Fifth Time's A Charm

Before I start this post, I'd like to let you know that Katherine over at Of Corgis & Cocktails is featuring me as her March Style Icon today! Be sure to head on over to her blog and read the post! :) She's such a sweet and awesome girl and I'm so glad we've become friends. She is the designer behind my lovely layout, and she did such an awesome job with it! :D

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

One of my life goals has been to go up in a hot air balloon. I didn't care if it was tethered or not, I just wanted to be in one. I think they're really neat and pretty. While I would love to go in one that isn't tethered, I was finally able to go in Disney's Characters In Flight balloon! I'm not sure if it actually gets lit with fire before it goes up, but it is filled with helium. It took me four trips to Florida and five visits to Downtown Disney to achieve this goal, but it finally happened! :D I had to go alone, though because my mom is terrified of heights and I guess my dad wasn't too thrilled about it either...haha.

The view was gorgeous. The balloon reaches to 450 feet in the air! It overlooks all of Downtown Disney, plus a lot of the Disney resort areas. You can even see the Epcot ball in the distance! I went up right at the beginning of dusk, so the sky was really pretty. That was my ideal time to ride it, and we had arrived just in time! :)

Afterwards, I celebrated the achievement of a life goal with a giant peanut butter Mickey cookie from The Candy Cauldron. It's definitely one of my favorite stores at Downtown Disney since it's full of yummy Disney-themed treats.

My parents and I walked around a bit and did a little more shopping. It was Friday night, so Downtown Disney was packed with people. They were having a St. Patrick's Day celebration that weekend (and this weekend), so there was an Irish band playing outdoors and they had special food carts with Irish foods and drinks.

[I'm not a huge Alice fan, but I thought this painting was really awesome!]

Downtown Disney is really pretty at night. They have twinkling lights in the trees, the carousel, and just all the signs and stores in general are all lit. It's a really fun environment for both night and day to just walk around and window shop!