A Hooty Halloween

Happy Hooty Halloween to you!!

This year we decided owls were the thing to be and I love how they turned out. Even greater than that, the children love them. It was so much fun putting them together and I am so thankful for my mom’s help. We were ‘hootingly’ inspired by darling costumes here and here. This is our version. :)

Like last year, many parts are made with fleece. It is a simple and forgiving fabric to work with and I always feel extra awesome after working with it. It’s also a warm fabric which is a bonus during evening trick-or-treating.

Note to self: While food does make happy children, it does not make for nice smiles in photos. The mouth is too engaged in chewing to look pleasant. I thought I was on easy street because I remembered snacks for our after-preschool photo session. The children were happy but I am pretty bummed so few of the photos include Bug smiling. Oh well, c’est la vie. The top photo was the best of the bunch. Check out the honorable mentions below. :)

Oh well. Sweet J is sure jolly.

There’s more details below!

Love Bug is our Owly Princess Girl Owl. (For some reason, ‘princess’ is not okay.) She LOVES the costume. She is even hooting in the left picture above. She has worn parts of the costume each day since the pieces were ready to wear.

The costume is made up of a fleece hat with owl features, a fleece tunic with ‘feather’ triangles around the neckline, an a-line skirt with two rows of tulle ruffles and a cape covered in more feathers. The cape is tied down around her back because around her neck was bothersome. Underneath, she is wearing her own long sleeve white tee and brown pants.

The cape was fun to make, though time consuming. I found coordinating fabrics in the red tag area in JoAnn’s and we used Wonder Under to iron the loose weave fabrics down so we could avoid hemming and finishing off every little bit. The cape stays on her wrist because of two elastic cuffs. For her hat, I added little eyelashes, again with Wonder Under, to make it a little more girly.

Here we got the smile.

Then there is the fluffy Baby Owl. I just love it.

This is his cheese face. (Again with the snack food…)

His costume includes a fleece hat with eyes and a beak and a long tunic with elastic at the bottom to give it a puffy, rounded shape. On each shoulder is a wing with fluffy fabric on the outside and orange fleece on the inside. I tacked the two sides together near his elbow so it’s essentially a sleeve though the bottom is allowed to flap. My mom taught me a new sewing skill on the sleeve. Notice how the inner fabric is only on the inside? I feel pretty cool now. :)  And isn’t the downy fabric great? It’s absolutely perfect for our baby owl. MJ, of all people, pointed it out in JoAnn’s. He’s such a good fabric shopper. :)

He might not be chewing the food in the photos but it’s in his hand. Darn it! :)

Under the costume, he’s wearing his own brown long sleeve and brown striped pants. His costume keeps him very warm and I’m looking forward to seeing him in action tomorrow night. He’s a little shy but should do well with Love Bug by his side.

I tried again to get both of them to smile and look at me but it didn’t happen. Love Bug was done chewing but J wouldn’t look up because he had lost his footing in these leaves.

I am going to try once more today to see if I can get a smiling picture of the two of them. I am not ready to give up.

Are your little one’s ready for trick-or-treating? What are they going as?

Take care.

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