How To Decorate School Banners Without Losing Practice Time

As far as I can tell, custom softball banners and posters for use around the campus or in locker rooms takes a lot of practice– to say the least! Generally, for all cheerleaders, practice is essential and time is constrained. Here are a few hints to help you organize your practice time, and still be able to make posters without both of them interfering with your other plans.

  1. Make them completely during the summer. This year, we are planning on dedicating one hour every Wednesday to unplug all banners and posters used for the previous school year. In the event that we do not complete them on Wednesday, no stress– we do not have a due date! We keep doing it until the end of the summer. By the educational season, we would have done enough so we will have a variety to choose from on game days. When we use them up, we will still have time to make some more, however, we do not need to worry about making such a large number since we spent the summer making tons of them!
  2. Pick a night to make the banners if your day is too occupied with plans. Set the ideal opportunity for a few hours slot where volunteers from your cheer team can come to help. Odds are, you will get a decent number considering there is no working out or exercise required. It will be like having a paint night with your best friends! It will also be ideal to have music playing in the background to spice up things
  3. Try to create an after practice banner making team. In the event that the condition of summer is not ideal for you, offer to pay some girls from your cheer team if they stay back after practice and make the banners and posters with you. Target those girls that are always picked up late. Prepare a schedule and a target you want them to meet daily so they can be focused.
  4. All the work and time you invested in setting up your booster team should pay off now, right? Set them to work! They will want to assist. Give them a few thoughts (from any social media maybe) to work on, and I am certain you’ll have some fun, inventive banners and posters subsequently.
  5. Offer them to the young ladies (or young men). You do not have a sponsor group or better still, you do not like the idea of staying back after practice and the team does not too… never fear! Give the young women the apparatus! Have some decorative (and mindful) pioneers bring homemade publications, brushes, and whatever else their imaginative souls require. Have them take a shot at a couple of banners while they at home, and ensure they return them in back one piece!
  6. Reach out to the Student Council. Perhaps, you are not even into the entire decorating thing… that is not a problem! Give the obligation to the Student Council (in the wake of soliciting them, of course). Our Student Council makes a huge amount of signs to stick around the school. Reach out to them and see if they can help you with the work.

At this point, you most likely have a decent bearing and ideas of the kind of baseball banner you want to make. Get imaginative, make it interesting, and do not be stressed out! Keep in mind: doing this will make both the basketball and football teams happy. I know our young men are so appreciative to see a huge banner when they stroll into the locker rooms! Try to put a smile on their faces!

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Freeze Frame Friday

As I sit back and drink some homemade lemonade with Sonic ice (duh), I can’t help but think back on some things I’ve been really grateful for lately. These are moments I don’t want to forget from the past few weeks.
Our little boy is basically a teenager now. Tomorrow I’ll be 35 weeks along! Just when I think things are gettin’ real, then I realize things are gettin’ real. And then it’ll probably just get more real in every season with him. It has been an honor to house our sweet Eddy for these past eight months. I don’t want to forget the kicks and little rib jabs or when PK reads to him and asks him about what he thinks about the economic state of foreign countries. You think I’m making that up, but I’m not. It’s hilarious. All I’ve been reading to him lately are Top 10 Buzzfeed lists. (bahaha!) All this to say, it’s a miracle, like a serious miracle that this baby is growing and thriving and wiggling and I thank God every day that we get to experience this and be Eddy’s parents.

Just when I think I can’t get enough of this man, he goes and gets me Sonic. In a V-neck. Have mercy. This season with PK has been sweet as we prepare to be parents. There’s been a lot of relaxing, and Friday Night Lights, and yummy dinners at home, and coffee dates, and PK helping me off the couch, and rubbing my feet that literally look like blown up rubber gloves. (It ain’t no joke people, it looks like I can pop these things) I’m grateful for my husband, and his kindness to me, and his listening ear, and how he can make me laugh in the midst of my hilarious pregnancy woes. Let’s never stop laughing and enjoying the little things PK, and let’s never forget this season we’ve had together. I love you.

We took a trip to our friend Sara’s parents’ house and it was glorioooooous!  Sometimes I don’t realize I need to get away until I get away. It’s a little oasis every time we go there. It was so fun to hang out with our sweet friends from here in Chicago. We got to wake up slow, boat all day long one day, lounge around, have good conversation, eat good food, and the list could go on. Sara’s parents are the best, and ask us good questions, and really want to know us, and it makes me feel so loved. Thank you Daryl and Gretchen from the bottom of all our hearts for having us over and loving us the way you do!
What are some sweet moments you’ve had these past couple of weeks? You know, the ones you want to store in a little box and never forget? Write ’em down, journal them, blog about them, keep ’em archived somewhere so you can go back and be reminded of the things that make the heart full.
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Top 5 must have clothing items during the I’ve-got-more-to-love-but-still-no-bump stage of pregnancy.

