To Sell or Not to Sell... °o° *•._.•* ‘ *•._.•* °o°

... That is the Question.

The rummage sale occurred this last Easter Saturday. There have been a LOT of events going on in March and April, and this was the only weekend that we were otherwise NOT committed out, but would still be early enough in the year to avoid a scorching day. As you may have read in my previous posts, Mark and I have spent quite literally four months of Saturdays cleaning, pricing, and organizing our junk (treasure!) in preparation for the sale, only to be followed up by me dragging out more and more bins to add to the pile. It got so bad that I had to call in reinforcements to help manage the booty!

Thanks to the help and dedication of three of our "work" friends, Mouseketeer Trish, Mouseketeer Sheri and Mouseketeer Jen, we pulled it off and pocketed a sweet $500 profit! Just for fun, I took a few photos at different stages in the day:

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This close-up of just one table is to illustrate how our buyer's shopping habits were that day. We had  a few items that I consider high dollar figure items (such as 3 pairs of vintage metal roller skates, an accordion, an antique wood carved Asian table, a large propane BBQ, and a stationary bike with a broken pedal), but for the most part we were selling items between $1 and $4. 

(Click to enlarge photo)

The morning started off overcast, even though the forecast was for a bright sunny day, with a high expected to hit 91 degrees (!). Turns out that for the most part of the sale time, it remained breezy and perfect. It wasn't until 1 or 2pm that we felt the full heat of the day. We were very thankful.

The shot above shows most everything pulled out and displayed by about 7am, although we still had several bins of items needing to be priced. Mark is wearing the skeleton shirt in this photo.

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Look at the camera and smile Mouseketeer Mark!

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Oh, Mousekteer Trish is back there, too! Thanks for all your help, Trish..  you, with the dusty butt! (from sitting on the grass, cleaning and sorting CDs and DVDs).

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We decided to use the neighbor's driveway for our truck bed to display the 50 or 60 puzzles we were selling. The house has been vacant for 10 years, so we knew the owner would not show up. There were another 30 board games that we displayed on the ground here, and 9 banker's boxes full of books of all types (there were approximately 250 books). Books, puzzle and games are the staple of my Amazon bookstore at Amazon.com and these were ones I had tried to sell for a few years, but they never moved for one reason or another. Nobody bought the 1980's vintage Maniac game! WHAT???!!!!

We had a few kooks show up (I guess this is the kind of event that draws them). One guy sat on the driveway and scanned the UPC bar code on every single book, obviously trying to find those with value on some resale website. I could have told him that they were the books with no resale value, but I was enjoying watching him far too much.

Several friends showed up from our Facebook blasts. It was nice to see Frank and Patti and their daughter, my actress friend Darcy, and several members of Mark's family. I think his Mom, brother and cousins left with more than anyone else that came to the sale!  They even bought the BBQ, one of our highest priced sales of the day at $40!

My initial goal was $1000 (and had we sold the Asian table, the roller skates and a few other key items, we would have met that), but I am NOT complaining.

In context of our Move to Disney Budget, that $500 from the rummage sale fully covers the cost of one Florida Resident Premium Annual Pass to Disney World!

If you don't count the Annual Pass charge in the moving budget, $500 covers the full cost of lodging and food for the four-night drive from Phoenix to Orlando.

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At 4:45, one of the shoppers from earlier in the day drove up as we were breaking down the tables and asked if we would sell the stationary bike for $10 (we were asking $20).  Considering I was going to drag it to the driveway and leave a "FREE" sign on it, I jumped at his offer!  That last ten-spot brought our profit to that $500 total.

Except for a couple of larger items, the two photos above show what everything boiled down to at the end of the day. Just imagine two or three times this amount of stuff filling your garage and closets. What a relief it is all done.

At 5:30, I had closed up the bed of the truck with the puzzles and filled it to the brim with the remaining board games and dropped them off at Goodwill.

An hour later, I was loading up the book boxes and we drove them over to the Lawn Gnome Bookstore, an independently owned bookstore in a converted historic house in the downtown Phoenix arts district. http://lawngnomepublishing.com/  I discovered the bookstore a few months ago, had met the owner Aaron and mentioned that I was looking for a place to donate my books. He was very appreciative of even the thought of it.

