Day 922: The Old Stomping Grounds

2013 seems like much more than two years ago...seems more like two decades. Funny, considering that's how old I'll be turning this week so it's impossible for it to have been that long ago. Regardless, heading back to my childhood summer camp to visit some of my friends who now work there seemed like a great time to flashback to my last week of camp in 2013. The week was filled with Disney all over the place, not that it was surprising in the least. Attending a camp called MADD camp, which stands for Music, Arts, Dance, and Drama makes it pretty easy to expect Disney to find it's way into just about every day of the week! So now, looking back to my last year at Pilgrim Center, here's a few of my favorite memories: 

I actually forgot a picture of this existed until I went back to my blog post from the day, but here we have me getting hit with a frying pan as a part of our Five Minute Musical: Tangled! If you want to read our miniature synopsis, you can find it back on Day 175, but let's just say that I was very excited to have my favorite Disney movie as my group's musical. 

This is actually the picture that reminded me of how much Disney was stuck in my last week at Pilgrim Center, when we had a cookie decorating contest and I decided Minnie Mouse would be the best design option. Long story short, I won the competition and what I wouldn't give to have another of those cookies. Read about the cookie and more of the camp adventures on Day 176! 

I forgot this happened until I went back to Day 174 too! Every year at camp we make buttons as name tags so we can easily learn names throughout the entire camp. In 2012 I was lucky enough to find a Disney cartoon, which you can see on the button on the left, as my background for my button. And apparently, as I wrote about two years ago, going into my last year, I had no expectations to be as lucky again as to find a Disney themed background...until I found a Nat Geo from 1982 and a giant Spaceship Earth. 

And last but certainly not least when it comes to the Disney references at my last week of camp we have the Chihuly exhibit we had a chance to see. If you don't know much about Chihuly, you can read all about him and the exhibit we saw on Day 177, but basically he's a glass artist that's done beautiful sculptures for many locations I've visited, including some of the Disney cruise ships (although I'm not sure if they're still there at this point). 

Like I said, it's been a long time since I've actually attended camp at Pilgrim Center, but that doesn't mean it doesn't feel like a little bit of home to me. There were several years in the middle I didn't go, but I'm forever thankful that I decided to go back for my final two years because I met so many wonderful people that I can't imagine my life without now. If you want to read all of my posts on my last week of camp, they're in and around those I've listed here! 

Have a magical day!

Day 381: The Lone Ranger

Back at the beginning of 2013, I went through the list of movies that were coming out that year and made my own list of everything I wanted to see. Of course, on that list was everything from The Hunger Games to Saving Mr. Banks and back to the spring with Iron Man 3, but sadly, I only saw about five of them out of over 12 on the list.

One of those movies was The Lone Ranger. I'm not necessarily old enough to remember the entire basis of the story, as that was a bit before my era, but I do know enough about it to understand the characters and the story and the theme song and everything. Plus I love Johnny Depp, so seeing this was kind of an obvious thing. Of course, we all know that the movie didn't exactly get the greatest reviews and didn't really do too well in the box office, and I didn't actually get to see it in theaters.

Then Christmas came around, and the #1 gift in our house (next to gift cards I suppose) is movies, and mom got dad The Lone Ranger. When one of us gets movies that generally means that all of us get movies (and actually she gave him like all of the movies on my list...works for me because then I get to see them too). Since my parents were on vacation (yes, currently it is January 26...I got behind), I figured that one of the nights would be a good time to watch The Lone Ranger.

And now that I have, I will never see Rabbits the same way again.

To be honest, I never actually got to finish the movie. I fell asleep near the end (the last thing I remember is the theme song that played during the climax of the film), and since I'm back at SNC now, I never got an actual chance to finish watching it (Ok, I probably could have finished that instead of continuing to watch HIMYM, but you get the point).

What I did get to see of it I really liked though. I mean, as much as I suppose you can like it. It's not the best film I've ever seen, that's for sure, but I think it's alright. Granted, like I said, The Lone Ranger was a bit before my era, so I don't remember what it used to be like. In other words, I can't say how close it is to the original and how it represents that, but Johnny Depp was pretty awesome. And the nomination it has for the Oscars is great too (Hair & Makeup or something like that...impressive to say the least).

And the White Horse was pretty awesome too.

The part that made me laugh though was the fact that Ruth Wilson, who played Rebecca, was also in Saving Mr. Banks (she played the mother there), meaning that she was playing a very similar character and it was just super confused to think about. I was like "No, this isn't the same movie. Think Lizzie, Think!"

Those rabbits though...

Have a magical day!

Day 365: The End...Or...

Well, here's part one of the finale of 2013 (although technically it's posted as part two...go back a day to see the other half later today when I get around to posting it). It was kind of interesting trying to figure out how everything was going to fit together, but I knew I wanted this post to be the absolute last one for 2013, because it's like my final words on this giant crazy New Year's Resolution I had for 2013.

To be totally honest, I can't believe I'm sitting here right now. I can't even remember what made me decide, a year ago, to blog about Disney every day in 2013. I have no clue where that even really came up, other than for the fact that I had a mostly empty blog sitting here that could easily be used, and the title Everyday Disney lent itself well to the prospect of blogging everyday. So if anything, that's where the idea came from.

