Tag Archives: halloween

Ok, so if you read my Halloweentime at Disneyland travel post, you know that it’s my absolute favorite time to visit.  But a VERY close second is during Christmas Time at Disneyland!  Seriously, if you love the Christmas season, this is the perfect time to plan your Disneyland trip.  Disney goes all out with their decorations, festive food, and entertainment.

The entire park is adorned with holiday touches, aromas of gingerbread waft from cafes, shops have a variety of Christmas gifts and ornaments – but don’t take my word for it, check out some of my photos and tips below!

As you walk into the park, you’ll see Main Street is all decked out!

Make sure to get your picture taken in front of the HUGE Christmas tree!

Sleeping Beauty’s castle gets a Christmas makeover as well.  Another great photo opportunity!

I love how they decorate New Orleans Square within the theme.

I’m sure you can guess that Disneyland’s bakeries would have a plethora of Christmas treats, well, you’re right!  My favorite treat that I had to get every year was the hot chocolate!  I was sort of expecting it to just be a packaged Swiss Miss-like drink, but was pleasantly surprised at the richness and quality of the chocolate.  So good!  Plus, it will help to keep you warm as the sun goes down!

Tip:  While some of you from colder states may think:  “how cold can LA possibly get?”  You’d be surprised!  I’m originally from Maine, and I was often taken aback at the how cold it got, especially at night.  Certainly not that face burning, nose hair freezing frigidness, but it still manages to chill you to the bone!  We would always see tourists looking pretty miserable, because they were unprepared for the cold.  I suggest dressing in layers, wearing warm shoes, and having a stash of gloves, hats, and scarves.  Take advantage of the lockers at the entrance of the park, so you don’t have to carry everything all day long! Read more »

Happy Halloween, everyone!  I hope you all finished your costumes in time and got a chance to carve your pumpkins!

We carved ours last week before we left for a romantic getaway in Rockaway Beach in Oregon!  I can’t wait to tell you all the best spots to visit!

I carved Boo and Daniel carved Edgar Allan Poe!  We found these great patterns on Zombie Pumpkins.  This site has an enormous selection of pumpkin patterns in a variety of categories, and they range from easy to difficult.  For just $5 we were able to download 25 patterns – such a deal!  We now have enough patterns to last us many Halloweens.

Well, I just wanted to say a quick hello and a Happy Halloween.  I hope you all have a fun and safe night tonight!  I should have my next round of apple recipes up soon, so stay tuned!

It’s that time of the year again…  Halloween is fast approaching and we need to buy some pumpkins.  And this year we got to explore an Oregon pumpkin patch!  After researching a few places, I found The Pumpkin Patch on Sauvie Island.  It’s only about 30 minutes away from Portland, and offered a lot of fun activities in addition to picking out pumpkins. Read more »

A few weekends ago Daniel and I went apple picking!  I was excited to take Daniel because he had never been before, poor guy.  I was also stoked because while I have been before (grew up in Maine, after all), I hadn’t been in probably over 5 years (thanks to living in LA).

I did a little research and found three options:  Draper Girls Country Farm, Sherwood Orchards, and Mountain View Orchards.

Sherwood Orchards was tempting because it was only 30 minutes away, but it looked a little small.  Mountain View Orchards looked like it had a lot of activities in addition to apple picking, but it was the furthest and Daniel didn’t seem too keen on driving that far.

I ultimately chose Draper Girls because it had a beautiful view, they made their own fresh apple cider, and it was the 2nd closest to us. Read more »

I love wine and I love Halloween, so when I saw this great DIY project on Pinterest by Lombardo Lagniappe, I knew I had to try it.

Our house is severely lacking in Halloween decorations, but this DIY was a pretty quick, painless, and somewhat inexpensive (depending on what supplies you already have on hand) way to fix that.

I mainly followed the original design, but changed a few techniques and aesthetics to suit my needs.

As you can see, I chose to vary the shape of the bottles rather than keep them uniform like pictured above.  I really loved how each bottle seemed to fit each “character” perfectly.  I already had these lying at home in our recycling bin, but if you don’t (and you want to keep this project inexpensive), you can’t go wrong with 2-Buck Chuck from Trader Joes!

In fact, the bottle on the left is Charles Shaw Chardonnay, and the bottle on the right is Charles Shaw Merlot!

Being on a budget, I couldn’t really justify buying all of the spray paint colors that were used in the original DIY.  Specifically because I didn’t know when I’d use them again, since I didn’t have any projects in the works that used spray paint.  So I chose to only buy the Frosted Glass spray paint (which I found at Home Depot), and use acrylic paint I already had for the rest of the color.

I’m sure it definitely took longer than just spraying them and using paint pens for the detailed work.  But I have to say I really liked the texture that came from hand painting them.  Not to mention the feeling of accomplishment!

And here they are, my ghoulish wine bottles!

I followed the taping suggestions from the original blog post.  For Frankenstein, I sort of followed both examples.  I cut the notches first, and then put the tape on the bottle.  Once the paint was dry, I used an exacto knife to trace over the notches again so the paint wouldn’t peel off with the tape.  Because I couldn’t find black glitter at the store, I decided to nix it.  And in the end, I don’t think they really needed it!

Here they are on our dining room table!

A pretty spook-tacular addition, if I do say so myself!