Admit it – those amazing tops pictured above are exactly the style inspiration you’ve been searching Pinterest for all these years.
I was digging through my old Flickr account earlier this week and came across some amazing Disney costume photos, so I thought I’d share with you guys! Even though I was originally hired for front desk, I ended up working at the Tomorrowland Speedway for about two months until a spot opened up in a resort. I only wore the Tomorrowland shirt pictures on the left up there for my first training day when they introduced us to Tomorrowland. After that, it was the Speedway costume, also known as the lightning bolt outfit!
Just in case that isn’t already the sexiest thing you’ve ever seen, try to imagine the beautiful smell that comes with spending 6-16 hours of your day around car exhaust. I was irresistible. (Fun fact! You can spot Speedway cast members in the wild by their distinctive v-neck tan lines.)
At some point, I started looooving Pirate & Princess Party shifts because a) no car fumes and b) I got to feel girly!
Behold the tan that come with a million hours a day working an outdoor attraction! And yup, I still had to wear the black tennis shoes. Fashion inspiration, y’all.
I finally got my transfer to the All Star Resorts, and man did I luck out. Just before I worked there everyone wore crazy print red-blue-orange-green shirts, but they changed to light and dark blue for front desk and concierge just in time, so I avoided this:
in favor of this:
I couldn’t find a full body pic of my front desk/concierge costume, but you get the idea. The top was actually pretty cute by Disney costume standards, and it was paired with the infamous pleated, high-waisted Disney blue pants.
I did pick up a shift at Typhoon Lagoon once (which I didn’t end up actually working because I got there and discovered it was actually supposed to be the day BEFORE so I’d missed it. They were going to have me stay anyway but I was sick so I just headed home). That costume was surprisingly decent, too!
Work!
We can’t possibly end on that fairly cute note, so instead let’s wrap up with the amazing Dr Quinn Medicine Woman outfit I wore the week I was deployed to the Wilderness Lodge. There is NO way to make this flattering:
Pardon the terrible photo quality – these are from 2007-2010 when my 4mp camera was very fancy. I’m pretty sure that last pic was taken in the 3.5 month period between the first and second time that apartment was robbed? I can only imagine that they saw me leaving home in this outfit and assumed I must have many other fine couture pieces inside.
IMO, the best way to approach Disney costuming is to embrace the ridiculousness. “Why yes, I’d LOVE to work at Pizzafari so I can wear this every day!”
#OutfitGoals
Let’s be honest, though – it’s all kind of worth it because Disney does your laundry for you. Clean clothes with no effort on my part? Sold!
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ABOUT FREAKING TIME! I hope he gets spectacular ratings!
2. Merriam Webster has a cool new feature where you can see which words were added to the dictionary the year you were born. A few added the year I was born include aerobicize, body double, boombox, camcorder, French manicure, infomercial, sleazebag, spreadsheet, stonewashed, uninstall, unsubscribe, waitstaff, and warm fuzzies.
Yup, camcorder, aerobicize, boombox, and stonewashed. Definitely the 80s! (Amusingly, spellcheck now does not recognize aerobicize as a word.)
Couldn’t resist also checking the year after my birth since I was born in mid-December, and found that 1982 brought us such classics as cyberspace, codependent, barista, couch potato, face plant, flip off, hard drive, phone sex and G-spot. Um, and also AIDS.
Leave me a few from the year you were born in the comments if you go check it out!
3. So, I originally tweeted this because I thought it was hilarious that the thrift store wanted $12 for a framed jigsaw puzzle…
But the more I look at it, especially that one huge, disgrunted cat, the more I feel like I NEED IT. It’s like his face is saying “I, too, am a tiny fluffy kitten.”
4. I’m still editing photos for my post about the Gaylord Texan Resort, where I stayed the night of my friend’s wedding in Dallas, but I have to go ahead and mention the awesome bath products. (Yes, I swiped them all.)
I rarely like hotel shampoos and such because they usually have heavy fragrances that make me sneeze, but these are amazing. Go book a $300/nt hotel room immediately just for the bath products. 😂
(Speaking of heavy fragrances, I’m writing this post at the library as a break from my actual writing work, and a dude just sat down like 20 feet from me but his cologne is SO STRONG that I feel like there’s a giant invisible cloud of fragrance filling the entire room. Send help and gas masks.)