Over the past two days I've gone through every single post on my blog, as you will see in the post previous to this one, and while I didn't read all of them word for word (and for good reason...that could take days in itself), I did read a few posts, one of them being the very first one: Day 1: The Beginning...Of Your Future.

In that post I said this: "But since I don't have many (or any really) other New Years Resolutions, why can't this be it? Instead of planning to lose weight, eat better, read a series of books, learn how to bake or cook an entire new series of foods, or even write a story (something I am currently doing in my free time already), I am going to do this. I am going to write a blog, called Everyday Disney, which for 365 days, I will write a post a day, or at least put something on the blog in order to keep up with the days. I really do hope that I can accomplish this, because as it appears right now, I love the look of this blog and the idea that it holds, and I hope that you do too, since I would love to have some people follow and chat with me along the way, so that I can share my extreme love of Disney with everyone around me.

Thank you, and here's to a magical year, filled with endless possibilities and new frontiers!"

Have I accomplished everything I talked about in that first post? I like to think that I did. I've gotten behind on days more times than I can count, but I've always caught myself back up in one way or another...even if I had to write a post almost two months after the day it was being posted on. There's a story behind every post: where I wrote it, why I wrote it, who I wrote it about or with. And I've gotten the chance to meet and talk with some wonderful people along the way too...especially a number of you on Instagram!

But how have I changed through all of this? At the beginning of the year I was somewhat of a different person, but I guess they say that college does that to you. 2013 has been one of the more interesting years of my life, and it came with a lot of big decisions, adventures, changes and possibilities. But I'm happy to say that this blog has changed even how I look at Disney, and it's changed it in a good way. For the first time in my life, or at least in a really long time, I feel closer to Disney than ever before. Of course, things are once again changing with the new year, but I am very excited for my two upcoming trips in 2014 (and hopefully another one a year from now in January 2015).

I would like to personally thank everyone who has helped me with this blog, read the blog, glanced at the blog, promoted the blog, repined the pinterest posts, liked my pictures on Instagram, followed the Facebook page or anything else. Everyday Disney has become a very important part of my life, and I have to say that I'm really glad I decided to do it this year.

So, here's to 2013, and what a wonderful year it has been!

Here's today's Disney History: 1971: The very first Magic Kingdom New Year's Eve Party is held at Walt Disney World, from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.

Have a magical day and a very happy new year! See you in the future!

Day 364: 2013

And here's part two of the end of the year posts. Really this one should go after the other one, but it just didn't work out schedule wise, so here we go. It's taken me hours and hours on end to total and tally all of this stuff up, and in order to technically have the numbers correct I have to finish this post before I can finalize the numbers. Because I want this post to include absolutely everything from the entire year.

So, let's start out by looking at the number of words from each month. You'll see the statistics by month and then overall.

January: 13,637 Words (0 Disney History)
February: 8,679 Words (973 Disney History)
March: 15,162 Words (1,688 Disney History)
April: 14,709 Words (1,690 Disney History)
May: 16,948 Words (1,543 Disney History)
June: 17,237 Words (1,559 Disney History)
July: 17,710 Words (1,608 Disney History)
August: 17,366 Words (1,385 Disney History)
September: 19109 Words (1,419 Disney History)
October: 20,741 Words (1,556 Disney History)
November: 24,406 Words (1,418 Disney History)
December: 20,299 Words (1,652 Disney History)

And then I went through and looked at some of the keywords from the entire year. My best friend and I came up with a list of the ones I probably used the most, or at least were the most interesting or funny.

Disney (w/o Walt Disney/Walt Disney World/Everyday Disney): 2,329
Colin O'Donoghue: 12
Emma Swan: 170
Hook: 213
Once Upon a Time (OUAT): 93
CaptainSwan: 37
Harrison Ford: 70
Star Wars: 211
Han Solo: 61
Epcot: 195
Spaceship Earth: 124
College: 214
Walt Disney: 142
Indiana Jones: 70
Walt Disney World (WDW): 211
Everyday Disney: 33

And then I calculated all the different pictures from each month on various fronts. For instance, Overall I had 803 pictures, although there might be a couple of them that are doubled. I mean, I didn't count Frumpstagram pictures or my Once Disneybounds more than once. Of those 803 pictures, 177 of them were from my Instagram account, 57 were movie posters, 50 were of Harrison Ford, 71 had to do with Star Wars, 108 were from Once Upon a Time, 171 were of Walt Disney World, and 25 at Disneyland. Throughout the year I also had 119 videos, most of which were from Youtube.

Of all the posts, 245 of them had at least one picture, 73 without any pictures at all and 47 of them had no pictures, but at least one Youtube video.

Overall, I think it's been a pretty good year, don't you think? Now to finish up this post so I can make the final counts and publish this post, which will, ultimately, be the last post I publish in 2013. Crazy, I know. But I think I'm ready for a new adventure once 2014 comes around. =)

Here's today's Disney History: 1980: The longest-running series in prime time television history, The Wonderful World of Disney, is canceled (on NBC) after more than 25 years on the air.

Have a magical day!

(Note: This blog post was written on December 31 due to obvious reasons).