Travel - Pocketful of Joules

Our Halloween Weekend o’ Fun

Happy Halloween everyone! I hope you have appropriately gorged yourself on Halloween candy with your morning coffee. Oh wait, just me?

We spent the weekend in Hershey, PA at their annual Hersheypark in the Dark event and had a wonderfully spoooooooky time. This was our first year of a family costume, so I was super excited to get all our costume pieces together for our trip to the park! We also ended up visiting the Turkey Hill Experience in Columbia, PA and eating ALL the ice cream.

First, costumes!

As I teased at the beginning of the month, we decided to go as characters from Wreck-it Ralph. I didn’t go crazy and try to make the costumes identical to the cartoon, but was able to find enough bits and pieces in our own closets to make it work.

For Ralph: We bought Travis a pair of overalls, added in an orange shirt from his closet and I made the “You’re my Hero” medal for him to wear. The wooden heart was less than $1 at Walmart and I had the paint and metallic sharpie with our art stuff at home. I gave a little sneak peek of how I made the medal here and showed the completed version here.

For Vanellope: Apparently Vanellope and I are spirit sisters, because I already had most of the pieces of her outfit. The sweatshirt was from my last Trunk Club order, the blue skirt is one of my favorite running skirts, the leggings were just $5.88 from Walmart and the Doc Martins have been in my wardrobe since I was 17 years old! The only thing I bought to complete the look was the “candy” in my hair that I found on Amazon here.

For Fix-It Felix, Jr: This was another super easy outfit that I was able to find in Jack’s closet. He already had the blue button-up shirt, jeans and yellow hammer, so that worked out well. All I bought for him was a plain blue baseball cap (Walmart again), and a tool belt. I found the tool belt on Amazon for just $9.99 and it included 14 tools/accessories, so it was really worth it.

Okay, back to the fun of Hersheypark! We drove from home on Saturday morning, checked into our hotel, changed into our costumes and went straight to the park. We did our annual measuring of the Jack to see which rides he’d be able to do this year:

We then spent hours running from one ride to the next for the ultimate amount of fun. While in line for the Ferris wheel I snapped this picture of the sunset. So pretty!

On Sunday, we decided to try something new and stop by the Turkey Hill Experience in Columbia, PA. If you are in the area, definitely make it a point to go!

For the three of us to do the Turkey Hill Experience and Taste Lab, it cost less than $40. We spent about an hour walking around the main area, and then we entered the Lab and made our own ice cream.

We were super lucky and they were having a special Trick or Treat event while we were there, so Jack was able to go to about a dozen candy stations. It all ended up with a ‘decorate your own’ pumpkin area (for FREE!) where Jack made a witch pumpkin before we left for the ride home.

All in all, it was an absolute fabulous weekend. I mean, Jack totally had a tantrum/breakdown/head spinning around incident on Sunday morning… but welcome to the life of a preschooler.

How did you spend your Halloween weekend?

Disclaimer: Hershey provided us with tickets to Hersheypark After Dark, however all thoughts, opinions and pictures are all my own. Pocketful of Joules is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

Cruising on the Carnival Glory

Whenever we go on vacation, I tend to procrastinate on writing a blog post about it. I’m not really sure why, maybe by writing the post it signifies to my brain that the trip has actually passed and I need to find something else to look forward to?

Anyways, I’ve put off writing about our cruise for long enough. As a teensy bit of backstory, we went on a cruise last April and had a bunch of issues which resulted in us receiving 50% back of the cruise cost AND 50% off our next cruise. If you want to catch up on all the reading you can find it here: Our Family Cruise, Part 1 {the drama}, Our Family Cruise, Part 2 {the fun}, Cruise Style: What to Wear on a Cruise. When we returned from our April trip, we decided to go ahead and book a new cruise immediately so our VISA statement would feel like we got it for free.

Which brings us to our October cruise. Now, typically I would not plan two cruises in a year… but when you wave a free cruise in front of my face I book that baby as fast as my fingers can type in our information. On our last trip we visited Nassau and Freeport, so we decided to book different stops for this cruise.

For this trip, we took the Carnival Glory out of Miami and visited: Half Moon Cay, St Thomas, Grand Turk and San Juan. We were worried that Hurricane Matthew would derail our plans – or at least the weather – but we were very lucky and had sunshiny days the entire time. We also decided to upgrade to a balcony room and I’m now totally spoiled for cruising. To be able to walk out on your private balcony and have your coffee each morning is total heaven.

I really don’t have a lot to say – other than we had a wonderful time – so here are some pretty pictures to look at:

Of course, we couldn’t resist the family pictures… even though Jack is making kind of an odd face. However, 90% of the time he is making weird faces in photos, so I kind of wanted to remember this memory!

Have you ever gone on a family cruise?

Hersheypark in the Dark & Our Family Costume Plan

Can you believe that it’s almost Halloween?! Well, it’s totally sneaking up on us which means that it’s the perfect time to tell you about this year’s Hersheypark in the Dark event in Hershey, PA.

The event runs for just three weekends: October 14-16, October 21-23, and October 28-30. Our family has gone for the last few years and we absolutely love it. It’s the perfect event for those who like Halloween and amusement park rides, but don’t want the super scary ghoul decorations that would give the kiddo (and me) nightmares.

Added bonus: It also gives us a chance to dress up in costumes! I’ve wanted to do a family costume since before Jack was even a glimmer in my eye, and this year is the year that I’m making it happen. All three of us are huge fans of Wreck-It Ralph, so we decided to dress up like three of our favorite characters!

As a little teaser, here they are:

We aren’t going for full-on cosplay with our costumes… instead just using stuff we already own and buying a couple accessories. I can’t wait to see them all put together!

We will be enjoying Hersheypark in the Dark the weekend before Halloween, so if you see us please say hi. I’ll be sure to tell you all about it (with pictures) when we get back!

Have you done a family costume? If so, tell me ALL about it! Are you planning to go to Hersheypark in the Dark this year?