"Disney Newbie" Shirt

It's February!  Last February, we took the Little Mister to Walt Disney World for the first time.  We were going to be in Orlando for something else, so we decided to take a little time to bring him to Disney World.  It was the perfect opportunity because he got to go with his uncles, both of this grandmothers, one of his grandfathers...even his only living great-grandmother joined us.  What a blessing it was to be able to share his first Disney experience with all of those loved ones!

We had a blast on the trip!  We only did one day at the park, but that was all we had time for.  It was a great introduction to theme parks for the little dude.

Before going to the park, I decided to make a shirt that said "Disney Newbie".  I wanted the Little Mister to have a shirt to commemorate his first Disney Park experience.  I also wanted to make him a shirt that would be easily identifiable in the event he wandered off from us and got lost.  We were lucky to have so many adults watching out for him.  However, there were still SO MANY people, even in February.

To make his shirt, I purchased a plain gray t-shirt, a Mickey Mouse applique and some iron on letters.  The hardest part of the whole project was sewing the Mickey Mouse on the shirt.

I started the shirt by placing all of the letters and the applique onto the shirt.  I had not yet sewn the applique to it, but wanted to iron the letters down before we left town.

Using the iron, I adhered the letters to the shirt as instructed by the packaging on the letters.

After ironing the letters on, I peeled the backing material away from the letters.  Then, my next task was to get the mouse sewn on the shirt.  To do this, I had to sew the applique by hand.  If you have sewing machine that can do this for you, great, but I actually decided to make this shirt at the last minute.  I purchased all of the supplies a couple of days before we left, began working on the shirt the night before we left, and completed it on the first day we were in Orlando.

After sewing the applique onto the shirt, it was done!  Ignore my terribly ridiculous sewing job on the applique.  There are a few areas, where the applique was so thin that I tacked too much of the fabric together while sewing.  I decided not to fix it, because, honestly, no one was going to notice it once the Little Mister was wearing it around the park.  Nothing in life is perfect, right?

At the end of the day, all that really mattered is that he had the time of his life.  Check out that smile!  My big boy still talks about that day often.  And, I'm glad he remembers his first trip to Disney.