My 2015 Odyssey of the Mind Crazy Hat

It's my Pirate Princess Cowgirl Hat!  Many years ago I bought this red beauty at the Pirates of the Caribbean store in Disneyland Park.  The "Pirate Princess" lettering is unfortunately hard to read, but I still find it pretty funny.

What is Odyssey of the Mind?  It's an incredible program that promotes students to be creative and think outside the box.  And there are 5 creative categories students can participate/compete in: Vehicles, Technical, Classics, Structure, and Theatrics.  There's great information on the OotM (short for Odyssey of the Mind) website that goes into further detail.

This last weekend was judges training for the Utah State OotM competition, which is being held at the end of March.  Our state is still small in the organization, so there are no regional competitions, and this year we've invited Idaho teams to compete with us! (Utah and Idaho teams are not competing against each other).  And there's a chance in the next year or two Wyoming teams will come and compete in Park City Utah as well.

As the problem 5 problem captain I trained the Theatrics judges for "Silent Movie," the name of our long term problem this year.  It's such a fun problem!  You can read the synopsis here.

All judges are encouraged to wear a crazy hat while they judge, it's something fun for the kids to see, and it allows us to be a little silly.  All Omer's are silly!  So I brought my new crazy hat to show the judges.

 I took my pirate princess cowgirl hat and attached some of my favorite 2014 pins from the World competition last year, and I found some pretty fake flowers to add a girly cute touch.

Some of my more favorite pins didn't make the hat because they didn't "look" right.  And I realized in hindsight that 3, Three, Virginia pins made the final cut!  But I'm happy with how it turned out.

 I still need to attach the flowers with embroidery thread, because they kept falling off during training.

 Proof that the base hat is official licensed Disney merchandise :0)

As a note, the only time I've seen this hat at Disneyland was about eight or so years ago, and have never seen it before or sense.  I visit Disneyland about once a year.  Maybe it didn't sell well?  Maybe people didn't get the humor?  They should totally sale this hat again.

My "Pigs Can Fly" crazy hat is lovingly being kept in my closet, but will not be permanently retired.  Kids seem to really like it, and I feel it embodies the OotM spirit, though I may end up creating a whole new hat next year!  I've got some more fun ideas :0)