Jazz Loves Disney is Toe Tapping Fun! #JazzLovesDisney

"This is a sponsored post from Disney Music and One2One Network. All opinions are my own."


I think many of us has been touched by Disney in some way or another in our lives. For me, Disney has played a huge part in my life since I was a wee tot. I remember watching the old black and white Steamboat Willie with grandma where I am sure my love of Mickey Mouse and all things Disney started. Later on, fun memories were created with my mom and siblings when we'd see a Disney film in the theater as a treat, and oh, happy day when my mom bought me the VHS of The Little Mermaid to enjoy over and over again! When I became a mom, I knew that Disney was going to be a huge part of my kid's lives too. Disney has always been a constant when it comes to family bonding, whether it comes from movie night where we are catching the latest Disney flick, reminiscing over old photos from our trips to the theme park, or just belting out our favorite tunes in the car. I'm pretty sure there are many families out there who've had carpool karaoke, jamming out to Let It Go a time or two, right?

Aside from the super cute characters and fun story lines, the one thing that always puts me in a happy place is the music of Disney. How can you not want to move and groove when you hear Everybody Wants to be a Cat or The Bear Necessities? I know I do! When I heard that there was a new compilation of Disney music, I couldn't wait have a listen. Jazz Loves Disney offers listeners big jazz band covers of songs that are a part of every kid's heritage. 

Walt Disney loved jazz and paid close attention to the writing of the music that accompanied his hero's adventures. Teams wrote and played the songs that at some point acted as a catalyst of the emotions of unique characters such as Tinker Bell, Jiminy Cricket, and even Baloo, and several of those songs have either been nominated for or won an Academy Award. 

With Jazz Loves Disney, produced by Jay Newland and arranged and directed by Rob Mounsey, you'll get a special feeling of the good old days when you hear popular artists such as Gregory Porter, Melody Gardot and Stacey Kent singing some of of your favorite classic Disney tunes.  The album has 13 tracks that are so enjoyable to listen to:

1.  Jamie Cullum – "Everybody Wants To Be A Cat" – from The Aristocats
2.  Melody Gardot – "He’s A Tramp" – from Lady And The Tramp
3.  Stacey Kent – "Bibbidi Bobbodo Boo" (French version) – from Cinderella
4.  Gregory Porter – "When You Wish Upon A Star" – from Pinocchio  
5.  China Moses – "Why Don’t You Do Right" – from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
6.  Raphaël Gualazzi – "I Wanna Be Like You" – from The Jungle Book
7.  The Rob Mounsey Orchestra – "A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes" – from Cinderella
8.  Hugh Coltman – "You’ve Got A Friend In Me" – from Toy Story
9.  Anne Sila – "Let It Go" – from Frozen
10.  Melody Gardot & Raphaël Gualazzi – "The Bare Necessities" – from The Jungle Book
11.  Laika – "Once Upon A Dream" – from Sleeping Beauty
12.  Nikki Yanofsky -"Someday My Prince Will Come" – from Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs
13. The Hot Sardines – I Wanna Be Like You (French & English version) – from The Jungle Book (US release only)

My personal favorites are I Wanna Be Like You and Bibbidi Bobbodo Boo. The first because when my daughter Mariah was about 3, she loved The Jungle Book. I'm sure she watched that film daily. It was also the year she insisted on running around in nothing but a pair of underwear, so we nicknamed her Mowgli. Every time I hear I Wanna Be Like You, it takes me back to those special days when she believed in the magic of talking animals and how she'd dance around in her underpants singing her favorite Jungle Book songs.

Bibbidi Bobbodo Boo is also a favorite because I love the smooth jazzy vibe of the song, and it reminds me of the time Allison went to Disney and met Cinderella, which is probably many little girl's dream. It was such a special day where memories that will last a lifetime were made.

 Every November, we like to sit down and watch a slideshow of our family photos from our trips to Disney over the years. It's a great way to keep those memories fresh and offers us an additional way to bond once again over our family love of Disney. We always play our favorite tunes to liven up the experience of watching the slides, and this year I thought it would be awesome to put Jazz Loves Disney into our slide show. Here's a little peek at what I put together for our family this year:

All of the song covers are so catchy, I can't help but to smile and sing along. The new Jazz Loves Disney album is now available to download on Itunes and Amazon. Grab your copy today and start some toe tapping fun with your family too!

