Parachute and Landing Pad Toy Craft

My husband just had his birthday. I was badgering him for weeks to find out what he wanted for his birthday. He didn't have an answer. Until the day before. The day before his birthday he told me, "I'd really like to go skydiving for my birthday."

I wasn't completely shocked. Skydiving has come up before... but not in an uber-serious way. I'm not completely thrilled with the thought of the love of my life jumping out of an airplane... but he really wanted to go, and without resorting to extreme hypotheticals - why not?

As a fun way to actually GIVE this gift to him, I made him some parachute super heroes and a drop zone. The drop zone was on the bottom of a box that opened up flat, so that it was easy to fold back up and wrap with the parachute men inside. And it was a fun thing for him to pay with the boys as well.

If you want to make your own drop zone parachute toy, here is what you need:
Box that opens flat
Pencil or Pen
Several sizes of plates
White paint (I used DecoArt Patio Paint)
Red paint (I used DecoArt Patio Paint)
Paintbrush
Plastic grocery bags
Small toy men
String
Black paint pen or marker (I used a DecoArt Glass paint pen, which is great on glass, but worked well here as well... I love getting multiple uses out of products!)


Start by tracing your plates on the flattened box.

Paint the entire circle white. Let it dry. Paint every other ring red. You should be able to see your pencil lines through the white paint. Allow to dry. (You can see I like to pour paint into disposable cupcake liners - they work great!)

While the bullseye is drying, lay out your bags. I used these plastic bags from target. Lay them out flat, and cut squares as large as possible from the plastic. I used squares from both the front and back - one side has the bullseyes, one side is plain white.

Cut two lengths of string each 3 feet long. Tie one end of a string to one corner, and the other end to another corner. Repeat with the second string.
Line up the corners of the parachute, and pull the strings so they are parallel, then tie around your toy. Trim any excess string.

To store, I folded the plastic parachute into thirds, and then wrapped in the string so that they wouldn't get tangled.

By the time I finished making the parachutes, the paint on my drop zone was dry. I used a black paint pen to trace the circles, and then added the words "drop zone".

The parachutes were a hit with the boys! This is the least blurry of all my photos of them playing - they had a ball!

And skydiving was a hit with my hubby!

This week was brought to you by: Star Shaped Bubbles

Today we burst my son's bubble when we explained to him that it doesn't matter what shape the bubble wand is... the bubbles will still be circular. Even star shaped wands make circle bubbles.

yes. that is his "I'm not impressed" face.

When he asked "why?" in typical four-year-old fashion, I'm pretty sure my answer was, "Well kiddo, it has to do with surface tension, and that a star doesn't make for a very secure structure." With answers like that, I'm not sure why he even asks "why" anymore!

This whole week has been a pretty amazing bubble, though! Over on 30 Minute Crafts I've been doing Craft Lightning, with a whole week of crafts that can be done in FIFTEEN minutes or less! Yup, for Craft Lightning week, I up the ante. I shared tutorials for my Falling Star and Tumbling Heart Earrings,  Felt Cowboy Vest,  Fabric Flower topped Gift Box, Fabric Banners, and  Fancy Felt Clutch. Each evening I shared a roundup post with quick crafts from my friends about the interwebs. You can catch the roundups for Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four, and Day Five.

The fast crafting doesn't end there, though! At 4pm PST Monday and Friday of this week, I'll be live crafting TEN minute crafts with Angie from the Country Chic Cottage as we do live crafting videos. Check us out, as well as our other awesome participants at Crafty Hangouts.

Here on Always Expect Moore, I shared my Mod Podge Dinosaur wreath, and then wrapped up the Dinosaur birthday party, and shared with you how to make super easy ice cream pizzas. Yum!

I started a new series on Craftsnark on the difference between the terms DIY and Craft. {{spoiler alert: I'm not a fan of one of them. No, I'm not telling you which one. Yes, that wasn't much of a spoiler. HA!}}

We had some fun this week. Wednesday hubs got a year older, and we celebrated on Thursday by watching him jump out of a practically fine airplane. You might have caught whiff of it on Instagram. And it is the inspiration behind a fun parachute craft project I'll be sharing here later this week!

