The Christmas Cow

What? You've never heard of a Christmas Cow??

Yeah, me neither.

There will be one this year, though.  Andrew's school is putting on a Christmas program next week and all of the kids in his class had a choice of what barn animal they wanted to be for the manger scene.  They sent home a sheet last week showing what each child had chosen and my little dude picked "cow".

Once I saw that I went to work looking online to get some ideas. I knew I could take the easy way out and buy a cow costume, but I didn't want to do that.  I wanted to do the crafty mom thing and make one for him.  Normally I avoid pinterest like the plague because it makes me feel inadequate, but I figured it would have some good ideas.  I found some good ideas and wanted to get started, but first I had to find a hoodie and sweatpants for him.  Finding white ones was proving to be almost impossible. I tried to talk him into being a brown cow with brown spots, but he was adamant - white cow with black spots.

Eventually we found some on Amazon that qualified for prime shipping and ordered them.  They'd get here on Tuesday, so that seemed fine since the program isn't until next Monday.  Then I picked Andrew up at school and saw the note in his box telling us that they are having a dress rehearsal today - four days before the program - and they need the costumes for that.  So instead of having a whole weekend to work on it I would have a day.

Due to that I decided to work from home yesterday so I could get some sewing time in.  On Monday I ran out and got all of the supplies I would need: black, white and pink felt, googly eyes, a button, white embroidery thread and some embroidery needles and some fun fur yarn. I got all of that for less than $15, so I was pretty happy.

Tuesday night I tried the sweatsuit on Andrew to make sure everything fit and to mark where the ears and face should go.  That night after Andrew was in bed I got started on some of the sewing to get a head start:

I got the patch and the tail sewed on and the ears constructed before turning in for the night.

Yesterday I dropped the boys off before heading home, logging onto my computer and pulling out my supplies.  It was kind of slow going since I had to try to get the patches to lay flat on toddler sized clothing. Plus I had to back out some of the stitching when things went crooked and the embroidery thread tangled a few times.  After a day of sewing I had this:

I was pretty pleased with the results, even if the ears look a little odd.  The real test would be to see what Andrew thought of it.  When he got home I told him I had a surprise for him and showed him the outfit. He was excited and wanted to try it on right away:

Seriously. How cute is he?

He didn't want to take it off, but I told him he couldn't eat dinner in it since it would get dirty.

This morning when I was helping him get dressed he kept asking to put on his cow costume. He had a bit of a meltdown when I told him he couldn't wear it, but I assured him that he would get to wear it for a little while for his dress rehearsal at school.

So there you have it - a Christmas cow.  Kinda cute, huh?