I SPY... with my little eye.

It's Read Across America Week and Kamden's school has been having fun all week dressing up each day. He wore blue on Monday, his Star Wars Storm Trooper Stance socks on Tuesday, a mustache he made me cut down to size on Wednesday, his Yoda hat on Thursday and his favorite book character on Friday for his elementary school's annual book character parade

Monday- Red and Blue Fish Day

Tuesday- Crazy Sock Day 

Wednesday- Mustache Day

Thursday- Crazy Hat Day

Friday-Book Character Parade

With such a busy week and something new everyday, it slipped my mind to prepare a costume in advance. Kamden has plenty of leftover Halloween costumes, including a super cool Batman costume from Pottery Barn Kids, but of course they're all in storage and at the last hour and the night before, I knew that was a lost cause. So... we had to get creative! My specialty! 

Everything I originally suggested, Kamden turned down. He very much has a mind of his own and unless he thinks of it first, he is not too easily convinced of anything. Then I scoped out Pinterest for any easy costumes that could be quickly made at home. Of course, he said no to all of those as well. So I tucked him into bed and said we will think of something. Before I even closed the door to his room, I glanced over at his bookshelf and saw one of his favorite books "I SPY" and thought... what a perfect idea! I could make t-shirt filled with fun gadgets from around his room, no purchase or midnight runs to the store necessary! 

I immediately ran back into his room and attempted to explain and although it took some persuading he hurried and helped me pick out some things to put on his shirt before climbing back into bed. His last words before falling asleep were, "You can make that, but I'm not wearing it." That's my hard headed, strong willed and stubborn Kamden. But I knew once he saw it, he would definitely change his mind.

So I pulled out my glue gun, an old white t-shirt and a black sharpie and got to work! After digging through the bottom of Kamden's toy boxes for anything that we didn't mind ruining for this project, I finally found enough quirky items to make this thing work. I slipped a piece of cardboard between the shirt, so that I could start writing on the back. I didn't have a linen friendly pen, but a plain black Sharpie worked just as well. I made the lettering to look like the book and did more of a "Kamden's Room" edition since all these random items came from his room. I wrote down on the back all of the things that I would attach to the shirt and tried to make them funny or at least interesting on a whim. The books usually have cute riddles, but no time for that! I then flipped it over on the front side and started hot gluing all the randomly placed things down to his shirt. I made sure to put more of the heavier stuff up top so that it wouldn't sag too bad. It really didn't take long to make and was much easier than I thought it would be. I laid it out on the couch with the book beside it to display, so Kamden would see it when he woke up the next day.

The first thing he did when he saw it was smile from ear to ear and say, "That's cool!" I'm really glad that all my hard work wasn't in vain and that he actually was proud to wear it. The character parade was at 9:30am this morning and I wasn't going to miss this for anything in the world. It was so cold outside, baby and I bundled up after getting Kamden off to school. Originally the parade was planned to take place outside, but I was happy to see they had moved it to the gym once we arrived at his school. I was wondering how they would fit so many kids in that gym, grades K through 5, much less in an organized fashion... but they did and it was perfect! The kids and teachers costumes were really neat. One of my favorites from the day were a few teachers dressed up like crayons for the book "The Day The Crayons Quit". There were dozens of Harry Potters and plenty of Things 1 and 2... but only ONE "I SPY"!

Baby Maelynn really loved checking out everyone's costumes in the parade as all the kids walked by. You could tell she was taking it all in and she was so thrilled she kept kicking both feet in the air, which is what she does when she gets excited. Kamden was happy that we came and he really stood out in the crowd and his little outfit was so unique. His teacher Mrs. Griffin stopped me in the hallway on the way out and thanked me and complimented on how awesome it looked. His original teacher at the beginning of the year, Mrs. Huffman, who just retired over the holiday break had given him his first I SPY book. We are so grateful she did or else we would have never thought of such a great idea.