Rather than just sitting around and hoping our trip was here, we decided to get into the Disney spirit before the trip and do some DIY (Do it Yourself) Disney inspired crafts and activities. By doing these things it helped pass the time leading up to the trip, added to the excitement we were already feeling about going, and gave us an outlet to show off our Disney side.
The first craft that we made was a Disney inspired "countdown" board. Ellen bought a small chalkboard from a local thrift shop for $1.00 and we hung it up in our foyer right by our door so we walked by it everyday. Ellen painted the wooden frame white and then designed a Mickey inspired image in chalk on it. In the head portion we put "days until Disney" number and in the ear sections we placed the number of weeks until we got to go. Since we booked our 2014 trip in February and didn't go until early June, we had plenty of countdown time on it. This was fun because we started with over 100 days originally and we were able to see it drop over time to 0 day-by-day!
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| Countdown Board |
We got the idea for our next craft after seeing a number of people who decorated their resort window with Disney themes during our 2012 trip. We decided when we went back in 2014 that we wanted to decorate our window as well. We knew we were going to take some of the Disney figurines we owned to place along the windowsill, but we wanted something to span the entire length of the window and that is where the next craft idea comes in...Disney Streamers!
We found this great Disney inspired scrapbook paper at a Michael's Craft Store which had multiple character's heads on it including Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Goofy, Donald and Daisy with a variety of expressions and colours. Ellen came up with the great idea of cutting out each individual square and making a single hole punch in each corner of the square. We then took two blue and two yellow coloured string and cut it to roughly 5 foot lengths and fed it through 12 squares spaced equally apart and taped the images in place. When we got to our hotel room we taped them from the top of the window and ran it to the bottom and spaced them out from one another. It spanned the entire window perfectly. We then put up our Disney figures running along the bottom of the window. For good measure we added a Canadian pennant to show off our nationality.
The window display turned out great and we saw a lot of families stopping to look at it and take pictures of it :) It was well worth the little bit of time it took to design and it only took five minutes to set up once there!
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| Close Up of Window Display |
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| Full Window Display |
When we were finished making the window streamers, we realized we still had some paper left over. We decided that we would take the left over paper and design customized Disney envelopes to leave tip money in for housekeepers, which many Disney enthusiasts call "Mousekeepers". We got this idea through other Disney craft sites prior to going and thought we would try it out ourselves. We wrote the word "Mousekeeper Tips" on the front of the envelope and then glued the Disney craft paper onto the corners of it. You can easily add Disney stickers or stamps to this to put your own twist on it! This was another fun craft project that made the wait for our trip feel like it was going by a little bit faster.
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| Example of Envelope |
*Note - Just before we left for our trip we were reading other Disney discussion boards and found out that the term "Mousekeeper"is not an official term used at Disney. Some housekeepers didn't take the tip money found inside designer envelopes that said "mousekeeper" on it because they didn't recognize the term. In order to ensure they took our tip money from the envelope we simply made sure to leave them on the pillow of the bed we slept in and attached a sticky note to it that said "housekeeping tip inside." They took the tip inside each time.
Finally, everyone knows the worst part of any Disney vacation is when it's all over, but you can always relive your trip by going through the photos you've taken! Of course you can purchase some great Walt Disney World frames to put some of your favorite photos into, but you can also display them in your own unique way...
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| Disney World Frames |
By simply taking a piece of string, along with a variety of clothes pins of different colours or finishes, you can create a wall piece that allows you to show off more of your vacation photos, rather than throwing them into a photo album. The other great thing about this type of display is that you can quickly swap out a photo and put another one in if you want to put pictures up based on some sort of theme or just want a change!
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| Wall Display over our T.V. |
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| Variety of Clothes Pins |
We are not the most artistic people in the world, but with a little imagination and some time you can easily do these craft projects or come up with your very own Disney DIY's! Taking the time to do these can help pass the time before you trip, get you in the Disney spirit, and keep you in the Disney state of mind long after the trip is over. Have fun!
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