Travel & Experiences

I’ve been looking for something special to do with my twin daughters this Mother’s Day so I was very excited to be invited to a Mother’s Day Blogger Event at the Boardwalk Towne Lake. We welcomed our third baby girl recently, and life has been more than a little hectic, so I really wanted to treat my older daughters to some special mommy and me time. We started the Mother’s Day Event at Boardwalk Towne Lake at The Flying Vine Lakeside Grille. This restaurant is so beautiful and all of the food we ordered was amazing!

The kiddos had their own table which allowed all of the moms to relax and enjoy some mimosas and delicious cheese trays! I ordered the chicken Caesar wrap for lunch and my daughters each had their favorite, grilled cheese sandwiches. The Flying Vine Lakeside Grille has a very pretty wine room for private parties, as well!

One of the coolest parts about this restaurant is the beautiful lakeside view and this fun mural wall located right outside. Who doesn’t love a good mural wall for endless Instagrammable photo ops?

Shop our outfits here: [show_shopthepost_widget id=”3578181″]

All of the gorgeous balloons at our event were provided by Glamfettico! She has the most charming event decor and balloons for the prettiest parties!

These cute sun hats and beach bags in the picture above were provided by The Royal Standard. I had never shopped there before and was completely blown away by everything this store has to offer. They literally have everything from home goods to jewelry, workout tops, dresses, and lots of extra comfy pajama options!

The store is so beautiful that when I first walked in, I expected everything to be expensive but that was not the case at all! I ended up getting a workout top for only $10!!! The Royal Standard has workout tops that are very high quality as well as extremely affordable!

I also ended up getting a gorgeous chambray shift dress and these adorable flamingo pajama shorts in the picture above. The Royal Standard personalizes everything from bags, to hats, to wine glasses in store, which is extra convenient for personalizing gifts! I saw lots of great gift ideas for Mother’s Day, graduation presents, teacher appreciation gifts and even birthdays!

Most of the other moms picked out pretty jewelry. The Royal Standard has endless options of sparkly stones on their rings, bracelets and necklaces!

After shopping we headed right across the street to get our nails done at Lux Nail Spa! This was the first time my daughters got pedicures and they were beyond excited about the entire experience!

Lux Nail Spa has the perfect kids’ area with these adorable pink butterfly chairs! They even had the ever-popular, “Paw Patrol” playing on the TVs in the kid’s room for them to watch while they were being pampered. This is definitely going to be a birthday party idea for us in the future!

All of the moms were pampered with relaxing pedicures and offered strawberry margaritas which is not something most nail salons usually provide! Lux Nail Spa also does all kinds of specialty nail designs. Check out their Facebook Page to see all of the different services they offer!

We absoultely loved our time spent at the beautiful Boardwalk Towne Lake! This gorgeous area is accessible by boat for local residents. How amazing is that? I love the dog that is enjoying an afternoon boat ride in the picture above!

Boardwalk Towne Lake is located at 9945 Barker Cypress Road, Cypress, TX. 7743. Here is a complete listing of all of the shopping and dining on the property. We will be back again soon for another mother-daughter outing! What do you like to do to enjoy one on time with your kiddos? Comment below or reach out to
http://makingmemorieswithmyminis.com/contact/ to share your ideas!

Special thanks to the Boardwalk Towne Lake, The Flying Vine Lakeside Grille, Lux Nail Spa, and The Royal Standard for hosting us! All photography in this blog post was provided by Studio 154 Photography.

An important part of any trip (for me anyway) is the food! So, I figured I would share our experience dining out at Disney World. Our daughters are three years old so character dining was a huge hit with them! We went to all four parks and got to enjoy a character meal at each one as well as lots of other great food spots! There are literally endless options for dinning at Disney with young kids but I wanted to share some of the restaurants that we enjoyed the most! Also check out the best age appropriate rides at Disney World for preschool/toddlers here.

We enjoyed breakfast every morning at our resort, the Port Orleans Riverside. They have a wide variety of breakfast options to choose from, cereals, waffles, eggs, bagels, etc. and it was also easy to grab some granola bars and hit the road. The Port Orleans also has a separate restaurant for dinner, Boatwright’s Dining Hall that was perfect on a day that we were all too wiped out to stay at the park for dinner.