So I’ve heard about it. Friends have gone through it. That stage in pregnancy where the pants don’t fit as well as they used to. The button starts poking your stomach and half way through a coffee date with your girls, you surrender and unbutton like you just ate round two of a Thanksgiving meal. Sweet, sweet surrender.
It’s a beautiful thing that’s happening right now in this season I’m in. I’m sustaining life, so grow, baby, grow! While baby and I tag team this thing and grow together, I thought I’d share my top five favorite pieces of clothing that have gotten me through the getting-bigger-but-don’t-have-a-baby-bump-yet stage.
First up to bat: loose fitting shirts.
Thank-ya Jesusss that loose fitting shirts are in style.
Everyone wears these things, so I feel like I fit right in. And still feel good.
This shirt is from sheinside.com. I just found this website not too long ago and they have really affordable clothes and accessories that are super cute. Thanks Pinterest!
Next on the list of wonderfulness are the Slim Leg Elastic Pull-On Pants. Go ahead and make fun of my elastic pull on pants…if you dare. Because they are glorious. And they have no button. And no one knows.
Fancy Leggings
These classy no-button, elastic-waisted pants are second runner up to my super baggy sweatpants, my friends. They are a dream. All of you know how much I love my “back up dancer hip hop pants” as I like to call them. Sometimes when I wear them, I dream of being a Fly Girl on In Living Color. {If you don’t know what that show is, then you don’t even know the glory you missed out on from the years 1990-1994} I digress. All this to say, these pants are amazing. You can class ’em up or style ’em down.
Flowy tops with prominent patterns have been my best friends.
They distract and you get compliments on the pattern. Two birds with one stone, sisters.
Flowy Bouses
 Francesca’s has been my one-stop-shop for these kinds of blouses.
Men’s shirt + belt + leggings {or not!} = cute outfit that’s baggy enough but super feminine.
My friend Sara did this all the time when she was pregnant and I think it’s genius.
I went and picked up a men’s business shirt at the thrift store. There are TONS of them there for $2.
You really can’t go wrong.
Big. Comfy. Sweater Cardigan.
Can you imagine this thing with those classy leggings from the picture up there and a flowy tank?
It’s pretty amazing. Trust me. Pair the outifit with some gold-tipped flats and you’ve got a cute, comfy outfit that makes you feel confident.
There ya have it, friends. My favorite pieces of clothing that are getting me by as I wait expectantly for our lil bun bun to grow. For you mamas out there, what have you worn during this stage of pregnancy? Any more tips you have to help a sister out?
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Monday morning coffee date

I thought a little coffee date might be fun on this lovely Monday morning.

Today in Chicago it’s crisp and cool. It’s one of those big comfy sweater days where you throw your hair in a top knot. Minimal makeup. One of those days you just let yourself be.

If I had you over, I’d make you Metropolis Coffee. That’s the good stuff we got as a gift from some sweet friends of ours. As we cozy up with our fresh cups of coffee I’d ask you how you are. It’s been a while, so I want to know it all. What have been moments lately worth celebrating? What has been difficult, and how can I walk alongside you?

I would tell you that I’ve been looking forward to this week for a really long time. On Wednesday I leave for The Influence Conference. I’m so excited to see sweet friends I met last year and to meet blogger friends I’ve made this past year, but have yet to meet. I’m excited to soak in as much as I can about how I can make God known through this blog. I’m excited to learn more about Jesus and let that seep into my heart. I’m just pumped for it all!

Amidst the obvious excitement, I’d tell you that there is also a little part of my heart that aches knowing that Elston won’t be in tow. I was excited to be sharing in the joy with the other pregnant women that will be at the conference. I would have been about seven months pregnant and what I would give to be wobbling my pregnant self around that place with the other wobbling women. I truly do trust in God’s plan in all this even though I will never understand it all on this side of heaven.

At this point in the conversation, it would probably be refill time. It’s Monday, which means an extra cup of coffee is a must. I would continue to tell you what a blessing it has been to have our sweet friend Kanani live with us this past month. She inspires us both and has a soul as sweet as the warm sunshine on a cool day. That’s what she is, a ray of sunshine. She is a young woman who, in her presence, you feel free to just be. You just want to soak her right up because what she adds to this world is so incredibly life-giving. I would tell you, too, that I’m not ready for her to leave at the end of the month.
I know I’ll see her, just probably not as much, and she really has become so special to me. I think I’m not ready for her to go because she’s been such a breath of fresh air in the midst of one of the hardest seasons of my life and I am just so thankful for her. My sweet, dreadlocked Kanani, I’ve told you this before, and I’ll tell you it again, that you are a gem. You are “far more precious than rubies” (proverbs 31), and you have a special place in the hearts of PK and me. We love you!

{Lovely Kanani. Seriously, even playing kickball she is gorgeous!}

As we conclude our lovely coffee date, I would ask if it would be okay if we prayed together. For the things that are going on in our lives and for the things that weigh heavy on our hearts. We are in this journey together and I see no better way to conclude such a good morning than with prayers of thanks and praise and requests to the God that loves us so.

Thanks for the sweet lil date, let’s meet again soon.

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