Disneyland Homeschool Day 2014

We love Disneyland.  Well, maybe just all things Disney.  Not to the crazy obessive point, but enough that my kids ask to go to Disneyland quite frequently and we have passes.  So of course, we had to make a special trip to go for Not Back To School Day!

While this event is not sponsored by Disney, it's still a lot of fun.  Homeschool kids go to Disneyland, or California Adventure, to spend the day playing.  You can spot fellow homeschoolers by the tie dye they are sporting!

That means our adventure started out with... tie dye!

 I made a shirt for each one of us.  Mine's on the top!  I let Green Bubbles have at it all by himself with no direction from me and I'm rather impressed it didn't turn out as a giant brown mess.  Little Miss insisted that her shirt should only have pink and purple and I helped her squirt the dye on her shirt so it wouldn't get all over the ground.  I picked a bigger shirt for Megatron thinking he could just wear it for awhile but was amazed it fit him so well the day of.  He just keeps growing!

 Here's Little Miss and me showing off our shirts.

 Little Miss has two favoriate Princesses.  One is Elsa, and the other was waiting right inside the gate when we came in!  She was so excited to meet Ariel.  I was hoping to make a straight dash to the back of the park to get tickets to see Elsa but couldn't pass up Ariel.  Unfortunately, by the time we did make it back to Elsa, the tickets were hours past the time we would be staying and I knew with a toddler and infant I wouldn't be able to last that long.  Someday we may finally meet Elsa.

We did manage to go on the carrousel.  Even though Megatron doesn't look very thrilled about it lol.. he ended up falling asleep right after this ride so I think he was just ready for his nap.

 We hit small world where we were able to walk right on, and a good ride to get out of the heat and let Megatron finish his nap.

 Green Bubbles favoriate part, and mine as well, as the Jedi Training Academy.  We've had passes to Disneyland since Green Bubbles' first birthday, except for the last year, and he has always been to shy to leave my side to become a Jedi.  But not this year!  Green Bubbles finally raised his hand and his Mickey Ears and tie dye shirt landed him a spot on the rooster!

He was one of the first kids picked and got to stand up on stage.  The entire crowd aww'd when he held the light saber upside down and the Jedi master had to help him 'activite' it.  I loved watching him up on stage and he told me afterwards that we have to do the Jedi school every time we come now.

 What made it even better was Darth Maul's fascination with Megatron.  He came over to us dozens of times during the show trying to taunt Megatron.  Tapping the ground in front of him with the light saber, crouching down in front of him, and he even poked him with the tip of his boot once.  Megatron stayed strong and never joined the dark side though, or even looked at him!  Perhaps that's why, even at the very end when the stage was going back underground, Darth Maul gave one last heated point towards Megatron.

 The end of our day was approaching and we happened to catch Mickey Mouse on our way out to the group photo.  Mickey was tickling the kids and even blew a sweet kiss to a sleeping Megatron.

 We made it to the big group photo infront of California Adventure.  Can you spot the kids?

 After a quick stop at the Lego store in Downtown Disney we made it to the car where Little Miss joined Megatron is a much needed nap after a long day of fun.  And I can honestly say, having three small children at Disneyland by myself was challenging.  It didn't occur to me until after we were there that many of the rides we normally do wasn't possible with only myself and three children. A 1:2 ratio was fine, 1:3 made me plan out what we could do.

Screen Printing Tutorial - Frozen Style

Frozen has become this massive landslide of snowflakes and glitter.  Every little girl I know loves it.  Let it Go is heard wherever we go.  And don't even get me started on the mad dash to get the recently restocked Elsa dresses at Disneyland for Little Miss that we had to do.

So, in honor of the awesomeness of Frozen, here's a tutorial just for you!  Little Miss loves Elsa.  She walks around pretending she has Elsa powers, holding her hands out infront of her with an intense concentration on her little 2 year old face or stomping her foot hard upon the carpet turning everything to ice with joyful glee.  But besides the before mentioned Elsa dress, she doesn't have anything else that's frozen.  I tried to buy her a shirt but she's moving up into girl sizes now and for whatever reason, a size XS Frozen shirt we found is fitted instead of straight and just doesn't fit her right.  We had to return it. To make it up to her I made this.

I found an Elsa template from Heidi and Finn.  I decided instead of sewing it on like in their tutorial, I would screen print it instead.  Copying another Frozen design on their site I planned out my design on a plain white tank top that was on sale at Target.

 

Next I sewed on the words Let It Go.  I tried to do it on the machine but it just wasn't working for me so I ended up doing it by hand.  I traced the words with pencil so I just had to follow the line.  Using this system, even doing it by hand, it went fairly quickly. 

 

After the words were complete I washed the entire thing just to make sure the thread was secure and nothing was going to shrink on me.  Then I took my template and cut it out using an x-acto knife.

 I placed the paper template onto white contact paper that I got from home depot.  You really don't need anything fancy for this.  Screen printing can be very complicated, but it can also be very simple as well. Make sure you cut the shape out without cutting through the rest of the contact paper.  The Elsa I cut out isn't needed.  For the screen printing, it's the missing pieces that will receive the paint.

I peeled the backing off the contact paper and placed Elsa onto my screen.  I have an actual screen printing screen we got from a yard sale awhile back.  The screen is dirty though and, because of that, doesn't always work just right.  I really should just toss it but I can't bring myself to do it.  We also have screens we've made when Green Bubbles did Curiosity Hacked (previously known as Hacker Scouts) last summer.  There's a great tutorial at One Golden Apple that talks about making your own screens as well as the contact method above and how to do it with kids!

 I ran into a problem mixing the colors of screen printing ink.  I wish it turned out a little more like the color of the thread and less blue, but I don't think Little Miss cares.  (I have no problem sharing my mistakes with you!)  I used Speedball ink and I highly recommend getting Speedball Fabric Screenprinting Ink Starter Set instead of buying the colors separately.  It comes with all the primary colors plus green, black and white so you are able to mix the colors you need.  Once the ink is applied you do need to heat set the ink by ironing it.  If you forget this step your beautiful design will just wash out.  Or, if you make a horrible mistake and want to remove it.

I also made a tutu to make the tank top for Little Miss.  Do you think she likes it?

We'll be wearing this to Disneyland on one of our many trips.  Little Miss has an Elsa dress from Disney but it's just to hot to wear right now.  The tank top and tutu is a lot cooler!