What are some of your favorite Disney tunes?

How To Host A Fabulous Disney Side @Home Celebration #DisneySide

*Disclosure: I received free products in order to host a Disney Side @Home Celebration. The opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links. Please see my Policy tab for more information.


It's no secret that my family loves all things Disney, so when we were chosen to host a Disney Side @Home Celebration again this year, we were thrilled! I immediately started making a list of what we could do to make it one of the most fun Disney parties we have ever had.

We did receive a box of goodies to help us get going. Our theme was supposed to be villains, but we also stuck with the classic Mickey Mouse theme for some of our younger guests to enjoy. We decided not to go overboard on the eats, sticking with simple finger foods that would be easy to grab while playing games. We used a little Mickey Mouse Cookie Cutter to create some fun Mickey cheese shapes for mini ham and cheese sandwiches. We also served up some "Hot Diggity Dogs".

We used the villain place cards we were provided for inspiration too. Using some green sherbert and Sprite, the kids loved sipping on Ursula's Human Potion. It didn't cost them their voice, either!

Kids love snacks, and again, we wanted to keep it simple and as mess free as possible. We used the same Mickey cookie cutters to make some fun Rice Krispies Treats. We were provided a box of Duff Goldman, Tie-Dye, Premium Cake Mix. Sticking with the villains theme, we only used the green and purple dyes to make Ursula's Sea Snack cupcakes. We created Maleficent's staff with chocolate dipped pretzels topped with non perils.

 

What's a party without fun activities and games? The kids had a blast playing Pin the Smile on Mickey.

They raced to see who could complete the Disney Villain's Puzzle the fastest.

The girls did a little villain inspired nail art.

Games like Disney Bingo, Word Search and Match-Up were a hit among all ages.

Feel free to save a copy of these games for your own Disney Side @Home Celebration!

The winners were provided small door prizes. Pencils and these fun Cinderella buttons were well received.

You don't need to invest a lot of time or money into planning a Disney Side @Home Celebration. Keeping it simple and providing fun Disney themed food and games will have every guest entertained for hours!

For more inspiration on hosting a fabulous DisneySide @Home Celebration, be sure to check out www.disneysidecelebrations.com

Are you a Disney fan? What kind of treats and games would you have at your Disney Side @Home Celebration?

Special thanks to Disney Parks and Mom Select for helping us host a fabulous Disney Side Home Celebration.

DIY Peter Pan Happy Thoughts Jar

My daughter has been keeping a "happy thoughts" jar every year, for the past few years. Whenever something good happens, she writes it down, then puts it into the jar. At the end of the year she will go back and reflect on all the good that happened throughout the year. She's had a crummy looking jar since she started, so I decided to make her a prettier one for Christmas this year. She just loves Peter Pan, so I thought it would be fitting to make her a Peter Pan Happy Thoughts Jar!

I cut some Peter Pan Silhouettes out of vinyl with my Cameo, along with the happy thoughts saying, then popped them onto a glass jar. If you don't have a cameo, you could always print out the design you want, tape the paper to the inside of the jar, then trace the stencils on with paint on the outside of the jar. Easy peasy too, just a little more time consuming waiting for it to dry.

Fill it up with all your happy thoughts throughout the year. It doesn't have to be handwritten notes either. Pop in some ticket stubs, charms and trinkets. Whatever reminds you of your happy times!

For less than $5, she has a custom happy thoughts jar that she loves!

How do you keep track of your happy moments throughout the year?

Disney's Magic Shots

It's clear, Disney has their stuff together. The first time we visited, we were really impressed that they had photographers stationed all over the park so everyone in your group could be included in photos. Most often, you are going to find an extra employee standing there offering to take a photo with your own camera too, which was an awesome touch for those who don't want to buy the picture packages. We did opt to buy the package though, and stopped often to have our photo taken all over the parks. At one stop the photographer had the girls look down into their hands and make a shocked face. We couldn't figure out what that was about, and assumed he was off his rocker and we were going to have one stupid looking photo when we got home. To our surprise, it was the opposite. "OMG! He added Tinkerbell into their hands!" was what we said when we saw the photo. We loved it so much, that on our next visit we made it a point to ask for "Magic Shots". For those going to the Food and Wine Festival, sorry to disappoint. It's not some awesome alcoholic drink wrapped up in a shot glass. Instead, you get some fun character special effects added into your photos. Here are some of our favorites from last month's trip:

Which Magic Shot do you like best?

Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party

Last time we went to Disney, we went for Mickey's Christmas Party. We had so much fun then, we planned our vacation this time so we could do the Not-So-Scary Halloween Party. It's one of the only times they allow guests over 10 to dress up in costumes and we took full advantage!

As soon as you arrive, you'll get a plastic sack to collect your trick or treat goodies in. Trick or Treat starts at 7pm. The lines start to get long at first, but if you wait until about 9ish to go through them, they are considerably shorter then.

 

There was no limit to how many times you could go through the lines, so when they were really short, we'd collect our candy and run back through again. At the end of the night we ended up with a ton of yummy loot!

 

But we weren't there for the candy. On party nights you'll have the opportunity to meet and greet some of the villain characters that aren't normally at the parks.

Even though the wait times can go over 2 hours, it was a MUST I get a picture with Jack and Sally! If you get in line at the start of the parade you should get through fairly quickly. The parade goes on twice, so you can skip one to cut down on wait time. We only waited 15 minutes to get our photo and caught the second parade.

She isn't normally there, but they had a "lady ghost" parked outside the line at The Haunted Mansion ride. She was a riot, making fun of all the guests as they came through. Jason was the butt of her jokes for a few minutes, which the kids got a kick out of.

Jason was all about The Villain's Parade, but I thought the Electrical Parade was fabulous! All of the floats were decked out in lights, as were some of the character costumes!

While everything was amazing, if you only stop for one thing at the Halloween party, you MUST stop for the firework show. Of course, Disney lights fireworks every night the park is open, but the Halloween fireworks were SPECTACULAR! Hands down, best firework show I have ever seen!

Micky's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party is over for the year, but if you are planning a Disney trip for next year, I highly recommend trying to get to the party if you can!

What part of Micky's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party would you like most? The parades, villains, trick-or-treat, or fireworks?

Halloween ~ Let It Snow...

Did everyone have a nice Halloween? We got our first snowfall of the year 30 minutes prior to trick or treating! Allison was so excited and said it was because she was wearing her Elsa costume. I caught her outside twirling around singing Let It Go as the flakes started to come down.

You can see the snowflakes sticking to her hair.

That enthusiasm was short lived though. The wind kicked up and big flakes started flying around, so we only made it an hour into trick or treating until we were too cold to continue and came home. I don't think many other kids made it that long either, because we only got 1 kid at our door in the last hour of passing out candy.

We made Mariah's Halloween costume this year. She wanted to go as Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

I wouldn't suggest making a long tulle skirt if you plan on doing a lot of walking. The skirt kept bunching up and was such a hassle to keep straightening all night. You can see a better photo of it in my Instagram widget.

Mariah wanted her boyfriend to go as the prince version of the Beast. I was exhausted from our trip, so just tossed some fabric together and came up with this. He was supposed to tie the frilly scarf to make it look more bunched up, but whatever ;) The yellow side things aren't crooked. It's just the way the fabric landed when taking a picture.

The snow and cold didn't make it the best Halloween, but the kids had fun regardless. Fingers crossed next year will be sunny and 75!

How was your Halloween weather this year? Did you get snow too?

Wishing You All A Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from the Mahoney family!

Painted Olaf Pumpkin

I'm getting back into the grind of things after being M.I.A. for almost a week. We just got home from vacation and now I definitely need a vacation from my vacation. I am exhausted! I can't wait to catch up with you all again, so I'll be making the rounds to visit you all over the next day or so :) I have A LOT to catch up on, so today's post is short and simple.

I hate carving pumpkins. I only cut those babies open for the seeds. So, every year I take a mini pumpkin and decorate it with some paint and a few other mixed media objects. Since we just got back from Disney, I thought I'd share with you the painted pumpkin I made for Allison this year. We made Olaf from Frozen.

All we needed was a few mini pumpkins close to Olaf's body shapes, some paint, pipe cleaners, and a few poms and we got to work.

