New Nightlight

First of all - anyone who says boys can't have cute things are just wrong! You have to be more creative, but boys can have cute things too! My youngest needed a nightlight and after looking around a bit, I came across this a Hobby Lobby. So I decided to make my own.

I took him to the scrapbook paper and let him pickout a sheet that he liked. He's two, so I actually picked 2 or 3 and then let him select from those. I then picked a solid sheet that coordinated.The pull away sheet on the nightlight shade can be used as a pattern. I traced it onto a sheet of scrapbook paper and cut it out.
The shade is self-adhesive, so I just stuck the paper right to it.

Next a cut out his initial with my Cricut on the matching solid sheet. I decopaged it on and coated the entire sheet of paper in decopage to help bond it further to the shade.

Then I glued on this fabric trim all along the top and bottom...
wrapping it around to the back and securing it with glue to the back of the frame. I then cut away all excess hanging fibers from the trim so that none would be touching the lightbulb.

And this is my finished product - with the lights on.

And with the lights off. He loves his new nightlight and he loves that he picked out the planes, trains and automobile paper too.
Obviously you could also do this with fabric and monogram the fabric, but I don't have a monogram machine - and scrapbooking is more my thing, so I decided to go that route. It was also very quick. From start to finish it took less than an hour and then just time to dry. It was ready to go into his room that night.

Join Between Naps on the Porch for more Metamorphasis Monday!

hey, batter, batter, swing!

By Shaila Creekmore, Illustration By Brittney Guest as printed in the June issue of Jonesboro Occasions Magazine.

When you become the mom of two boys, you understand pretty quickly that much of your time will revolve around sports. From the time they can grip, they have a ball in their hands and are throwing them across a room as soon as they can sit up.

Since my oldest, Samuel, was 2 years old, we’ve had a basketball goal in the living room and a surplus of Nerf footballs lying around the house. And still, my boys think they need to purchase another ball when we are at the store. I have yet to figure out why.

Last spring, we ventured into organized sports for the first time with T-ball. It was fun for the kids and great entertainment for the parents. One friend described it as “the amoeba of T-ball” and I found that to be an accurate description. While the coaches did their best to help teach the kids about the game, that didn’t stop players from running from home plate to third base or the entire team from running to the first base line to fight over one small T-ball.

This year we moved on to machine pitch. The kids better understood the basic mechanics of the field, but hitting a ball coming at them at 35-miles-an-hour was an entirely new skill. We spent hours in practice learning when and how to swing, where andhow to stand and what to do when you finally make contact with the ball.

After games, other mothers and I would laugh about how excited we would become when our sons hit the ball and I will proudly say that I was one of those moms screaming, “RUN, RUN” every time Samuel hit the ball. As a parent, I found that I am just as excited as he is when he makes a good play or hits the ball. But I also found that I also feel his disappointment. Not dissatisfaction in him, but merely in knowing that he is disappointed with himself.

We were lucky this year to be placed on a team with a great group of parents who were supportive of all the kids. Whether they hit the ball or not or overthrew to the first baseman, the supports in our stands were yelling “good job” to the kids. Friends on other teams were not so lucky with overbearing coaches, angry parents and whiney kids.

But whether the kids can play well or not, they look the part from their bat bags down to their muddy cleats. As a momma, I don’t think there’s anything cuter than a field full of 6-year-old boys in their matching jerseys, baseball pants and monogrammed hats playing on a miniature field of dreams.

Outdoor Wednesday - Geese

I haven't been blogging lately because we've been so busy with things, so these are from this past March. They were taken at my parents but I never got around to posting them. My dad built this nest on his pond about 3 years ago, but geese had never used it until this year. A couple took up residency at my parents this year and the female nested in the half barrel my dad created. You can just see her peaking her head up here...
Her male partner was never far. You can see him near the nest in this picture.

She hatched six geese and five survived being little. I wasn't able to get pictures of them after they hatched. We've only been home once since then and they were only on the pond in the very early morning and I wasn't able to get pictures. In addition to this family, another family shortly after joined them with three babies and another family came about 4 weeks ago. They just left the pond this week and over the past month my parents have had 21 geese in total on the pond. I'm sad that I wasn't able to go home and get pictures.

See more great Outdoor shots at Outdoor Wednesday!