Castaway Cay

We barely made it to Castaway Cay because it was so windy. In fact, the captain had to rearrange the entire itinerary. We made it there a day late, but we still made it!

Thankfully, the wind died down so it was comfortable. It was still kind-of chilly though.

The island had some Christmas decorations, but not too many. I was actually mildly disappointed at the lack of decor.

Although the tram was sure in the Christmas spirit!

Must be Santa ...

One morning, as I was walking around deck 4 watching the boat dock, I ran into Santa in the lobby. Unfortunately I looked homeless, and I hadn't showered yet, but hey - it's Santa!!!

I also ran into a different looking Santa in Nassau, Bahamas.

I just notice something funny about these 2 photos. Photo with Santa in the lobby - I'm unshowered. Photo with plastic dark Santa, I'm showered. Yet, I look pretty much the same, and I seem to be wearing almost the same clothing. Gross ...

Jodi Benson!

Jonathan, his parents and I just got off a wonderful (and cold!) 4-night Disney cruise.

Check out who else was cruising with us ... Jodi Benson, the voice of The Little Mermaid.

We bumped into her in the lobby, then again in the lunch buffet line (where we got our photo with her. She mentioned she was doing a show and autograph signing the next day (for a private group, but hey, she invited us!) so we went to that too.

She was so sweet and nice. And her voice was amazing! She same songs from a bunch of broadway shows and 90's Disney movies. We really got lucky that this private group was on the same cruise as us! I felt quasi-guilty crashing their private concert, but heck, Jodi 'personally' invited us! (ha ha ha!)

More Harry Potter Land!

More random photos from HP land!

Jonathan's new toy

My Black Friday deal was a ladder from Lowes (see my 365 photo-a-day album on facebook).

Jonathan's black Friday deal was a flip cam. I guess he uses them at work alot, so he was familiar with how awesome they are.

He's been playing around by taking short videos at the Osborn lights (at Disney), and he walked around HP land at Universal all day.

I caught him in action a couple times. Hee hee. Here he is standing outside of the 3 Broomsticks restaurant. See the actual 3 broomsticks above his head? There's also a "wanted - Serius Black" poster to his right.

More Harry Potter Land!

Harry Potter Land is a cross between Hogsmead and Hogwarts. Some HP purists say things like, "there's no Olivanders wand shop in Hogsmead!!!", but I didn't care. I don't really pay attending to many minor details when I'm reading.

It was really fun just to wander around and look in all the shop windows.

Here you can see an overview of the 'land'. HoneyDukes is the sweet shop (chocolate frogs, etc ...) and one of the outdoor Butterbeer carts.

And, it's snowing in Florida!!!! (nah, it's all fake)

Butterbeer!

Hog's Head - home of the Butterbeer! (and other alcoholic drinks, but who cares about those)

One of the attractions at Harry Potter land is the food! They serve butterbeer, pumpkin juice, chocolate frogs and more! The main attraction is the butterbeer. It tasted like a sweeter cream soda, and we LOVED IT!

We had 4 through out the day. It comes in 'frozen', which is a slushie consistency and 'regular'. Frozen was by far the best!

Pumpkin juice was NASTY!!! Normally if I order something, and it's gross, I'll choke it down just b/c I paid for it. This crap I couldn't even choke down. It was downright disgusting.

Butterbeer #1 (frozen). There is some delightful foam on the top that makes a fantastic mustache!

Butterbeer #2 (regular)

Butterbeer #3 (frozen again!)

Butterbeer #4 (one more for the road in the souvenir mug!)

Harry Potter land

Jonathan had a free ticket to Universal Studios that expires at the end of this 2010. We calculated the perfect day to go would be 12/5/10. The Christmas decorations would be up, and it's the perfect time in-between Thanksgiving and Christmas so the parks would be dead.

Were our calculations correct?

Heck yes they were!

Did you hear news stories about people waiting for hours and hours and hours to ride the new ride? (That's not an exaggeration - when "Harry Potter land" first opened this summer you had to wait multiple hours just to GET IN to the land, much less do anything.