First of all the snacks are fantastic!!! There are so many options to choose from and if you only have time for a quick sit down meal there are tons of places to choose from for that too, here is a list of fast/casual restaurants on property. Our girls loved the snacks, of course! Mickey ice cream (pictured below) and pretzels were among their favorites. Most Disney dining plan options come with a TON of snack credits, we had about 60 leftover at the end of our trip. You can also use snack credits to purchase bottles of water throughout the day so that was a huge plus!

One of the most exciting parts of the trip for our daughters was the character dining. Each time we did a character dinner multiple characters stop by your table throughout the meal to take pictures with and hug or high-five the kiddos. This really made the trip for our girls!

The Crystal Palace at Magic Kingdom was a definite favorite of the girls! All of the Winnie The Pooh characters were there and they had a really nice buffet with something to offer for everyone.

We also went to the Be Our Guest Castle for breakfast at Magic Kingdom. They don’t do the character dining for breakfast but the ambiance there is really cool, the castle looks exactly like it does in the movie.

In addition toThe Crystal Palace and The Be Our Guest Castle we were told that the following restaurants are wonderful at Magic Kingdom:

• The Diamond Horseshoe
• Cinderella’s Royal Table – Princess character dining – This will be a must do on our next trip!
• Liberty Tree Tavern
• Tony’s Town Square Restaurant
• Gaston’s Tavern
• Tortuga Tavern
• Casey’s Corner
• Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe

Our daughters loved the princess character dinner at Akershus in Epcot. All of the princesses did a great job of coming by every table and giving all of the kids equal attention. They also signed a cute card and gave it to all of the kids at the end of the dinner. This was probably our daughter’s favorite experience from the whole trip, they still talk about it all of the time! We also enjoyed delicious food and a great character dining experience at the Garden Grill Restaurant in Epcot with Chip ‘n Dale characters!

Here are a few other restaurants that are supposed to be wonderful at Epcot:

• Le Cellier Steakhouse
• Coral Reef Restaurant – Indoor aquarium
• Rose & Crown Dining Room
• Biergarten Restaurant – We walked in here and it has an awesome ambiance, they also had a great German band playing and a place for the kids to dance at the front!
• Via Napoli Restaurant
• Nine Dragons Restaurant

Overall our daughters had a great time at Tusker House Restaurant, in Animal Kingdom. We all enjoyed the buffet and they had interactions with Mickey, Minnie, Daffy and Pluto. A note about this restaurant – do NOT be late for your reservation! We were approximately 7 minutes late to check in with the hostess and were told they had already given our table away and we would need to wait at least an additional 20 minutes for another table. After speaking with the manager we were able to be seated a lot sooner than that. Other than that slight inconvenience we liked our experience at Tusker House.

Other restaurant options with great reviews in Animal Kingdom:

• Yak & Yeti Restaurant
• Nomad Lounge
• Tiffins Restaurant
• Harambe Market – Quick service – African inspired with more options than just burgers and hot dogs!
• Satu’li Canteen – Quick Service

Restaurants we were told are amazing but we didn’t have time to check out in Hollywood Studios:

• The Hollywood Brown Derby
• Mama Melrose’s Ristorante Italiano
• Hollywood & Vine – Character Dining
• 50’s Prime Time Cafe

What’s your favorite Disney World restaurant? Comment below or feel free to reach out to http://makingmemorieswithmyminis.com/contact/ to share!

I just love this time of year, seeing those gorgeous bluebonnets popping up all along the roadways makes our already beautiful state even more “purdy”. This time each year Texans search for the best little field of bluebonnets to plop their loved ones down for a few photo ops with our beautiful state’s flower. That’s why I decided to share a couple of great locations to find bluebonnets in Houston.

Houston is really flat, y’all. We don’t get to enjoy the picturesque hills filled with bluebonnets like our neighbors in the hill country. But, there are a couple of spots around town with mini inclines that help provide the illusion of that hill country feel.

