Follow our family's magical adventures To Eternity and Beyond
I have compiled several trivia questions and answers from the classic Walt Disney’s Pinocchio. For a printable copy of these questions click here. What color is Jiminy Cricket’s Umbrella once he enters the storybook? Light Purple Who is the first character to appear on the […]
I have compiled several trivia questions and answers about the different Disney Theme Parks around the world. For a printable copy of these questions click here. Before Walt Disney World got its name, what was it referred to as? The Florida Project What date did […]
If you are a 90’s kid like me, you probably grew up watching and loving all the awesome but equally as cheesy DCOMs. If you aren’t familiar, DCOM stands for Disney Channel Original Movie, and these movies premiered on the Disney channel as the name entails.
I have created a Disney Channel Original Movie printable bracket you can use not only as a watchlist but also to track your favorite DCOM of all time.
I also recently did a poll on my Instagram stories, where my followers voted for each of the matchups until we landed on the greatest Disney Channel Original Movie of all time, High School Musical. You can see those results below.
I have compiled several trivia questions and answers from Disney/Pixar’s Onward. For a printable copy of these questions click here. What is the name of the college Ian’s dad attended? Willowdale College Which birthday is Ian celebrating in this film? 16th Birthday What is the […]
I have compiled several trivia questions and answers from Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. For a printable copy of these questions click here. What color fabric does the book “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs sit on at the beginning of the […]
We are REALLLLLY missing Disneyland right now so we are making all of our food Mickey shaped these days. It’s so fun and it makes everything taste better, right? For our most recent Disney food, we turned our chocolate chip cookies into Mickeys. 🙂
I used my FAVORITE chocolate chip cookie recipe that I’ll share with you below but you can totally use whatever cookie recipe you’d like.
Making chocolate chip cookies into specific shapes can be tricky because the dough melts and doesn’t really hold a shape. I have a few tips for you to help make your cookies hold that fun mickey shape.
To make your Mickey cookies, start by rolling some cookie dough into a ball. You can use however much you’d use to make regular cookies. This will make his head. Then roll two MUCH smaller balls to create his ears. Place the ears on either side of the larger dough ball. If you put the “ears” too close together, the cookie will melt into a big blob.
One thing I noticed while trying to get a fun Mickey shape is that if there’s a chocolate chip on the edge of one of the ear balls, it doesn’t quite melt into that nice round shape. It’s not a big deal if it doesn’t make that perfect shape but it’s just something I noticed.
That’s pretty much it. It’s so easy but makes your cookies much more fun. If you want your cookies to look like the giant, delicious Mickey cookies you can get at Trolley Treats at California Adventure, you can also dunk the tops of your cookies into melted chocolate chips. This makes your cookie look like it’s wearing Mickey ears. Add a squiggle of melted chocolate across the main part of the cookie and it’ll look just like the cookies from Disneyland!
I hope you enjoy this recipe. Tag toystorydad on Instagram so we can see how yours turn out! Enjoy! 🖤Rach
1. Preheat the oven to 350°
2. Cream butter and sugar together. Make sure the butter is room temperature but not melted or the dough will be runny.
3. Add eggs, vanilla, and maple syrup.
4. Add dry ingredients- flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. If the dough seems runny, add a bit of extra flour.
5. Mix in chocolate chips.
6. Roll dough into balls (or mickeys) and place them on a GREASED cookie sheet or a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
7. Bake cookies for 8-10 minutes. (I prefer my cookies “underbaked” so I never have them cook longer than 8 minutes.
8. Press in extra chocolate chips on top of the cookies if desired. Let the cookies cool before removing them from the tray. (If the Mickeys are picked up while still hot, the ears may fall off.)
9. Optional. Melt a cup of chocolate chips and dunk the tops of the cookies in melted chocolate. Using a piping bag or a sandwich bag with the tip cut off, pipe a chocolate squiggle on the main part of the cookie.
Notes: This cookie dough is SO good when chilled! If the cookies are dipped in melted chocolate, they taste extra yummy when chilled.