Now, we are left with the items in the photos above, which will be picked up by the Valley Big Brother/Big Sister organization on Wednesday morning. I used to volunteer as a Big Brother 15 years ago so I am happy to support them further with the donation of the rest of our junk (treasures!)

One more shout out to our friends Trish, Sheri and Jen. I hope we thanked you enough for your help!

Comments are welcome. Positive feedback encouraged!

Mouseketeer Ken

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HUGE Rummage sale to raise money for the move

Months in the planning, and the day is fast arriving! The mother rummage sale of them all will occur on Saturday, March 30th from 7am to 3pm. I have listed our rummage sale on several sites.
Here are 2 of my favorites sites, featuring our add.  

Thanks to our friends Trish, Jen and Sheri for rising to the occasion and helping a couple of Disney fans out! Those are true friends.

www.gsalr.com

and another favorite site is yardsalesearch.com. Here is our listing.

www.yardsalesearch.com

7am to 3pm.

We have so much stuff for sale that it took four people two weeks to price it all. 

• Disney items sprinkled throughout most categories
• Small home décor items
• Small picture frames
• 2 (non-matching) bar stools
• More board games and puzzles than you can shake a stick at! (all are complete, most in very-good to mint condition.
• 1970’s or 1980’s French Provincial style princess phone (push button keys).
• 2 pairs of vintage 1950’s metal roller skates, $25 a pair
• 3 non-matching wooden crates, perfect for home décor, $20 each
• Carved wood Asian table (very ornate, vintage) $300
• Tiffany style (Art Deco) reproduction table top lamp
• Enough books to stock a small library, priced to move.
• Battery operated, working megaphone
• 2 matching Metal CD stands
• Small stereo, great for garage or back porch listening (plays CDs and cassettes, includes speakers)
• Tons of CDs
• Christmas
• Halloween
• Stuffed animals
• Entire library of Disney VHS animated films (and other animated films)
• 40-50 DVDs ranging from B movies to horror. Some are still shrink wrapped from the factory - $1 each
• Unused 50 qt. Igloo cooler (sky blue), $30
• Accordion (circa 1970s or 80s?) that works but has no shoulder strap
• James Dean collectible/limited edition pewter belt buckle
• Vacuum cleaner that just needs a good cleaning to optimize
• Sequined cowgirl hats (pink and powder blue)
• Portable wood burning fire pit (showing age, but has several years of use left)
• Propane portable BBQ (showing age, but has several years of use left)
• Soooooo much more that I’m running out of room to list them. Things like planters, a color printer, drinking glasses, several Disney children’s bed sheets, glass punch bowl, rhinestone tiara, unused feather pillow, gently used clothing, lots of men’s ties…….. holy cow my fingers are tired from typing it all! 

If you are in the Phoenix Area, Mouseketeers, make sure you drop by!

Ken and Mark

…and Now the Spending Begins… °o° *•._.•* ‘ *•._.•* °o°

It seems like money is just flying out the window right now, and everything is costing $200 or more! 

The kitchen sink suddenly backed up last week with no warning and no home remedy would work = $280 bucks. 

The truck’s front breaks suddenly start grinding LOUDLY = $225

At least we have a planned expense coming up, that will help with increasing the value of our home; a full replacement of our Central Air Conditioning unit = $3000!

Below are the before and after pictures of the job they did. It’s nice to know that we will have a final summer in the desert with a fully functioning, energy efficient A/C unit that we can brag is BRAND new the year we are selling the home.

(This is the BEFORE. You can see that we stopped painting the exterior of the house just where the evap coolor started because we knew we would be replacing it. The evap cooler stopped working back in 2001. The A/C unit is the bigger one on the right.)

(This is the AFTER shot and the new A/C unit which is about the same size but has a larger capacity for the size of the house.  It also comes with a smart looking digital thermostat and a ten year warranty).

Unless there are further unforeseen expenses, The A/C will be the biggest out-of-pocket expense that we have to plan for. From here on out, I am expecting routine purchases like paint, spackle, or gas for the lawn mower. I have a short laundry list of small projects to get done around the house, but they are all easily manageable (knock on wood).

Comments are welcome. Positive feedback encouraged!

Mouseketeer Ken

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BLOG milestone - 2000 views today.

Congratulations "Living a Disney Life'. With only 3 actual subscribers, we still hit 2000 pageviews today.

The next milestone in my mind will be 5000 and 10 subscribers!

