42 Minute Pirate Costume

Yesterday I faced a stereotypical mothering moment: I had forgotten that Spencer needed a costume for school.  The next day.

In my defense, a note was sent home about the costume quite a while ago - like before Christmas.  Holiday life was busy and crazy and thinking of a costume then was not my highest priority.  Plus, I figured they'd send another reminder home once we got closer.  They did.  The day before.

D'oh.

D'oh!!!

But, I am proud to announce that I did not have to spend my entire afternoon and evening shopping and sewing and gluing together.  I spent around 42 minutes and didn't even have to leave the house.

The majority of that time was spent trying to figure out who Spencer could be.  His class was having a Fairy Tale theme to their Valentine's Day party, so his costume needed to be a character from a fairy tale.  Although it would be cute, animal characters weren't really an option; they take a lot of time and talent, which I did not have.  After going through a list of fairy tales I gave Spencer two options: Prince Charming or Captain Hook.

(Side note: Lance questioned whether or not Peter Pan was really a fairy tale.  I wondered that, too, but Wikipedia - the source of all internet knowledge and truth - listed it as such, and that was good enough for me!)

He chose Captain Hook.  And who can blame him?  What six year old would want to be a boring ol' handsome prince when they could be a swarthy sea dog?

I quickly realized that being Captain Hook wasn't really an option, since I lacked the requisite red coat with gold trimming and a curly black wig.  No matter; Spencer was perfectly happy being just a regular pirate from Peter Pan.  (Although he resisted being called Smee, which I think is the coolest pirate name ever.)

So, the first 30 minutes were spent on research.  The remaining 12 were spent gathering items from the house:

• A pirate hat left over from his birthday party (Admission: I freaked out about making a pirate hat for about 30 seconds before I remembered that I already had one!)
• A raw silk ruffled shirt that I used as a pirate shirt when I was in college.  (Is it a sign of age that I can use real clothes from my 20's as costumes for my children?  Ponder.)  I had kept it with our Halloween costume stuff for such an occasion!
• Pirate booty beads, also from his party.
• An old (and kinda small) church vest.
• Two fabric belts from a couple of child-sized Japanese kimono outfits we inherited from my dad.
• Red and black-striped socks.  Essential for any worthy pirate.
• A cardboard sword, covered in traditional aluminum foil.

The sword took the longest, and even then I only spent about five minutes on it.  

The results:

Argh and avast!  A pirate worthy of terrorizing Never Land and that annoying kid, Peter Pan.

I saw lots of the other costumes this morning when I went to his class to drop off some cookies.  They were all adorable, and I might be a bit biased, but I think my homemade pirate was definitely the cutest.