We walked right on the ride. No waiting, no nothing ... walked right on.

The ride is inside the giant Hogwarts castle. The queue line is fully decorated like the inside of the castle, so I honestly wanted to wait a little tiny bit so I could look at all the details.

Later on in the day we walked thru the queue line again. This time the line was a whopping 15 minutes (ha!). When we got to the front we said, "we don't want to ride please", and went thru the chicken exit.

The ride is pretty cool, but it's 1/2 looking at stuff and 1/2 virtual reality. My inner ear can't handle that virtual stuff. Even Jonathan was a little queazy afterwards.

The ride was kind-of scary. A dragon and a bunch of dementors are in your face (I mean, inches away!).

More on HP land (better known as "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter") later!

Laundry Strike - over!

Well, I survived my laundry strike. Now I'll be doing laundry for the next week and a half.

I made it 70 days.

I could've made it a tad longer, but I just didn't want to. I had a dress and a couple skirts left, but day 71 just felt like a jeans day. So I washed 'em and wore 'em.

Now I'm back to picking what ever the heck I want out of my closet, and it feels so good!!

Laundry Strike - Day 69-70

Day 69 - Skirt Tuesday! And it's also freezing outside. So I figured skirt (bare legs) + sweater = warmth. I was dead wrong. Also, why have I never worn this skirt before. I love it!!!

Day 70 - Hippy shirt day! I'm quickly running out of things that match.

Laundry Strike - Day 66-68

Day 66 - Normally I would be wearing my jeans, thermal and thift store sweater (it's cold in Florida!), but I spilled coffee grinds all over them! Have you ever seen those free compost grinds that Starbucks gives away? Well, be careful if you take a bag ...

Day 67 - Wedding wear! Since it's chilly, I'm glad I own 1 almost long sleeve dress.

Day 68 - Since I woke up at the crack of dawn to get a new tire on my car, AND I'm out of jeans, it's sweatpants day at Walmart!

Laundry Strike - Day 64-65

Day 64 - I am rapidly running out of clothing! Could this outfit be any more blah?!?
Day 65 - This is one of my favorite shirts. I like the color, and I like the 3/4 sleeves. Why did I wait so long to wear it?!?

Laundry Strike - Day 60-63

Day 60 - Holy moly, I made it to week 2!

Day 61 - Making some new friends at the Magic Kingdom. Seriously, how cute is Flynn Ryder (character from the new movie Tangled)?

Day 61 - Ok, ok ... you got me. I'm wearing the same shorts as the day before. But I didn't watch them (hence, the laundry strike is still on!). And I'm just running in and out of Walmart ...

Day 62 - Skirt Tuesday. This is the skirt I made a couple months ago.

Adios Halloween!

I love 75% off sales after the holidays!

Let's face it, I don't need any more Halloween decorations or any candy, but I always seem to find a gem in the clearance isle.

Today my big find was 25 cent candles (black, but when they are inside a votive, nobody can tell) and a 2 pack of Halloween underwear for $1! So what if they are black and say "spooky" on the butt (I'm so embarrassed right now)?!? As long as I'm not wearing white shorts, I should be ok.

Laundry Strike - Day 56-59

Day 56 - I decided to change things up and wear a cardigan.

Day 57 - Happy skirt Tuesday!

Day 58 - Thank you laundry strike. I've never EVER worn these pants. I'm pretty sure they were hand me downs. They were a little tight on top, but overall a fun surprise. Does anybody else find clothes in their closet they kind-of forgot about?!?

Day 59 - Just a few hours at work in the wee hours of the morning (2:50am is the wee hours right?). Go Padres! (for some reason)

Laundry Strike - Day 53-55

Day 53 - More Breast Cancer awareness pink!

Day 54 - Brown cardigan time!

Day 55 - Magic Kingdom with the MouseScrappers gang!

Laundry Strike - Day 48-52

Day 48 - Never left the house! Cut me some slack on this one. I worked a lot last week.

