Countdown to Disneyland using the Silhouette machine

Our family has a bucket list of places we want to visit (again or for the first time)

before my oldest son heads off to college.

When you parent young kids you think they will never leave,

then the reality sets in and we realized we only have four more years with all three kids in the house.

So with that in mind, we are setting out to cross off the second item on the family bucket list

(the first was a trip to Washington DC)

#2: Visit Disneyland (again...)

Yep, all of the kids have been before.

 May 2004

May 2004

December 2005

December 2005

December 2005

In fact, our oldest two kids have been several times

But my youngest son was just three months old when we went last time.

He was snuggled up in the sling the whole time

The "baby" is now 6 and he's requesting a countdown calendar until we go.

So I busted out my trusty silhouette machine and set to work.

This project wasn't as cut and dry as I would have hoped.

I had to figure out (again) how to do the print and cut feature

I imported the Disneyland font to my silhouette program

and also had to import Mickey Mouse ears since Silhouette doesn't sell Disney items (yet)

I followed this tutorial on how to make a tear off calendar.

It gave me a good idea of how to do it, but because I have updated (or outdated...not sure) software, I had to search for the answers on how to do things a little differently than what Jin showed.

Then, mid project, my new printer ran out of ink. 

I ordered ink on-line and had to wait a week for it to arrive.

But once that was up and running, I got started.

Notice the registration marks on the printed sheet?

Those help the Silhouette know where your page is so it can cut in the right spot.

Everytime I loaded the pages in to the Silhouette, I made sure I used the "detect registration marks" feature.

The one time I didn't it cut crazy and I had to reprint the whole thing and start again.

Each page also has a perforated edge so that they tear off easily.

Once the pages were printed and cut

I used my silhouette machine to cut out Disney font numbers and glued each number on to each page

That took FOREVER.

In hindsight, I should have used some print feature to do this

Once I had all of the page numbers glued on

I stacked them up in descending order

Then I found some rubber cement at Michaels and put a thick layer on the top off all of the pages.

As the rubber cement dried

I clipped the top together with a large binder clip

I used about 5 layers of rubber cement to bind the pages together

This is the finished countdown with the cover on.

It looks a little rough (well loved???) because it's been used for the past few weeks.

The back cover on the inside says

We're going to Disneyland

that way when you get to day 1, you pull that off and see the message!

Each night my little guy crawls into bed and takes out his countdown calendar

He tears off the page and is excited to see how many days are left!

After he's done, he can sit the calender down on his dresser and wait for the next morning.

What special ways to do you use to countdown the days to a big day?

I would love to hear them.

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