Owl and Tree Costume - A Mom and Baby Costume

yes, The Little Mister is in there :)

This year I had planned on doing matched costumes for Mr M and I, but then realized I really needed a costume that would allow me to keep TLM with me in the carrier, and my original idea just wouldn't work.

After doing some googling, looking for costume ideas for babies in front carriers, I finally found an idea  I liked here for an owl. I found quite a few ideas for babies in back carriers, but for some reason I just couldn't find very many for front carriers. Luckily this idea was one I could work with.

Two years ago I made a tree costume for the Halloween 5k I participated in, and I still had the costume, so I became the tree for TLM's owl to sit in.

The inspiration photo had an owl hat for the child to wear, but since TLM is so young, I've been keeping the hood of the carrier up to keep him more isolated when we're out running errands. Instead of a hat for him, I made an owl head to cover the hood of the carrier. 

This turned out to be a pretty easy project. I spent a bit of time cutting out feathers from various colored sheets of felt, then figured out how I wanted it all laid out. Once I had that down, I started at the bottom row of feathers and hot glued each one to an old tan polo shirt that I had sitting in my stash.

I also hot-glued the ribbons that attach it to the carrier and the brown fabric owl head to the old shirt I used as the base of the owl body.

The back isn't pretty, but it's functional, and you can see how I attached everything. I used hot glue to "hem" the cut edges of the shirt so they wouldn't show.

Before putting the carrier on, I attached the owl to it using the ribbons. The gray ribbons velcro around the waist strap, the cream ribbons tie around the shoulder straps, and the brown ribbons for the hood loop through the purse straps (I have a Boba carrier, and I'll be doing a post about it later). Once the owl was attached and the carrier buckled on I could put TLM inside. 

The carrier straps cover some of my felt tree leaves, but you get the idea.

I think it turned out great, and apparently so do others :)  I've used the outfit twice already and have gotten lots of compliments on it. The extra layers from the shirt and felt also help keep TLM warm when we're outside in the chilly October weather- bonus!