Then today I took the boys to the park for a Mommy and Me event. It was quite a few hours in the wind and sun, but they both loved it. And that's all that matters, right?

 I hope you have an amazing week! And enjoy this last photo... my son is a "ladybug whisperer". Any ladybug will find him, or he will find it, no matter how giant the park!

Ice Cream Pizzas

My 4-year old loves Team Umizoomi. If you don't have small kids, you don't know that Team Umizoomi is a team of 3 tiny cartoon characters (4 if you count Umi Car), who run around Umi City helping their friends by using their "Mighty Math Powers".

Team Umizoomi has helped to teach my son math issues like units of measure, identifying patterns, and shapes. They also reinforce proper social behavior like sharing and helping friends. One of my son's favorite episodes is about Ice Cream Pizzas. The ice cream truck has broken down, and can't get down the street to bring ice cream treats to the neighborhood children. The ice cream treat of choice is the ice cream pizza. My son asked me if we could make ice cream pizzas together, so of course I said yes!

We had to start by getting our ingredients. Large sugar cookies, vanilla ice cream (which I allowed to soften) and gummy candies. In the show they use a striped candy. Since we couldn't find the right color striped candy, I went with these gummy candies that are the right color, but weren't the right size. I cut them down to size for our pizzas.

I spread the softened ice cream on to cookies. I had softened the ice cream so that it was about the consistency of margarine.

I cut up the gummy candies and then let my son put them on. Team Umizoomi used 5 candies on their ice cream pizza, and so did we.

All that was left was to chow down! Nom!

Dinosaur Party Wrap-up

At the end of April my baby turned one. And suddenly, he doesn't look like a baby anymore. He's grown tall and lanky. His baby chubbyness is slimming down as he runs around the house and yard. He climbs up anything his legs can reach.

To celebrate his first birthday, we threw a dinosaur-themed party. When my oldest turned one, we used the theme from his nursery for his first birthday. It was an easy transition. So we did the same here. My baby has a dinosaur themed nursery, and so we threw a dinosaur themed party for him.

You might have already seen the dinosaur invitations with washi tape, the dinosaur wreath, and the tissue paper pennants. I had fun creating handmade items for the party.

I spent the day before prepping food for the party. Lots of fresh fruits and veggies. I had a smash cake for the birthday boy, and a chocolate cake on the side, but also cupcakes for the kids at the party. Cupcakes are so much easier than a large sheet cake when you're expecting lots of people.

I got a little help putting up decorations for the party... sometimes streamers end up like this when you have a 4-year-old involved!

Instead of getting a heavy helium tank, or schlepping to a party store early in the morning for helium-filled balloons, I hung regular balloons from the ceiling. This also kept them out of the hands of small children during the party.


Before the party, my brother and sister-in-law helped me cut out dinosaur feet for the kids to decorate. We used this template from Make and Takes.

Once they decorated them, they could wear them.

I made several batches of homemade playdoh the day before for the kids to play with. We also had a pinata for the older kids - at the request of big brother.

 The birthday boy didn't know what to do with the dinosaur smash cake he was offered...

 And although he loves cake, he hasn't ever been a big fan of frosting. After we pushed his hands into the cake, he wasn't a very happy guy.

After a change of clothes and a nap, we opened gifts.

I can't believe how big he is already! Happy Birthday, little man... I'm looking forward to so many, many more celebrations with you!

Mod Podge Dinosaur Wreath

This Dinosaur wreath is so simple to make that I don't have an official tutorial for it... but if you want to make your own, or something similar, here is what you need:

Tissue paper (I used the leftovers from my pennant banners)
Ribbon (I used rainbow colored)
Foam craft sheet
Extruded Foam ring (this smooth surface works great for Mod Podging)
Hot Glue
Scissors
Ballpoint pen
Mod Podge
Paintbrush
Google Eye

Use the Mod Podge to layer the tissue paper on the wreath. Make sure the wreath is fully covered. Adding multiple layers will increase the depth of color on the wreath.