Start by painting your pumpkins white. When dry, paint on Olaf's face. Someone with a steady hand could probably do a better job here, but hey. I'm not the best painter out there, so you get what you get. Twist a bit of orange pipe cleaner until you get the shape of a carrot. Glue it on the face. Next, glue all 3 pumpkins together with hot glue. Cut your brown (I only had black, so that's what he ended up with) pipe cleaner arms and hands and twist together, then glue on. Cut and glue a few strands of pipe cleaner for the hair. Glue on a few black poms down the center. I didn't know what to do for feet, so I just cut a large marshmallow in half and glued those on.

Then, Olaf was done. This can be made fairly quickly. It took about a day to get it all put together, but most of the time spent was waiting for the paint to dry.

Did you carve or paint your pumpkins this year?

DIY Countdown to Disney Yarn Wreath

We are taking the girls to Disney this fall, and I thought it would be fun to make a Countdown to Disney Yarn Wreath so they could get excited about the trip a little every day leading up to our departure. Since it's going to be a one time use kind of craft, I didn't want to spend a lot of money. The circular craft wreaths were running over $5 at the craft store for the large ones and the smaller ones were around $4 each. I really didn't want to spend more than $10 on all the supplies, but thanks to Pinterest, this nifty idea helped keep the cost to under $5, which included all the yarn and supplies.

Simply pick up some of this foam pipe insulation at the local hardware store (mine only cost 98¢), wrap it in a circle to the size you want your wreath, then hold it together with some duct tape.

I picked up some red and black yarn for a little over $1 each at Michael's, as well as a wooden cut out piece. 2 yellow buttons were under $1.

Wrap the bottom half of your wreath with the red yarn, securing ends with a little hot glue. (TIP! Do not put hot glue on the foam. It will melt it! Instead, place more duct tape where you want to glue, and glue to that!)  Repeat with the black yarn for the top half.

Wrap your smaller circles (for the ears) in black yarn, then attach them to the bigger circle with more more black yarn, followed by a dab of hot glue to secure.

Glue on 2 buttons at the base of the wreath.

I painted my wooden piece with a little chalkboard paint and secured it with some hot glue. Then my wreath was complete.


Tell me something you love about Disney! A favorite place to visit in the park, your favorite character, or even your favorite Disney film :)

Celebrating Our Disney Side! #DisneySide

Disney has been a part of my life for as far back as I can remember. From my early childhood of watching Mickey Mouse cartoons, to dreaming about a world of princesses and happily ever after, then becoming a mother and seeing the magic through my children's eyes, what Walt Disney created will never cease to amaze me.

We took our first trip to Disney 2 years ago, and we had the most amazing time! My husband was bit by what he calls "The Disney Bug" and has been planning a return trip ever since we got home. Disney has a way of drawing you in, letting you immerse yourself in the magic and getting wrapped up in its fantasy and charm. We all have a little Disney in us, and now you can show off your Disney Side!

Everyone has a Disney Side- that fun-loving adventurous spirit that comes out to play when you’re feeling the Disney magic! Whether you show your Disney Side through fashion, food, or your favorite characters, or frequent visits to Disney Parks, it’s time to let it shine.  Gather your fellow Disney fans, grab your Mickey ears and prepare to sprinkle some pixie dust on those who cross your path as you let your Disney Side take over!

We recently had the chance to host a Disney Side Home Celebration. It was such a great way for my girls to gather up their friends for a day of Disney fun! We were sent some goodies to help get our party started.

Our party kit was FAB-U-LOUS! It had everything we needed to have a jolly good time. Cups, plates, a table cover and streamers helped make it Disney Festive!

We had pizza for dinner, then served up some adorable Disney cookies for dessert.

The older kids had a great time with the party games that were included. We played some Disney Bingo, then had a Disney Trivia Challenge! 

Of course, no party is complete unless you dress the part. Who doesn't love Mickey Ears? Or, I should say Minnie Ears :)

Or adding a few tattoos might get you a spot on Captain Hook's crew!

All of our guests had a great time showing off their Disney Side! Even if you aren't planning a trip to Disney, hosting a Disney themed party is really easy with the Disney Side Celebrations Website! You'll find tools there to help you get started- party themes, activities, and recipes are a few ways they will help you bring that extra bit of magic to your party. Head over all see all the great ideas that will help you get inspired today!

*Disclosure- I received the above mentioned product courtesy of the sponsor for the purpose of this review. No monetary compensation was provided. All opinions are genuine, based on my experience with the product, and have not been influenced by promotional items.