Thanks to all of you "hit and readers" out there. Keep coming back, we appreciate it. Don't forget, we are still hoping to find Florida locals to Dis-Friend!

Mouseketeer Ken and Mouseketeer Mark.

Sometimes You Need a Hand °o° *•._.•* ‘ *•._.•* °o°

Every weekend we have been working on the rummage sale.  This is the BIG one, folks. There is so much stuff on the back porch and in the two car garage, that it is just overwhelming. This is years of hoarding, items that were once for sale in my Ebay store, and just things I had collected that I thought I would use at one time. I have been fairly ruthless about moving things out so that we won't have to move quite so much on moving week.

I have been hounding Mark to help me with it nearly every weekend, but there always seems to be something else that has to be done instead. With Spring quickly approaching, that means summer is only a few short weeks away and rummage sales in summer in Arizona are just not a good idea. We are quickly losing our window of opportunity to hold the sale.

The biggest problem is that we have to wipe everything down, before it can be priced. Arizona is a desert, and dust gathers very quickly. This is going to be quite a large yard sale, so I am counting on bringing in several hundred dollars and that just won't happen with filthy, dirty, dusty items for sale. After spending another two hours on Sunday afternoon with Mark, I finally had a mini-mental breakdown. There is FAR TOO MUCH for only two people to handle.

Let me illustrate with pictures.  This photo is everything that we have cleaned, priced, and organized:

 (click to view it larger)

Nice and neat, ready to be carried out to tables in the front yard, right?


Oh.. except for this:

 

Yeah. that's at least TWICE as much still to be cleaned up and priced.

 

So it was finally time to call in reinforcements... Now we have yet another Saturday afternoon planned, this time with friends coming over ready to dig in deep and get the project off it's feet. This has been such an ordeal that I feel like progress is being held up simply because of the mountain of junk (treasure) that has been in the way. 

 

More updates coming soon. Phase One begins on Saturday at 2pm. Then I'm hoping the sale can occur on the 16th or the 23rd of March.

 

MouseketeerKen and MouseketeerMark

Comments are welcome. Positive feedback encouraged!

 

Living a Facebook Life °o° *•._.•* ‘ *•._.•* °o°

Did you know that we have a Facebook page that is dedicated to this blog and to the smaller details that relate to Living a Disney Life-the blog (as well as living a Disney life)?

1. Do you already live in the Central Florida area and are interested in quality friends?
2. Do you dream of relocating to the area in order to be near Disney?
3. Are you just an über-Disney fan that loves to talk Disney even though you don't have plans to relocate?
4. Are you a GLBT Disney fan (or GLBT friendly), and also fit into category 1, 2 or 3?

Then we wanna be friends with you!

Please come over to Facebook and "like" our page. We want to built a community of like-minded friends. The link is below:

http://www.facebook.com/LivingADisneyLife


Hugs to all of our MouseketeerFriends,


MouseketeerKen and MouseketeerMark

Comments are welcome. Positive feedback encouraged!

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Disney Summit Meeting, Spring 2013 °o° *•._.•* ‘ *•._.•* °o°

We are at a period along the relocation timeline where we find it is time for serious discussion now about putting plans into action. This weekend Mark and I sat down to discuss options for how we will make this move, logistically.

One of the scenarios and the one that I happen to like best is that Mark graduates on June 30^th, and within a week or two, we relocate him to Orlando.  I can take a few days off of work, and the both of us will fly out and spend 4 or 5 days looking for a residence and setting him up with everything he needs to settle in. If we are able to schedule a few interviews during this time period, we will at least have a rental car for the week to get him to the interview.  We bide our time until he gets a job offer, and once that comes in, the house in Phoenix goes up for sale.  When the house sells, and it’s time to pack up the dog and the furniture, Mark will fly back to Phoenix so that he can help me load a U-Haul truck and make the drive across country to Florida. Done.

The second scenario is identical to the first, except that Mark does not relocate to Orlando UNTIL he secures a job. Once that happens, we move him there, and the house goes on the market, it sells, and then we coordinate the moving truck and the cross country drive.

I like option one because it means that Mark will be able to establish residency right away, and he will be more likely to interview well in a face-to-face meeting.  From some web research I have done, I have learned that many employers will not even consider you for a position unless you are already a resident and have a local address. Mark will also be working in the culinary field, which is an industry that has high turnover.  Considering Orlando is already on the record as having the most hotels in the country after Las Vegas, we have a good feeling that Mark can land a job within a couple of months, if not sooner.

