Arrrrr Matey! Pirate makeup made easy.

Arrrrr Matey! It's Pirrrrate Day!

I love the theme dress up days at school. I loved them when I was a kid, too. But now.....now I'm armed with Pinterest! I may even be slightly overwhelmed with all the amazing ideas. And maybe a little worried that my "costume on the fly" won't come close to all those other kids with fellow Pinning mommies. This is where I happily play my, "I have four kids" card. Plus, after three house on Pinterest getting all those good ideas, it's too dang late in the evening to whip up a costume fit for Broadway. So I wing it.

Last year, I lucked out and found an actual pirate costume in our dress up bin. Score! One costume down, one to go. What the frick do pirates wear??! Stripes. Yes, stripes. I stumble across my daughter's Fourth of July dress....red and white stripes are piratey, yes???! Score! I find a bandana and a scarf at the bottom of the Halloween bin (mental note, get rid of all the slutty costumes I thought were cute on me before kid #3 and #4.)  Oooo, and dress up beads. Perfect!

Now for makeup. The pirate trademarks include
1)a parrot (I did not have any kind of bird other than a Beanie Baby, and I couldn't figure out how to perch that on their shoulder for the school day)
2) a peg leg  (not gonna happen)
3) a hook (Yes!!! This was part of a Captain Hook costume several years back...woo hoo!)
4) an eye patch

I like the idea of an eye patch. It's an easy prop, you can stick it in their pocket or maybe they can wear it as a headband when they get sick of being a cyclopse...but my daughter is very particular about how things "feel" (which translates to a total pain about what she wears.) I knew the elastic band would drive her bonkers. She is also irresponsible with her stuff and I figured I didn't want to give her the one we had because I knew she would lose it.

So I came up with using my grocery store liquid eye liner. I've McGeyver'd all kinds of painted faces at the zoo with this magical little tool. I used it for my son's eye brows, too...I gave him sort of an angry jack-0-lantern look. It totally went with the scruffy beard!  And then I gave my daughter a goatee with it, too! All in about 5 minutes. The bonus, she got lots of ooos and aaaahs at school (she loves the attention) and didn't have any l about it. Woo hoo!