Why can't we have Protour day?

So, tomorrow is "footy colours day" at P's kindergarten. I confess I did see the notice about this a week ago but as I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in Australian Rules Football I ignored it.

Had it been declared to be Protour colours day I could have got excited about that. I could have happily stencilled a big pink T on s shirt and sent him off as a Jan Ulrich from Team Telekom in the good ol' days

Or even more fun for a crafty mum, how I would have loved to get some paint out and knock out a Mapei kit à la Cadel circa 2002

Or, without making anything, P might still be able to squeeze into his own yellow jersey, seen here in celebratory pose after Cadel Evans' win in the 2011 Tour de France:

Eeek. he looks so little!

Yet today when I picked P up from kindy he said he HAD to wear footy colours tomorrow and declared which was his team. I suspect that choosing your team (rather than inheriting one from your folks) could actually be a really monumental moment in a kids life, but as I don't think he has the faintest idea of what it's all about, I'm remaining dismissive of the whole thing.

As a supportive, loving mum I did, however, volunteer to make him a footy colour T-shirt for kindy. He got all whiney on me and wanted to buy "a real" one from a shop. That lead to a really long discourse from me about branded merchandise from which P was eventually rescued by A spotting a garbage truck and shouting about it very loudly. I hadn't even got to the bit about offshore manufacturing and child labour.

The deal breaker in the end was that if we made our own P could do the painting of the logo. My kids seem to respond to paint like others respond to candy or some grown-ups to crack cocaine.

We did an internet search for the logo of his chosen team. All I know of this team is that their training oval is nearby and is a great place to fly a kite on a windy day.  We hit up Spotlight for the Setacolour fabric paint and then I cut out a freezer paper stencil.

 



 I don't know if my anti-merchandising tirade was at all effective, but the power of paint certainly won him over and P declared this to be much better than buying a shirt after all. Yay!

We let the paint dry in the afternoon and in my evening sewing time I've pulled out the overlocker (man I love that machine) and whipped up yet another Oliver + S Field Trip raglan T-shirt.

I'm wishing I put the logo higher up

I've just snuck into his room and popped it on the foot of the bed. I hope he'll be pleased and, if I can be forgiven for trying to influence my children, I hope he'll quickly lose interest in AFL football.