5. There are so many crazy political stories that I could pick as a favorite this week, but I have to go with the email subject that made me laugh the most while trying to picture the scene:
Oh, 2017, you are crazy-go-nuts and a new level of horrifying every day, but at least you’re amusing.
(This post is sponsored by Groupon, but all opinions and nerding out about my beloved city are my own.)
It’s no secret that I absolutely can not wait to move back to Orlando. Even though I only lived there for three years, it feels more like “home” than Missouri, where I’ve spent almost the entire rest of my life thus far. I even have an Instagram account dedicated entirely to The City Beautiful. It’s crazy how much I miss being surrounded by amazing things to see and do, not to mention having the beach just an hour away on one side and 90 minutes on the other!
Although there are a lot of fantastic things to do in Orlando that are totally free (visiting the Lake Eola swans, for one!), most of those world famous attractions do cost something to visit. While scrolling through the list of companies that Groupon partners with for Groupon Coupons, I was excited to see Best of Orlando listed!
The list of deals available gets a thumbs-up from me, which is high praise! Just a few of the current coupons and promo codes available include:
Up to 40% off Orlando area hotels, including the Walt Disney World Swan Resort, which is right next to Disney’s Boardwalk Resort and one of my favorite areas to just wander around, especially at night when the lights are reflecting on Crescent Lake and the Epcot fireworks are doing their thing.
Discounts on pretty much every theme park in town. Seriously.
30% off tickets to the Orlando Eye, which I am dying to do. I honestly wasn’t sure how I’d feel about it when it was announced, but its ever-changing color scheme always makes me happy when I pass by it on I-4.
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And although it’s called “Best of Orlando”, they also offer discounts on attractions that are located just a short drive away, like 10% off Kennedy Space Center tickets and $28 season passes to Tampa Zoo.
I’m definitely bookmarking this to come back to once I’m home so I can explore my dear Central Florida without spending a fortune.
Have you visited Orlando yet? What are your favorite things to do? Man, I really need to move home so I can share all of my favorite parts of my city with you guys!
Happy Friday! Yet another week has flown by. Stop doing that, weeks! I need to catch up!
Could we please start a petition for an International Catch Up On Your Life Day? You get a full 24 hours to catch up on ALL THE THINGS from overdue blog posts to that Netflix show you’re three seasons behind on to sleep.
Okay, maybe it should be International Catch Up On Your Life Week?
Anyway, here’s this week’s list of favs!
1. I’ve been sick this week and finally had to give in and get some antibiotics. Despite asking the doc for an affordable option, when I picked them up they were $50. LOLNOPE. Enter the GoodRX app, which gives you a coupon code the pharmacy people can enter to drop the price down. It brought mine down to $21, which is still way more than the $4 generic I meant when I asked for “affordable”, but significantly better than $50! (And nope, this isn’t sponsored, I just hate when pharmaceutical companies charge way too much for things just because they can.)
The app shows the price available at your local pharmacies so you can make informed choices. Yay!
2. I posted a song that I fell in love with via Spotify last week, and I have another new one that love this week!
Yes, same musical vibe as last week. I’ve been in a weird mood.
3. If you’re anything like me, you usually kinda vaguely notice the refrigerated section of the pet food aisle or store, but never really stop to investigate.
However, FreshPet recently sent me some coupons so I could try out their cat food on the house (Yes, my cats are spoiled.) so for the first time I actually explored the refrigerated stuff!
This one was a big hit! It’s easy to feed like dry food, but it’s softer and moister. The resealable bag made me ok with sticking it in the fridge and not feeling weird about cat food being in there with my food. (Refrigeration is required because they don’t use preservatives.) This was awesome when one cat would miss meal time (there always seems to be one off doing their own thing!) because I could grab them a good meal without the sound of an opening can alerting everyone else to the possibility of food.
I believe this was around $5 for a 1 lb bag. Not bad at all given the high quality ingredients, but also not something I could afford to feed them daily. It was so handy for a quick meal, though, that I’ll probably purchase it occasionally in the future! You do need to use it within about a week after opening, or else I’d just keep some on hand most of the time.
Okay, not the best photo ever, but I think anyone with pets knows what happens when you try to photograph something for your blog or Instagram!