This gives us the following time line:

June 30^th – Mark graduates

July 15^th (or sooner) - Mark moves to Orlando

September 1^st (or sooner) – Mark is employed

September 2^nd (or sooner) – Phoenix home goes on the market

*** unknown factor: the house sell date (current average is 69 days, depending on what website you are reading), which means I could be moving by mid-November.

Another adjustment to the scenario is that we put the house up for sale upon Mark’s graduation and before he receives a job offer.  Considering the time it takes for a home to actually sell, we may want to take advantage of the summer time when most homes sell, so that we would have a potential move date of mid-August to mid-September.

So many factors to consider and worry about! Forget Space Mountain, THIS is the real roller coaster ride!

Comments are welcome. Positive feedback encouraged!

Mouseketeer Ken

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Focus and Balance °o° *•._.•* ‘ *•._.•* °o°

This blog has been on my mind almost daily since I put it on a fall hiatus. I discovered that I was writing too long before the move to keep the subject of my postings related to relocation, and too many entries were veering off into other subjects.  They were all Disney related, but they did not serve the core reason for the blog.  Once Mark and I have settled into our “Florida Compound” and have started to get to know the area, I plan on changing the direction of the blog, but before the move, I want to keep the focus with fewer off shoots into other subjects.  I think we are now at a point in the timeline that I can start up again, but don’t worry if I still occasionally veer off into other directions just for the fun of it (alright, I’ll admit that Mark and I have a few non-relocation blog postings already in mind). Among other things that are simmering on the burners are these thoughts:

·       Boy, I can’t wait to get my hands on some of the home-improvement and furniture refinishing jobs that I have planned.  I have started some of them, and I’m itching to dive back in again so that we can make the house as re-sellable as possible. 

·         I am also an artist, and now that the overtime at work has ended, it is a personal requirement to get back to my art.  All of this is about balance, and not tipping the scales with any one project so that it becomes a detriment to other tasks that also need attention.  My first project is a pen and ink Mickey head silhouette that will be embellished with a swirly design and mounted in 3D, in a shadow box. I’m planning on a series of them.

·         Oh yes, the damned rummage sale…  This thing really needs to be a priority. I have 13 years in the house we live in now, and it feels like I never threw anything away in that 13 years. I have completed a sifting of the first layer and it’s enough to fill the back porch, and about 15 bins. We’ve been going out to work on pricing everything for a few hours each weekend, but I keep finding more to drag out. Sometimes I look at it all and I just don’t know where to start. Where the hell did I get that accordion?!?!

·         I’m also focusing more attention on my on-line bookstore through Amazon.com.  Last week, I mentioned that we spent a few hours digging through Goodwill bins for games to sell and we made a great haul. I’ve made the first sale from that batch of games today; The Game Of Preferences for $38.99, plus shipping. I see that as $39 bucks more towards the Move to Disney fund!  Oh, and as an aside, that $39 dollars covers the entire cost of last week's Goodwill haul, gas included; all other game sales from that haul are pure profit.

Please help keep up the blog-o-sphere morale by commenting every now and then, even on old posts; knowing that people are out there reading (or even FOLLOWING the blog-hint hint) is really a great confidence boost!

 

Comments are welcome. Positive feedback encouraged!

Mouseketeer Ken

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Making Money to Move to Disney World °o° *•._.•* ‘ *•._.•* °o°

We are still socking away money for the move to Disney. To make additional money on the side, I sell books, games and puzzles on Amazon.com. Last weekend was a 50% off day at Goodwill, so Mark and I made a trip to 7 different stores and came back with the 21 items you see pictured here.

The great part about our haul is that we were able to scan all of the UPS numbers with our smart phones to check the value on Amazon.com, so that we could pass on items that were not worth spending the money on.  Some items here were for sale for $100 or more!

After 3 days of sorting, part-counting, cleaning and listing, all of them are available for sale and the grand total for all 21 gems is $950!  Even if I sold only one quarter of the haul, I would still have profited by more than $200!  I currently have 700 books and 50 games/puzzles/toys for sale, for which all profit goes right into savings for the Disney Move. Everything not sold by the time we move will be donated back to Goodwill, unless we find the room in the moving truck to keep a few things. Those books are heavy!

