Corporate Pirates

I already wrote this post once--Blogger, what's wrong with you?!--so I'm not as enthusiastic as I was a half hour ago when I started. Grrr. But here goes.

My kids used to be way into Captain Hook and Peter Pan, but mostly Captain Hook. That fell out of favor about a year ago. But they have a renewed interest and I KNOW it is because of the Pirates of the Carribbean marketing. They see Jack Sparrow's face on everything, think it's cool (and that he looks like Paul), and want to buy it all.

If you scroll down this blog a bit you'll see that Mo is going to be a pirate for Halloween. His birthday is four days later and he is having a pirate birthday party. We went shopping for party supplies and I told him he could get anything piratey as long as it doesn't actual say Pirates of the Carribbean on it.

Perhaps I'm kidding myself here. I know PotC marketing is the main reason he wants anything to do with pirates...that we've bought into it. But I feel like I'm sticking it to the man a tiny bit by not literally buying into it but by crafting our own piratey goodness.

We delievered the invitations last night. Since he's turning six, Moses was allowed to invite six friends. They are all from Sunday School or Kindergarten, but most of them are from both. There are four boys and two girls.
These are Frostie Root Beer bottles. The kids got to help empty those bottles, which was a party in and of themselves. I tied a red ribbon around them, cut skulls out of fun foam, wrote names in sharpie and hot glued them together.

I printed invitations on cardstock--I took a photo but it was too blurry to read. They said this:
A party awaits you if you know this:
They way to the cove of the Dread Pirate Moses
You'll find riches & booty & treasures galore
Just follow the map and knock on the door

Then it gave the party information. For "where" it simply said "x marks the spot."
I made the treasure map in Paint on Windows XP. I always thought Paint was pretty useless until I actually tried using it. I imported clip art and drew the rest with the program. According to the map the pirate ship with the X is our house. It is at the intersection of Shipping Lane No. Nine and the Mouth of the Chestnut River (aka the corner of ninth and chestnut); just east of the Steeple Volcano with cross on top (church); and due south of The Island of Learning (school). I converted paper grocery bags into 8-1/2 by 11 sheets with a paper cutter and ran them through the printer. Then I used a candle to burn the edges and blacken it up a bit.

I haven't actually planned much for the party yet. I think I'll go to Long John Silvers and snag some of their hats for the party guests. Ben Franklin is selling pirate hats for $4.50! I figure for the cost of a basket of clams I can grab eight hats and then alter them a bit. Should be fun. And I get to eat a basket of LJS clams. Yummy!