Aye love pirates

Thar be somethin’ me loved about pirates long before Johnny Depp’s swaggering Cap’n Jack sealed the deal. They’re “bad boys” with frilly costumes, wanderlust and treasure. What’s not to like, right? I mean, if you can just look beyond all the pillaging and the plundering, pirates are inherently likable characters. At least most kids seem to think so.

Pirates inspire the imagination. They’re a great thematic backdrop for story books, birthday parties, Halloween costumes and all sorts of other childhood mayhem. Check out this amazing ship-themed bed I found at Chasing Fireflies, a Seattle catalog company.

If I had tons of treasure (like, oh, $1,900 + s/h +  sales tax), I just might buy this for my little scoundrels. Unfortunately, my coffers won’t even cover the $98 costume. Oh well. They say “talk is cheap” and this Saturday — Sept. 19 — is (quite officially) Talk Like a Pirate Day, so I can probably afford some of that. Actually, it’s pretty easy to steal a few bon mots from the official Talk Like a Pirate Day Web site.

Personally, I’m trying to figure out how to trick talk my husband into driving us down to the Portland Pirate Festival this weekend. (We can drop anchor at Grandma’s house and save a few POE … pieces of eight, that is. I just picked up a few bits of pirate chat lingo here.)

I’ve never gone to the festival before, but it looks like they’ve got lots of fun activities for the kiddos such as Scupper Monkey Island, a play area with several thematic inflatables, free balloons and temporary tattoos, jugglers and puppet shows.

There’s also lots of music, a blacksmith demonstration, grub/grog and, aye!, cannon fire. We actually have a little experience with cannon fire from last year’s Tall Ships Festival in Victoria, B.C. There were lots of amazing ships in port including a replica of Columbus’ Niña and The Lady Washington, our state’s “official ship” that starred as the Interceptor in “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Anyway, I’ll write more about that trip another time, but my point is that there were a few pirate-y activities going on and it was lots of fun. We had the opportunity to go for a sail during one of the festival’s cannon battles and the kids thought that was a hoot. That festival should be returning to Victoria in 2011.

Anyhoo… If you’d like some pirate fun closer to home, you might try marauding your basement or a local appliance store to find a few cardboard boxes to build a super-cool cardboard pirate ship. Mr. McGroovy’s page has detailed plans and lots of pictures for inspiration. I haven’t made the pirate ship yet, but I have used McGroovy’s plans to build a cardboard castle and a semi truck (Optimus Prime, Transformer fans). Here’s what I learned about cardboard construction: Making the structure is simple. Painting it is … entirely optional.