Homemade Autograph Books for Disney

Well, we arrived home yesterday (BOO!!!!) from our Disney vacation. It was both wonderful, and horrible, but that's what you get sometimes. Overall, I have a lot of fond memories of the trip, though.

Before my trip in 2012 with my friend and her family, I designed some digital autograph album pages- they turned out super cute, and the kids really liked them. Over the past 18 months, I have continued to add a few pages here and there for friends.

I finally offered them on Etsy over this past summer, and of course, made custom ones for our trip last week.

We got SO many compliments, and people (from cast members, to actual characters, to other guests) asking where we got them from, and wondering how they could get one- I really wish I had thought to make up business cards to have on hand with us in the character lines. Seriously, we could have handed out at least 50-100 when people were asking.

On our first night in a park, Minnie noticed that one of the books had a name on the cover (all of ours did), so she checked the name each time, and personalized her autograph for each of us!

Now, I am working on adding more pages for both specific characters, and generic pages for any character to use. We had a lot of characters we saw with no specific pages (which is fine, we had generic pages to use), but some were common enough we should have had pages for them. Below are some of the nearly 200 pages I have made. I have around 150 of them currently available on Etsy, with a new set of 110 that will be available by next week.

You can find these in several different sets to suit your needs. Each set is digital, so it can be reused over and over again for future trips.

Holiday Specific (currently includes Halloween and Christmas themed pages & covers only) - 32 pages including covers for $7.00

A 20 page book with 2 album cover choices, Princess themed - $5.00

A 20 page book with 2 album covers, Classic Character themed - $5.00

A 20 page book with 2 album covers, Assorted Characters - $5.00

A 110 page set, 100 unique pages, plus 10 album covers (No holiday pages included, but it includes all of the other pages & covers posted) for $20.00


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Disney, here we come...

...in 40 days, anyway.

So it's been a few months. Disney is paid off. We scored free dining, too. I have made a few changes along the way.

We now leave October 18th, and do not return until October 28th. We are going to spend 2 days with my FIL on the gulf coast first- he's excited to show us around, and is already planning meals!

We will be at Disney from October 20-28th, though the 28th is not much. We have to be up and on the bus to the airport by 6am. Yuck!!  But overall, it gives us 8 full days at Disney. That is a LOT.

I can't wait. It's really happening. :)

Now what I am doing is saving up spending money. Our hotel, 2 meals and 1 snack per day, our park tickets, and even our Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party tickets are all paid off. I'm planning to stop at a grocery store on Sunday before my FIL takes us to Disney and do some grocery shopping for the room. Nothing real big, but definitely some healthier options for us- fruit, granola bars, yogurt, etc.

Oh, and alcohol. Yes, yes, I would like to grab a bottle of rum or schnapps, so my aunt and I (did I mention she is tagging along?) can have a drink or two around the pool without going broke.

We have Halloween costumes either bought or planned. My oldest is going to be the Cheshire Cat, and has her costume. My youngest is going to be Alice in Wonderland- we need to find a costume locally, I did not have any luck with Etsy for her. I am going as Minnie Mouse, and I have my costume already! It's a fun swing style dress in red with white polka dots. Then, my friend who runs a theater department scored me a huge white square dance dress to wear under it :)

I can't wait.

Disney Earning Update

Originally, my goal was $300/month. That would have been enough to go to Disney this fall, but it wouldn't have left much wiggle room. But, I was at $300 in early January. Like the 7th, I believe. Maybe later? So I upped it to $400/month. Then I met that.

Currently, I have earned $706 this month, and I have $53 in invoices waiting to be paid. I have already put down the $200 deposit on the vacation.  I doubt every month will be a $700 month, but I am hoping to reach $800 this month, thus doubling the earnings I was hoping for.

My guess is that most months will be much closer to the hopeful $400.

We leave October 19th for 7 days in the Magic Kingdom. That gives me 9 months left to earn the money. I need to have an average of $366 per month to reach that. Here's hoping for more months that I reach $700! The faster it's paid off, the better!!