Once the wreath is dry, tie a large bow on one side with the ribbon.

With a pen, draw your dinosaur shape on the craft foam, and then cut out.

Hot glue dinosaur on the bow of the wreath, attach the google eye, and hang the wreath.

This week was brought to you by: Stitching

I've been spending a lot of time these past weeks stitching. I can't show you much of what I've been working on... but I promise, awesomeness is on the way! Speaking of awesome, if you don't already follow me on Instagram, you missed out on this awesome set of predictions by my preschooler...

I have managed to get some work done around here between all the stitching...

I put together over 25 ideas for last minute Mother's Day Gifts, which included a quick mother's day handprint canvas that I made with the kids.

I haven't played with plastic canvas in a long time, so making these quick plastic canvas earrings was super fun. I was able to join in on a blog hop for Plasic Canvas Tutorials with Diane of CraftyPod - one day I hope to meet her in person, I've been inspired by her work in blogging (and plastic canvas) for years.

Hopefully you had a chance to watch the Washi tape in a live hangout on air that I did with some bloggy friends of mine. You can watch me make washi tape flowers there, or read the step by step washi tape flower tutorial. I had so much fun playing with washi tape that I made a washi tape necklace tutorial as well.

In the next few days, I'll be sharing more of Baby B's big first birthday party celebration. Yesterday I showed you how to make a dinosaur shaped cake.

And I checked a big to-do off of my list by finishing up my cross stitch necklace pendants. I mailed them off, and they should have arrived in mailboxes today.

In between we had a lot of our regular day-to-day around here as well. But we did manage to take a morning off to go out to breakfast and hit the pool. Baby B had fun running around the restaurant making new friends. Funny how a baby toddling around can bring a smile to just about anyone's face.

Dinosaur Smash Cake

For Little Moore's first birthday, three and a half years ago, I made a small car cake for him to smash into. He doesn't remember, but he has seen pictures. Quite a few times he has requested that I make him a car cake again. I'm sure I will... but before then I had Baby B's first birthday cake to make. For Baby B, we were throwing a Dinosaur Birthday Party. I had all kinds of fun ideas planned (I'll share more with you soon - I promise!), but the cake really had me stumped. Dinosaur cake. How was I going to make this happen?

Sure, I could make a traditional cake and slap some dinosaur toys on it. But I really went all-out for his brother's birthday... and being a second child myself (and my mother was a second child too), I'm very conscious of second-child syndrome. Yes, some things are going to be different for Baby B than for his big brother... but I'd like to have some things the same, too. So I got baking.

I used one boxed cake mix to make 2 round cakes in 6" cake pans. I've had these cake pans forever, and love them. I used them for Little Moore's first birthday as well. I got them my last semester in college when I lived in a tiny apartment with no oven. When we were first dating, I used them to bake a birthday cake for my husband in a toaster oven!

I covered a small cutting board to use as the base. I then cut a slice off the bottom of the first round to make the bottom of his legs, and cut off each side to make the front and back of the body. I cut a notch in the middle to make the legs.

From the second cake I cut an arch to make the head, and a pointy bit for the tail, and then put them by the body piece like so:

Yup! Already starting to look like a dinosaur! I then cut the top so the cake was level. Now he looks like this: 

I used canned frosting, and gave him a thin layer of frosting. This is called a "crumb coat". I didn't worry about crumbs everywhere, because this is getting covered up later. I just wanted to seal everything in. At this stage, he looks pretty ugly.

 I tinted frosting green until I got it the right color, and then put it in a piping bag. I grabbed the largest tip I had, which happened to be a star tip. I then piped the green all over every inch of the cake.

With a knife, I smoothed out the frosting.

I added a couple touches later with a contrasting color, for fun... but that's optional. This is really a simple cake to make - I promise! And, he had his shining moment in the sun... before he was reduced to this...

 I hope that in four years, Baby B will look back at photos of this cake and ask for a repeat as well!