Go ahead, take a guess: (click on the photo to see it larger) Which game out of the ones you see here do you think is the most valuable? Comment below!

Comments are welcome. Positive feedback encouraged!

Mouseketeer Ken

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We are still on track

Hello Mouseketeers,

Have no fears, none of our plans have changed. You may have noticed a lack of postings lately, and it is because we started to notice that our own blog postings were becoming less and less about the relocation plans, and more about things unrelated.

Our vision for the blog is to document our journey every step of the way. Occasionally, we thought we would include some fun postings (Disney pictures, Hidden Mickey finds, Disney cooking), but it became clear that since we are still more than a year away from the actual move, we didn't have enough happening to sustain the blog in these early months.

So, we are still here, still making plans, and still saving money.  But we will not be posting again until we can contribute on a regular basis on the subject that was planned.

I'm hoping that what we HAVE written will still attract readers, so if you have just found us, please drop us a line. We are hoping to make many friends local to the central Florida area, as well as Disney fans in all parts of the world.

I am hoping that we will return in just a few short months.

Ken 

Photo blog - Hidden Mickeys °o° *•._.•* ‘ *•._.•* °o°

Oh yes, the most popular of secondary Disney activities; hunting for Hidden Mickeys.

These photos are from my own collection.  Feel free to send yours to me, I'd love to feature a post with all of your great finds!

Here are the first five:

This one was the hardest to capture.. it's found on the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and the coaster goes by the hidden Mickey very quickly. You need to know where it is to get the photo.

This one is in the queue of the Matterhorn. I was directed to this by the cast member when I asked him if there were any hidden Mickeys on the mountain.

And this last Hidden Mickey, was staged for the EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival. Photo credit: http://www.myhiddenmickey.com/ blot.  Thanks, My Hidden Mickey dot com!!!

Send your Hidden Mickey photos in, and I'll give you a shout out.  You deserve it!

Comments are welcome. Positive feedback encouraged!

Mouseketeer Ken

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Where Are We Going to Get the Money For This? °o° *•._.•* ‘ *•._.•* °o°

It will come from sacrifice, pure and simple. When the decision was made that we would be moving to Florida, we immediately imposed a freeze (or at least a chill) on movies, eating out on a Friday or Saturday night and internet shopping (that was a hard one). Of course, freezing your frivolous spending doesn’t really earmark the savings, so we put a more formal plan into action as well.

Just around the time that we started dreaming about the move, and wondering how we would ever afford it, I was reviewing a history of book sales that I had made in the past year on Amazon.com. I have been selling books for several years now, and I have been able to afford some things that I otherwise may not have been, including trips to Disneyland in California. I was looking at the numbers and wondered to myself how much money I had earned in one full year. I added up the  and found the amount was just slightly over $1400!

This boggled my mind. Had I stashed that money away into a savings account and not spent it on things that are unaccounted for today, I would have that money right now. Suddenly, I had a savings-account epiphany – what if I saved my earning for the upcoming year? How much would I have at the end of the year? If sales maintained at the level that it has been, then I could easily have the same amount by the end of 12 months, without any more effort than I was used to.

Then, another thought popped into my head. What if I wanted $2000 by the end of one year instead of just $1400? I did some quick math and divided the $2000 dream total by 24 (the number of paydays in one year). I would need to earn $83.50 every two weeks.

When I first think about socking away $83.50 every pay period on my current salary, my excitement kind of evaporates.  However, with the kind of sacrifices that I have been making recently, I might be able to supplement the balance of my book sales, UP TO the $83.50 goal. So for example, if I have a slow book sale week, in which I earn only $40, from my following work paycheck, I would transfer the difference ($43.50 in this case); a prospect much easier to swallow.

On good sales weeks, I might even go over the goal amount, in which case I would not need to supplement any deficit. Of course at the end of the day that translates to earning MORE than my goal amount.

The first thing I did was to adjust my half.com payments account that that all deposits were made straight into my savings account, instead of checking. This way, I save myself the added effort of doing it, and I’m not tempted to hold any amount back when things are tight. I made a plan, and I need to do everything I can to stick to it.

The year was already two months in by this time, so I had missed three or four deposits and I wanted to make them up.

Since book sales had been decent, mostly approaching the goal, I didn’t need to supplement much more than 10-20 dollars, but there were those first few weeks in January and February that I needed to make up. It took some belt tightening, but I was able to double up on savings transfers and I matched the half.com deposit, to the penny for the weeks that I was missing.