Everything tastes better in Mickey form, right? Say hello to the yummiest, easiest Mickey pretzel recipe out there. These taste so delicious and they’ll make you feel like you’re at Disneyland sitting on Mainstreet, USA. Ingredients To Make Mickey Shaped Pretzels 1 ½ c lukewarm […]
Disney and Pixar invited us to an early media screening of their new movie Onward. Onward tells the story of two teenage elf brothers who set out on a quest to discover if there is still magic left in the world. The movie will be […]
Note: This post was created as part of a paid sponsorship with PersonalCapital.com. Although this is a paid sponsorship, all opinions are my own and I have been a user of PersonalCapital for years.
If you know our family, you know that we LOVE Disneyland and basically all things Disney. Because we live in Utah and go to Disneyland often we are often asked: “How do you afford to go to Disneyland so much?” I will answer that question in more detail throughout this post but to put it simply: We make it a priority and budget accordingly!
In our family, I am the main financial nerd(I have a degree in Accounting) and do most of the budget and financial tracking. I seriously love numbers and finance, especially personal finance. My family knows I can spend hours and hours talking about savings, 401ks, IRAs and other nerdy financial things. Although Rachel does not share this same passion, I think it is important that we are all on the same page financially as a family which is why I found and love Personal Capital.
I have been using the tools in Personal Capital for years. I love that the dashboard gives me a 360-degree view of our money. With several incomes, investments and many bank accounts, Personal Capital allows me the ability to see and easily explain our financial status to Rachel. I have tried several different tools over the years and use to use several different websites to manage my finances and budget, but Personal Capital is now my tool of choice because I can do everything in one place. The best part, Personal Capital is FREE to use!
Click Here to create your Personal Capital account and get started today. Once you create your account I highly suggest connecting all of your accounts. Personal Capital makes it super easy and secure to connect all of your accounts. These accounts can include checking, saving, credit cards, any debt such as cars and auto loans and investment/retirement accounts as well as any other assets you have. Once you have all of your accounts linked you will be able to see your net worth which is one of my favorite tools within the Personal Capital dashboard.
Now that everything is connected you will begin to sync up and look at where your money is going. Before we can set budgeting goals it is important to see where our money is going. Under the banking tab, there is a link to budgeting. I usually look at the last year to really get a good idea of my average spending per month. Personal Capital will automatically categorize all of your transactions but you can go in and manually change the categorization on each transaction if desired.
Looking at all the transactions for the last year I can see all of my expenses. When budgeting, I always like to start with our fixed expenses. Every family will be different but for us this includes:
Now that we have a total for all of our monthly expenses we can look at some of our variable expenses. I like to get an idea of how much I am spending on each of the following somewhat essential categories each month:
I work a full-time job with a fixed salary so I budget off of that fixed income. All of our other investment/business income is extra and is usually just reinvested back into the business or other investments. We, of course, don’t want to budget off our salary, but instead our take-home pay. I max out our 401k and HSA then pay for medical/dental/vision insurance before I receive my paycheck.
Looking at the money coming in every month vs the money going out to these expenses will help us set budgeting goals. Obviously, if we are spending more every month than my take-home pay the first goal should be getting that spending under control so that we can not take on any more debt. Look for categories where you might be spending an unnecessary amount. One area that we are wanting to improve this year is less eating out. Eating out for us costs an average of $20-$30 every time we do. If we ate out one less time per week that could save us $100/week or over $1000 every year.
Do you have financial goals or dreams? Maybe you want to buy a house, a boat or a new car, but for us, our goals usually involve around travel. I work A LOT between my day job and other business ventures. Travel is our escape and time where we focus on being together as a family. Our favorite place to travel is Disneyland. We can usually plan a Disneyland trip for our family for under $1000. For more on how to save money when planning your trip read our Planning Your Disneyland Vacation post.
If our average Disneyland trip is $1000, then if we can hit our goal of eating out just one less time per week, we will save that $1000 we can put towards our Disneyland vacation. It just comes down to setting goals and making priorities. It is YOUR money so at the end of the day YOU can do what YOU want with it. At the end of the day though, money doesn’t grow on trees so you will have to sacrifice spending in some areas to have money saved to use in other areas.
As Walt Disney said, “If you can dream it, you can do it!” Set your dreams and then take the actions to achieve those dreams.
Disclosure: This tutorial was sponsored by Primary.com and they provided clothing to create this costume. This post contains affiliate links. When you purchase anything through these links we receive a small commission that helps support this channel and allows us to continue making content like […]
