and I from getting sick as well. If you aren't a believer in flu shots... let me tell you that they work... Fully contagious Ben spent each night breathing next to me while he slept... heck, he even sneezed in my face a few times and this mama escaped without even a sniffle!

When your child gets sick its probably one of the worst feelings in the world. You feel so helpless when they're in pain or discomfort. But I'm thankful our little Ben kicked this flu like the little champ that he is!

First haircut
The weekend after Ben battled the flu and started to feel better, we decided that our family needed to get out and just do something fun. That something fun? Getting Ben his very first haircut! My family has always had a tradition of waiting until after the 1st birthday to give a child their first haircut. With Ben we happily waited to continue this tradition and also because Ben didn't have enough hair to cut until this month, lol! So we took our little guy to a local barber shop, complete with Cars seats and all. Ben was nervous, as were we, but his hair stylist was great and we ended up with the most dapper haircut for our little man. I say little man because this kid seemed to have aged years after getting his new do!

Not a first Disney trip, but a first Disney redo
So remember how I mentioned Ben got the Flu? Well we ended up cutting that Disneyland trip short, ehh, more like it was canceled entirely at the start of March. It was all good though because our main priority was making sure Ben was okay. We agreed that once Ben was 100% again we'd head back to Disneyland for our "redo" trip. This particular trip happened two weeks later and held so much magic and fun in store for our family!

First dad and me day
Everything always happens for a reason and I like to think that things always will work out in the end. Case in point, as sad as it was to cancel our first Disney trip, we were able to come back and redo the trip two weeks later, but that's not the only wonderful turn of events. The most magical opportunity presented itself for this Disney mama with an invite to celebrate the Mary Poppins Returns Blu-ray release at the parks. You can read about that *Practically Perfect* day HERE. While this Disney mama was away at her event, PB and Ben were left ALONE together at the parks for hours. This was huge for our little family since it'd mark the first time Ben and PB would spend this amount of time together without mama AND all while at the happiest place on earth! There was nervousness, anxiety and some fear... but Ben and PB rocked their "dad and me" time together like champs!

First steps
Now here's something that honestly just needed a good dose of Disney magic to happen... Ben's 1st steps! As crazy as it seems, Ben took some of his first wobbly walk steps at Disneyland! It could have been watching all the other kiddos run around and play, it could have been all the distractions, or just plain Disney magic, but whatever it was, we can say that Ben was motivated to walk at Disneyland. Granted, he was still "drunk baby" walking while holding onto our fingers or one hand. But it's leaps (&steps) more than he's ever done while back at home.

So where are we now? As I type this Ben has officially taken a few steps ON HIS OWN!!! YAY! We've always known this little guy could do it, he's got everything he's need to physically, but there was just some kind of mental block up until it just happened at Disney. There aren't enough words to describe the joy, the RELIEF, and the happiness that washes over you as a parent when your child finally achieves that huge new milestone of walking!
This is such an exciting time for us as parents because we're seeing him realize he has a whole new world of possibilities ahead of him. You can just see the wheels turning in his head... and this mama and dada know they our stock in baby proofing just went up tenfold, LOL!

This also goes to show just how flexible those "guidelines" are for our children. You know, those written "supposed to/should be doing" schedules that somewhat get drilled  into your head as a parent. Ben has proven to us that no timeline will ever contain him or his greatness, lol! He likes to roll on his own timing and we wouldn't have it any other way!

Spring forward!!!
We're closing out our March with a whole of of new memories, milestones and most of all: magic! Here's to April and all the new adventures that await! Until next time, thank you for reading! 💜