Of course, second-hand books don’t list themselves, and they also don’t shop for themselves to be sold in my store.  As they say, your success is dependent upon the effort you put forth, so I started increasing my efforts. I had rummage sales to visit, and thrift store bins to dig through. Church and School fund-raisers were priority because they are usually on a much larger scale than a garage sale, and there is usually no shortage of books they are trying to unload and the church or school staff don’t mind taking lower price offers when I come up with a huge box of books and a five or ten dollar bill in hand. Rock bottom discounts are usually more frequently accepted as it gets later in the afternoon; no one likes to pack up heavy book boxes at the end of the day.

The rest of my afternoon is spent inspecting my booty, getting them listed for sale, then stored in the garage, awaiting their new owners. I like to think of myself as a book-broker; someone who goes out and finds an unwanted or abandoned baby, cleans it up, and gets it into the hands of its rightful owner; someone who will appreciate the beauty of the thing… at least until they have finished reading it and the cycle starts again; hey, kind of like Buzz and Woody and the toys of Toy Story 3, eh?

 

Comments are welcome. Positive feedback encouraged!

Mouseketeer Ken

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Cooking Our Way to the Magic Kingdom (Meatloaf) °o° *•._.•* ‘ *•._.•* °o°

Mark and I decided that since it’s Mark's dream to work for Disney in the culinary arts, we would build a portfolio of culinary experiences.

Until we have more blog-news making experiences in the area of our relocation, this will be an ongoing feature (as budget permits), where we will choose a recipe that looks good, cook it up, take some pictures for you, and then include our review of the finished product.


We thought that a fun way to share these adventures (and to relate them to our theme-blog) would be to look to the Disney catalog of recipes, namely “Cooking With Mickey” volumes 1 and 2, and “Delicious Disney”, which collectively contain hundreds of park favorites.

This week we made an easy, comfortable choice; meatloaf! The comfort food of comfort foods. This relatively easy recipe was featured in Orlando at the Disney Village Market place in Chef Mickey’s Village Restaurant.

Unfortunately, Ken is STRONGLY anti-onion... and mushrooms, celery, bell peppers, and most seafood (and as Mark says, "basically, the fundementals of all cooking-the mirepoix"), so we will be cooking slightly altered versions of the Disney recipe, but we plan to stay as close as possible to the original.

The recipe was for a family of six so since there are only two of us, we decided to cut it in half. The full recipe is at the bottom of the post.

Photo credit: WDWnews.com


Sadly, we do not have photos to share.  The day after baking this dish, we had a computer crash, and lost everything from the last 24 hours.  We were lucky-we didn't lose much, and we were able to recreate everything EXCEPT the meatloaf pictures. Thanks, WDW News!

This photo is courtesy of me.  Since the back cover lines up with the front to make one great Disney scene, I thought you would like to see it laid out.

RESULT: We had very good results for our first meatloaf.  The half recipe was the perfect size for a meal for two, and then left overs for lunch the next day.  The texture was surprisingly smooth, and the herbs and spices were just great. 

We cooked our loaf for one hour as called for, and it looked perfect, but we like a more crispy outer shell, so we gave it another 15 minutes.  That gave us a perfect, juicy inside with a crunchy outside.  I would suspect that if you were making the full recipe, you will probably need to bake for more than one hour in order to cook all the way through.

THE RECIPE:

Meatloaf

Chef Mickey’s Village Restaurant

Disney Village Marketplace

Yield: 6 servings

2 pounds ground beef

1 pound ground pork

1 ½ cups onion, diced

1/8 teaspoon garlic, granulated

2 cups bread crumbs, fresh

2/3 cup cold water

1/8 teaspoon thyme

¼ cup parsley, chopped

1 whole egg

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1/8 teaspoon salt

Soak break crumbs in cold water and set aside.  Sauté diced onion until tender.  Set aside and allow to cool.

Preheat oven to 350 degree.

In a large bowl, combine ground beef, ground pork, onions, granulated garlic, and bread crumbs mixed with water.  Mix well and add remaining ingredients. Mix well and mold into loaves.  Form in either loaf pans or in a meat pan with sides high enough to hold juices.

Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Comments are welcome. Positive feedback encouraged!