This one is a pate from FreshPet’s “Vital” line, which is grain-free. The cas LOVED this stuff – I think they would have happily eaten the entire 1 lb package all at once. (It suggests feeding 1/4 – 1/2 lb per day depending on the cat’s weight, so I guess multiple cats splitting one would be totally normal, but it FELT like so much!) There was a learning curve to figuring out how to slice it up. At first I went with actual slices, but they seemed to struggle with those so I switched to chunks that they could get their mouths around better. Success! This one was also around $5, which is pretty budget friendly since if you only have one cat you’re getting 2-4 days out of it. Again, though, if you live in CatLadyville like I do, it may fall into the “special occasions and occasional splurge” category.
I found these at PetCo, Target, and Walmart, but their website also has a store locator if you want to track them down. There are WAY more options available for dogs, so I’d love to see the cat food varieties, expand, too! They do also sell single resealable cups of cat food that are under $2 each, so that’s next on our list to try!
4. I’ve been in hardcore cleaning and decluttering mode because I’m determined to move back to Orlando this fall, and I feel like the less stuff I bring along with me (literally and figuratively), the better. Strangely, this has gotten me hooked on YouTube videos of other people cleaning. Can’t decide if this is a step up or down from watching Hoarders?
Speaking of video consumption, I’ve been on a YouTube kick again lately. Leave a comment to let me know who your favorite YouTubers to follow are!
5. If you’ve been visiting my blog for very long at all, you know that a) I love cats and b) dot-to-dot books for adults are my jam. As much as I love coloring books for adults, sometimes when my brain is totally exhausted from a long day of work, even picking out which colors I want to use feels overwhelming. Dot-to-dot is way more relaxing. I can just put on a good podcast and kind of zone out as a cool picture forms.
I was recently sent a copy of the new Where’s Kitty? Dot-to-Dot by its publisher, Thunder Bay Press, and I’ve definitely been enjoying it. In addition to unwinding at home, it’s also come with me to Arkansas to help turn my brain off after a long day of exploring.
Like most dot-to-dot books for adults, each page is pretty intricate and the dots can be pretty tiny and close together.
Definitely not as tiny as some dot-to-dot books I’ve seen, though, and the numbers all being black also make them easier to read than some other books. I think it would be impossible to have intricate designs where the numbers don’t stand out like a sore thumb if they weren’t quite small.
As you might guess from the book’s title and cover, there’s a kitty hiding in each page! Something about this turns me into a small child and I get all excited when it shows up, “OMG, THERE’s kitty!” (Look, I live in a very small town right now. This is about as exciting as things get sometimes.)
Each image has a clue about the setting, which is super cute.
Kitty chillin’ on a gondola in Venice
Since I’m also a travel nerd this book was a perfect fit for me, since the designs each feature a famous world landmark or destination.
Happy weekend, all, and good luck if you’re entering the giveaway!
I spent most of the latter half of June asking, “Is it July yet?” because I was so looking forward to plans to head down to Dallas for a friend’s wedding and quality time with other people I care about. And now, somehow, I’ve already been back for almost a week and the time has flown by. Most of this week’s hours have been filled with work, which is lovely in the financial sense and not so great in the catching up on blog posts (and life!) end of things.
My brain hasn’t wanted to focus on anything productive all day, so this poor Friday Favs post is going up well after 9 p.m. Better late than never? I’m going with yes on that question.
1. Getting to spend time with incredible people while I was in Dallas has to be #1 this week. I’ve known two of the friends I got to visit since I was about 14, and another since 18. I hadn’t been to Texas in at least a decade, but I feel like I might need to go back in the relative future. Maybe a year? Maybe sooner? Life is weird and unpredictable, so I’m leaving it as a big question mark for now.
2. The meowers were treated to this delicious (their opinion, I didn’t personally try it) Blue Wilderness wet food from Chewy.com this week. The variety pack had chicken, duck, and salmon flavors, which were all a hit.
I often tell Bear that as a bear, he should be off catching salmon from a stream. Canned food made of salmon seems like the next best thing, so he got to be my model this week. Yes, I know, the black cats are impossible to photograph and these photos never turn out great, but Bear deserved that fishy deliciousness.
3. While writing a suite description for work, I made what is arguably the best typo of my life:
4. I came across this statue while wandering around the historic district in Grapevine, TX last Friday and it just struck me for a lot of reasons.