If you live in north Houston, Spring or The Woodlands area The Montgomery County Memorial Library has a beautiful little field of bluebonnets right outside of their building at the Lone Star Circle Park.

Also in the Conroe area is a beautiful bluebonnet field off of Highway 105 near Ransom’s Steakhouse & Saloon next to Fernland Historical Park.

Rob Fleming Park located in the Creekside area of the Woodlands has a small field of bluebonnets each year. The only issue with this area is
that it’s encompassed by ropes so it won’t be mowed, this makes it difficult to take pictures without catching the ropes in the background. Luckily our amazing photographer, Angela Renae Photography was able to edit all of those ropes out.

The above picture was taken at Herman Park, right across the street from the Hermann Park Golf Course.

If you are looking for more bluebonnet locations in the greater Houston area be sure to check out this awesome list by Mommypoppins.com.

If you know of another great bluebonnet location in the north Houston area that isn’t listed above please comment below or reach out to www.makingmemorieswithmyminis.com/contact.

There is SO MUCH that goes into planning a Walt Disney World vacation with toddlers! There are 4 major parks with endless amounts of entertainment and great restaurants at each one so it’s hard to know exactly where to start when you’re trying to plan a trip to “Mickey’s House” as my daughters like to call it. We decided to go ahead and take a family trip this past February since the girls are still in preschool and we thought the parks would be a little less crowded than during their peak seasons. Little did we know Disney is ALWAYS crowded year round, apparently school age kids go there at all times of the year so we did not beat the crowds but we did manage to have a great time at Disney World with toddlers.

We decided to commit one full day to each park and not bother with getting any park hopper passes. I think this strategy worked pretty well because it’s a lot of work to transport young kids anywhere so going to more than one park per day just seemed way too ambitious to us. Rating our experience of all 4 parks in order from the best to worst is as follows:

1. Magic Kingdom
2. Epcot
3. Hollywood Studios
4. Animal Kingdom

We absolutely loved our time at Magic Kingdom and Epcot! These parks definitely have the most rides and character experiences for toddler/preschool age children. There are things for toddlers to do at every park but we enjoyed our experience at Magic Kingdom and Epcot the best.

Favorite Attractions at Magic Kingdom

A few of our favorite rides at Magic Kingdom included:

• Dumbo The Flying Elephant (pictured above)

• The Magic Carpets of Aladdin

• The Mad Tea Party

• The Barnstormer

• The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

• Peter Pan’s Flight

Definitely get FastPasses for all of these rides if you can! Dumbo and the Magic Carpet rides are very similar so you really only need to FastPass one or the other. You can start booking your FastPasses up to 60 days in advance if you are staying onsite at a Disney resort or if you have a regular ticket you can book up to 30 days in advance. Our kids also enjoyed the Swiss Family Tree House, you do not need a FastPass for this and there was never much of a line or crowd when we walked by. They also loved
Tom Sawyer Island which we did not need FastPasses for either. We also loved our dining experiences at all four of the parks. Here is a complete list of all of the best restaurants for young kids.

Favorite Attractions at Epcot

We were really surprised at how much we enjoyed Epcot, there are lots of attractions for toddlers and we had some of our best character dining experiences here.

Our favorite rides & attractions at Epcot:

• Frozen Ever After is a slow moving indoor boat ride with no height requirement, I was amazed that I was even allowed to bring our 5 month old daughter on this one. They have lots of special effects that the girls really enjoyed!

• We also went to a character meet & greet experience with Anna and Elsa at Royal Sommerhus right before we went on this ride so our Frozen obsessed girls were completely thrilled!

• Other rides they enjoyed at Epcot were the The Seas With Nemo and Friends which had a fun play area for the kids to enjoy after the ride.

• Journey Into Imagination With Figment also had an indoor area for kids to explore after the ride.

• Soarin’ Around the World was a favorite for my husband and I but our kids were not tall enough to go on this one with us, they have to be at least 40 in for Soarin.’

We also really enjoyed The World Showcase at Epcot which is mainly a bunch of restaurants & bars featuring cultural food from countries worldwide.