Mouseketeer Ken

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We highly recommend this recipe!  8 Mickey Heads out of 10!

Disney Haiku - Installment Two

(Haiku: an unrhymed verse form of Japanese origin having three lines containing usually five, seven, and five syllables respectively.)
And now a little indulgence in language manipulation; Haiku, volume 2...


This week I was watching the Disney Channel and a really nice commercial came on the screen. It was a two minute, fifteen second ode to poetry aimed to opening children's eyes to all things iambic!  Perfectly fitting when I have a Haiki post upcoming.  You could even say serendipitous!

Please to enjoy.

A cool mist sprays out-

Mickey’s imagination

On a summer night

The Main Street Parade;

Magnetic musical sounds

and sparkling lights

Disguised in grass skirts

a bear and man-cub dance for

Bare Necessities

Looking for villains

My favorite trading pins

to fill my lanyard

Scat Cat and a rat

Foil Edgar’s evil plan,

to change Madame’s will

 

And one more written just for this blog.  As sweet as a spoonful of sugar....

Poppins is her name

Very sweet and witty

Rosy cheeks, no warts!

Comments are welcome. Positive feedback encouraged!

Mouseketeer Ken

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Scouting Orlando – The Arrival °o° *•._.•* ‘ *•._.•* °o°

In planning for our relocation to Central Florida, Mark and I felt that we needed to budget in a trip to the area for scouting and research to make sure this was the right thing for us to do.  We visited the Orlando area March 23^rd to the 31^st of 2012... 

Our flight to Orlando was scheduled to leave at 11pm. We were due to arrive in Orlando at 4am Friday morning. We figured that with even an early check-in we would not get a room before 11am, so we planned on taking our time picking up our luggage, checking in with Hertz for the rental car and maybe getting a bit of breakfast in our future home.

The flight over to Florida was about 3 ½ hours, but I didn’t sleep for one minute which was hard considering I fall asleep at 10:00pm on the dot when I have to get up for work the next morning.  It was a packed flight, full of Spring Breakers heading to Orlando for the theme parks. They weren’t a rowdy bunch, thank goodness, but it did mean a lot of people to maneuver around and wait for loading and unloading.

Mark and I anticipated the extra charge to check our luggage, so we planned to share our larger suitcase so that we would only have to check one bag. Everything else we were able to carry on (lap top, and a carry-on bag each). Still, $50 bucks each way is not chump change!

Four hours later, we were searching for the luggage carousel that would spit out our green suitcase. This is a big airport compared to ones I’ve been to, and we didn’t find the signage very user friendly. After a few wrong turns, and what felt like a mile of hiking, we had baggage in hand and started the trek to the rental car counters.  Of course, Hertz was the furthest one down, but was thankfully empty of people.  The rental agent was nice enough, tried to upsell the vehicle without mentioning an extra charge (she made it sound like she had a nicer vehicle on hand, and was going to upgrade as a courtesy).  We declined, and found that we were happy with what we got.

Walking through the outside of the airport at 4:30 in the morning, excited to be in the city that we will be moving to eventually, all of our senses were alert.  We noticed a light fog around the area, something you rarely see in Phoenix.  That temperature at that hour was on the cool side of lukewarm, but the humidity was noticeable.  We didn’t know if the humidity that morning was high, or low, but we were both surprised that it was humid at all considering the cool temperature. 

During the 20 minute drive from the airport to the Radisson Hotel Orlando we soaked in the view of the environment, lots of grass, lots of small bodies of water, certainly more tree-life that in our desert home. 

I was pleased to discover that Orlando did not have a strange smell when we got off the plane.  Sometimes, you may find that a strange city has a scent (Phoenix smells like dust sometimes, and when it rains, it’s a distinctive dirt smell).  Certain parts of the valley has a lot of horse property, so in the morning hours, you will smell manure for miles.

(The crystal chandelier from the lobby of the Carlton)

We arrived at the hotel by 7am after a quick breakfast at a nearby Waffle House.  We were pleasantly surprised that the staff was able to put us into a room right away.  We were very happy with the room; a nice size, clean and with nice décor.  I have to admit that both of us were drop-dead tired, so after a quick wash up, we both dropped onto the bed and slept until late afternoon.

The first day of our Scouting Orlando trip had begun with a nap!

Comments are welcome. Positive feedback encouraged!

Mouseketeer Ken

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