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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Guess who booked her Disney vacation?

This girl.

In October, look out- me and my girls will be invading!

Spring Break- The Zoo

For a quick get away, I took our three children to a large town about an hour away, and had a brief over night get away. I didn't have much money to spend, so I focused on keeping things frugal, as I would have done even if I had extra money to spend. ;)

We arrived just after noon, and went straight to the zoo. This is the zoo I grew up going to, but I haven't taken the kids to since Gilly was about 2. I just never seem to have the time when we are over there!

I may have underestimated to myself just how busy the zoo would be, and busy it was. Spring break happens either the week before Easter or after, for almost all the schools in the area. Well, that makes for 2 very busy weeks of activities.

Monday was gorgeous- clear blue skies, and fantastic weather, which made for a very packed zoo. It may have been even more so due to the impending bad weather the area was set to have for the rest of the week. Ah, well. We still had fun.

Last fall, Grand Rapids became home to a wonderful new art contest called Art Prize. The sculpture behind the kids is one of the entries from the contest- the Loch Ness Monster. He was relocated to the pond in front of the zoo after the contest, though he is showing signs of wear.

We had 1 down moment during the zoo, which was the result of Chris doing something dumb, and a woman being very rude and over reacting greatly to it.

While I was waiting in line to order lunch (which wasn't exactly frugal, but wasn't any more expensive than McDonalds), Chris stomped a ketchup packet. It splatted a woman on the bare leg. I didn't see it happen, but she came over to me and asked if he was my son. When I said he was, she went on and on about what happened, showing me her leg in the process. I apologized and said I would talk to him, then called him over to me. I told him to not do that, explained that it was rude, and told him to go apologize to the woman.

He did. She, on the other hand, did not accept it. She rolled her eyes and said very loudly, "Oh, whatever." From there, she turned to a group of people and a zoo employee, and again very loudly, started to talk about how rude kids are, and how horrible it is that "SOME PARENTS" can't keep an eye on their kids, or control them.

Never mind that I had A) apologized to her, B) talked to him, C) made HIM apologize to her, and D) kept him next to me for the rest of the time I waited in line. She just didn't care- it was like we had ruined her day by getting ketchup splatted on her.

Now, yes, I know Chris shouldn't have done that, which is why I talked to him about it, kept him near me, and made him apologize. But, her reaction was like World War 3 had just started, and life as she knew it was OVER.

It really brought down the mood while we ate. Just as we were finishing up, another woman came over, and said, "I really hope you and your kids aren't too embarrassed over how that woman acted. She really over reacted to the whole thing, and was very rude to both you and your children over it. It's a zoo, kids come to the zoo, and sometimes they do things they shouldn't. It isn't the end of the world."

I about started to cry, because I was embarrassed. Chris was, too, given how the woman acted when he apologized for what he had done.

Anyway, that was the only low point to the zoo. We had a lot of fun, and it was a perfect day for it!

Welcome!

It's probably been around a year since I removed the Herber Kids website. I didn't do it to end it, but rather, I kept meaning to update it, and just never have.

I have recently gotten into Blogging, though, and find it to be an easy way to communicate, and show off photos of our family as I do. So, from here on out, this will be where you can find information about us, updated photos, frugal tips, and more!

Welcome to the Herber Family Blog!

Gillian, Raegan, & Chris in front of the Mackinac Bridge,
June 2009. I took the kids up for a vacation by myself
this year- Nick stayed home!