Favorite Attractions at Hollywood Studios

Some of the best attractions for toddlers at Disney are the shows! At Hollywood Studios our favorite attractions were:

• Beauty and The Beast – Live on Stage – the show only lasts about 30 minutes and there are lots of bright colored costumes, loud music and characters on stage to keep them fully entertained.

• They surprisingly also liked seeing the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular show that included lots of explosions, fire, a gigantic rolling stone, and a car flip over.

• Toy Story Land is supposed to be fantastic! We wanted to check out everything it has to offer but we ended up heading back to the room early for naps that day 🙂 I have heard it’s perfect for preschool aged kids too.

Favorite Attractions at Animal Kingdom

Overall we enjoyed our time at Animal Kingdom but it was not the best park for toddlers compared to the other 3 parks. At Animal Kingdom we did enjoy the following attractions:

• Mickey and Minnie at Adventurers Outpost – An indoor area to meet and take pictures with Mickey and Minnie as seen in the picture above.

• Kilimajaro Safari Ride, which has lots of animals that are very easy to see from the ride. We saw several lions, a cheetah, giraffes and flamingos to name just a few.

• The Festival of the Lion King Show was nice to go inside and escape the heat and we did not have to use a FastPass for it.

Other attractions I hear are a lot of fun that I wish we had been able to check out are the Hakuna Matata Time Dance Party and Finding Nemo The Musical.

Have you traveled to Disney with toddlers and loved an attraction that wasn’t mentioned above? Please let me know by commenting below or by reaching out to www.makingmemorieswithmyminis.com/contact.

I had so much fun over the weekend at TFTI Houston! My parents offered to babysit so I could finally have a MUCH needed mom break and my friend and I were looking for something fun to do for an hour or two before going to a Christmas party that night. We decided to check out Thanks For The Invite and I’m so glad we did! This was pretty much the ultimate Instagram-able pop-up shop and overall we loved our TFTI experience. There are several different rooms with lots of unique photo ops in each including a love themed room with lots of pretty faux roses everywhere and a large light up sign. 

The upside down Christmas room was definitely my favorite. Everything in the room is upside down so when you stand in it and take your picture flipping the image upside down makes it look like you are hanging from the ceiling. This worked out perfectly because we were going to an ugly Christmas sweater party afterwards so I happened to have my sweater in my bag and threw it on for the picture.

There is also a cloud themed room with some pretty sweet origami, a neon sign, and a swing with lots of boomerang potential!

I loved this rainbow wall room that had lots of pillows and a feather blowing machine which made for some pretty hilarious videos!

 I would definitely recommend checking out TFTI for a fun hour of entertainment. The cost is $30 per ticket. This is a pop-up photo experience so it will only be in the Houston area until the end of this month, December 30th so go while you can! They are open Thursday through Sunday. As mentioned I had a babysitter for my kids but I did see a lot of kids there which would be really cute to get some unique pictures with your kiddos. If you are from the Houston area you will probably remember going to the once popular DRINK Houston, TFTI is now in that same building so we had fun reminiscing about our wild and crazy DRINK Houston days…. from about 100 years ago 🙂

We are always looking for fun new places to experience if you have a great recommendation please comment below or reach out using the contact page – www.makingmemorieswithmyminis.com/contact. 

Weekend trip to SeaWorld San Antonio & The J.W. Marriott Hill Country Resort:

We are staying pretty close to home these days since I’m about 5 months preggo and the girls have a really hard time sitting still on an airplane (or anywhere). So, we decided to take a mini vacay to SeaWorld since it’s not too far from Houston and because we love the Shamu show! Also, SeaWorld is phasing out all of their Orca entertainment shows by 2019 so we really wanted to take the girls to see them before they’re gone! We also found some great savings at Sea World that I will share below.

Savings on Tickets & Dining:

You can save $5 per ticket when you purchase your tickets online 3 days in advance. We also saved by purchasing the all day dining tickets. It’s an additional $15 per ticket but you can eat every hour at the park and it’s easy to share all of that food with the kiddos. The cost of just one meal at the park was around $15 anyway so we definitely saved a lot with the all day dining pass. The pass is not valid at all restaurants at the park, mainly just the big restaurants that offer basic burgers, pizzas, sandwiches, salads etc. The food was not great but what you would expect to find at any theme park.

