Angry Bird Pumpkins

My little techno-genius preschooler has learned how to play games on our touch Android phones. His favorite is Angry Birds and it's variations as well (Angry Birds Rio and Angry Birds Seasons). Beginning when Owen was 18 months, we have carved a pumpkin for Halloween. Last year I put Barry's carving skills to the test and had him try to carve a Thomas shaped train. It turned out fairly good so this year Barry suggested we do Angry Bird pumpkins. A couple weeks ago one of my Facebook friends from the ward I grew up in posted a picture of her kids with their Angry Bird pumpins. She had painted the pumpkins red and yellow for the birds and green for a pig. Then she glued cardstock cutouts for the eyes, eyebrows, and beak or snout. They turned out so cute and I figured it would be much easier than carving!! So thanks Michelle for the idea :)


Owen was excited to help make them but his enthusiasm must have bomb-dived that night because I ended up painting them all by my lonesome while Barry worked on homework (oh yeah, Barry has been working on finishing school by taking online classes at BYU-I but that's for another post). Anyway, I got Owen to paint just long enough to take some pictures. I had some blue and red craft paint at home and I bought the rest from Walmart. Note to self never use Apple Barrel brand craft paint if you want one coat coverage. I had to use 2 or so coats where as the Folk Art (also sold at Walmart) and Delta only took one.

Owen was not happy about me trying to get him to paint.

Owen loved gluing the eyes and other parts on.

I used the thicker pop-up glue dots to attach the eyes and such. At first the glue dots didn't work because they would pull up the paint instead of sticking so I just scratched off the paint with my nail in the spot I was going to put the glue dot. Even with a very windy night we only lost one set of eyes/eyebrows so the glue dots worked really well.


Here is the finished product. The best part was hearing the trick-or-treaters as they approached our door and say "Angry Birds! Cool!"

Owen was very excited to go trick-or-treating.

He likes candy more this year but 

I'm very glad he'd rather have string cheese or a Go-Gurt instead. LOL.

This is Halloween!

Just read my sister-in-law's blog post about Halloween. She posted The Nightmare before Christmas song "This is Halloween" and since I cannot get it out of my head now (thanks Allison) I thought I should title my post the same.


I know I'm a little late posting about Halloween but as they say, "Better late than never." I posted last month a picture of the Harry Potter costume I made for Owen. Unfortunately my dreams of having a little boy to dress as Harry quickly vanished (I believe the spell is Evanesco) with the mention of one particular superhero, Robin.


You see Owen's finally made a best friend at school named Dillon and it has helped tremendously with getting him to like school. Owen absolutely loves being around Dillon and well, Dillon loves Batman. So every time when someone asked Owen who he was going to be for Halloween  he'd say, "I'm going to be Robin and Dillon, he's going to be Batman."


Finally I decided there was no way I was going to get Owen to wear his Harry Potter costume for Halloween. Good thing the sweater vest and tie can be worn to church He actually wore them a couple Sundays ago. He even plays with his wand every now and again. Fortunately the cloak is big enough that he could still wear it next Halloween (I can still hope, right?) or may be able to sell it on Etsy or eBay. Plus I figured it would be relatively inexpensive time-wise and money-wise to make him a Robin costume. 


I used this tutorial to make the super hero cape and this tutorial to make the Robin logo to put on the cape. I figured I could do better than the Robin logo she drew by hand and made available for download. I used the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator to trace an outline from an image of the Robin logo I found online. It was actually really easy because the Robin logo is mostly straight lines and ovals. After that I just printed it out, cut the felt using the pattern, and used iron-on adhesive to adhere the logo to the cape. I used the leftover fabric, felt and iron-on adhesive to make him Robin's utility belt (no tutorial needed for that one. :D )


I lucked out and found a solid long sleeve green shirt ($5) and a solid short sleeve red shirt ($2.50) at Walmart and the best part is they have been worn again as well. Though some people thought I should make Owen be Harry Potter anyway, you should have been there to see his smile when Dillon dressed as Batman exclaimed, "Owen you really are Robin! Come on Robin!" Plus Owen has worn the cape at home several times. So here is my little super hero!