Day 49 - Getting called in to work at 3am = black shirt. I think I have 1 long sleeve black shirt in my closet.

Day 50 - I just wanted to show off that this used to be a long sleeve sweater that was sooooooo hot. So I shortened the sleeves and now it's fantastic!

Day 51 - I'm officially out of jeans. Well, I have 1 skinny pair left. I'm not sure those are work appropriate.

Day 52 - I stood next to a guy who was wearing a lime green shirt. Everybody kept saying, "ahhhh - you guys match!" My shirt is yellow! It's an old shirt ... is it moldy or something?!?

P.S. Dear zit on my forehead,

Please go away.

Thanks,

Amber

Skirt Tuesday here I come!

My friend Julie gave me 2 adorable skirts about 3 years ago. The only problem ... they are too long for a shorty like me. Skirts that hit me mid calf just make my bottom half bigger than it already is.

(wearing fleece socks with a long skirt also make your bottom half bigger than it already is!)

So I finally got my act together and tore it apart. It's hard to tell from the photo, but there is a ribbon layer above the bottom stitching. I cut that off and 3 more inches.

Wa-la! I'm very pleased with my results!

Laundry Strike - Day 42-47

Day 42 - "You're a weiner" ... classic. And cozy for a little Food & Wine festival at Epcot.

Day 43 - I just want to say that I love this green shirt. I had a coupon for The Gap (I never shop there), but I found this beauty for only $6.

Day 44 - Skirt Tuesday! We were having a party at work, and I knew I would have to do a lot of lifting and walking, so I wore my coziest dress made out of t-shirt material. I had to dress it up a tad with a ... what else ... cardigan!

(Off topic - I bought a $5 cardigan today)

Day 45 & 46 - This is kind-of cheating, but I worked 20 hours in a row starting at 9:30pm on Wednesday night. That's not a typo ... 20 hours. So this was my outfit on Wednesday AND Thursday.

Day 47 - Pink day at work for Breast Cancer awareness. If you're paying attention to my blog, you'll recognize this cardigan! (I tore apart an ill fitting sweater and made it into a fun cardigan.)

Britt-ish Designs!

Yes, I labeled this post as "celebrities".

I met the super uber talented Britt of Britt-ish Designs at the Magic Kingdom today.

If you're still scrapbooking with glue and paper, get with the program!

Come visit Britt's blog and join the fun!

P.S. Josh - if you're reading this, she didn't spend too much at Property Control. :)

Time Warp!

Has anybody flown over the International Date line? One minute you're in "today" and the next minute you're in "tomorrow".

Anyway, on Wednesday night I went in to work at 9:30pm. I didn't leave until 5:30pm the next afternoon (you do the math).

I went home, immediately went to sleep, and woke up for work on Friday.

So all day I was thinking, "what day is today? It is really Friday?!?"

I went into work on Wednesday, and the next day I went into work was Friday. I just kind-of skipped over Thursday! Very international-date line like. It was an odd feeling ...

Laundry Strike - Day 38-41

Wow - over 40 days in and I'm still going strong! Well, I'm almost out of jeans, so 'casual day' at work won't be so casual for me. Bummer

Day 38 - Boston thrift store Gap shirt for $1. I love it!

Day 39 - ADLS game 2. Go Rays!

Day 40 - Breast cancer awareness Friday. Go pink!

Day 41 - Casual Saturday at work. I only have 2 pairs of jeans left. Pair #1 are kind-of skinny. I don't think I can pull those off right now. So pair #2 it is!

Joe Rhode

I met super Imagineer Joe Rhode on the cruise.

I was actually stalking Bill Farmer (the voice of Goofy) at the time, and Joe Rhode is standing right on front of me. So why not ask him for a photo.

I'm wearing my super cool uniform, while Joe looks very daper and island-y.

Joe is the mastermind behind Aulani, the Adventure's Club, Expedition Everest and pretty much the entire Animal Kingdom park.

Cheers Joe!