Children under 3 years old have free entrance into the park, our girls are two and a half so that worked out perfectly for us!

https://seaworld.com/san-antonio/tickets/

Best Attractions: Obviously the Shamu Show “One Ocean” is a must see but as mentioned Sea World is phasing out these theatrical shows by 2019 so go while you can! We went to both the 1:45 PM and the 5:30 PM showings. Both were great and very different shows but if you have an option the 5:30 PM one was the definitely the better of the two!

https://seaworld.com/san-antonio/shows/?tags=Daily-Shows

Other shows we loved were the Sea Lion High (pictured below) and Pets Ahoy. Both of these have several showings throughout the day. I think Pets Ahoy was our girl’s favorite, it was exciting for them to watch all of the different animals on the move – dogs running through different doors, cats walking across ropes and pigs and birds popping out of different parts of the stage. I found it so amazing to learn that several of the animals that perform in the show are rescues from local shelters!

The girls got really tired about halfway through the day and since we forgot to bring our stroller from home we ended up renting one at the park for about $22 which worked out great! They have both double and single stroller options available to rent. We stayed at the park from noon until close at 6 PM and we still didn’t get to see everything SeaWorld has to offer. In all we had a wonderful time and will definitely be planning to return next year!

Hotel Recommendation:  J.W. Marriott San Antonio Hill Country

There are so many great places to stay in San Antonio, including about a million different options around the river walk but since we have young kids we wanted more of an all-in-one resort style hotel. After getting several recommendations from friends we ended up staying at the J.W. Marriott San Antonio Hill Country and it was exactly what we were looking for!

https://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/satjw-jw-marriott-san-antonio-hill-country-resort-and-spa/

 Photo courtesy: Houston Style Magazine

What to Eat: 

Most importantly, the food was amazing!!! The hotel offers several different restaurants on site, we decided to try the High Velocity Sports Bar for dinner our first evening. My husband loved watching the Astros game on the ginormous TV’s that scroll across the entire restaurant. High Velocity has a Vegas sports bar type of feel but is also very kid friendly.

The next morning we enjoyed a delicious buffet brunch at the Cibolo Moon restaurant. The signature omelet with brisket is a must!!! Kids under 4 years old eat the breakfast buffet for free which is a definite win! We snacked at the pool bar, Rivertop Grill for lunch and then went back to Cibolo Moon for an early dinner. Crawfish jalapeno cornbread fritters is not an appetizer I would typically order but I’m really glad I did because it was absolutely delicious!!! The picture below does not do it justice, trust me just order it!

For entrees my husand had the chili-seared shrimp with green chili cheddar grits which was amazing as well! I ordered the Smoked BBQ plate but I would recommend doing the BBQ buffet instead since it had so many additional options for almost the same price. The girls ate the kid’s BBQ buffet again for free!!!

What to Do:

The J.W. Marriott has an amazing pool with several large water slides, a lazy river, a toddler pool and a mini beach for kids to play in the sand! This kept the girls occupied all day long! Beach toys are even provided for the kiddos to play with which was awesome!

We took a break from playing in the afternoon and visited the make your own ice cream station at the pool which the kiddos loved! In the evening we went to one of the many fire pits at the resort and roasted marshmallows. One of the best things about this resort is the number of activities provided to help keep the kids entertained! It also offers an impressive golf course as well as a full service spa but we obviously didn’t have time to enjoy either of those this trip!

Overall, we loved our stay at this hotel! The only thing we weren’t crazy about was the additional $40 “resort fee” tagged on to our bill at the end. We received a short list of what the resort fee covered and it was a list of things we weren’t interested in – golf storage etc. The hotel is already at a high price point and this additional fee was a little bit of an annoyance, other than that we absolutely loved our stay and will be back another time!

***This blog is based on my own personal opinions I do not get paid to write for Sea World or the J.W. Marriott***