Captain of the Titanic Costume

When I asked my six year old son, Ethan, what he wanted to be for Halloween this year, it came as no surprise when he confidently responded "the captain of a cruise ship - the Titanic!". You see has has been obsessed (to put it mildly) with ocean liners ever since he saw the movie "Titanic" last year. We have read about them, recorded every tv show about them, wrote stories about them, watched movies about them, downloaded every boat app and simulation game that exists, and on and on and on....So I excitedly hopped on the internet in search of a costume. I found a Navy Admiral costume that fit the bill - perfect I thought! So the costume comes and I excitedly await Ethan's response - big smile but.....a little lackluster in my opinion. His response? "Well, I was kinda hoping there would be a a ship!" Ok, then - so I wandered out in the garage to see what I could come up with and lo & behold there is the perfect sized cardboard box to be a "Titanic" - score! So with the help of his sister Madison - the three of us painted the ship in all her red, white, & black glory. I then purchased cardstock to make the smoke stacks ("don't forget, Mom, the Titanic is one of the few ocean liners that had FOUR smokestacks" got it buddy). The smoke stacks were attached with a staple gun and here comes the funniest part of the story. My husband, happy to wield a tool (if you can call a staple gun that) for this project, decides to staple this whilst anchoring the ship to the kitchen table. You can guess what happened next. Or maybe not. He stapled the smokestack to the table. So now we have a permanent reminder with two little holes in our table of this wonderful project! Ethan insisted that he affix the letters to the ship, and the final touch was some fiberfill cotton as "smoke". We were able to cut the straps off of two old backpacks we had, attached them through holes, knots, & a just a whole lot of masking tape to make this comfortable for Ethan to wear. The big reveal came at a school event "Family Game Night". We walked into the local coffee shop hosting the event and Captain Lee was ALL SMILES proudly showing off his beauty. People love this costume! They admire the creativity, originality, and most of the pride in her captain. He loves to tell the story about why he chose this as his costume and he assures us his ship is "unsinkable" - wait...haven't we heard that before??? Ethan has won 3 prizes so far for "funniest costume", "most creative costume" and "best costume overall" . We've entered as many contests as we could find, but are still awaiting results on most of them! Ethan can't wait to go trick or treating this year and wear his costume to school for his Halloween party. Happy sailing!