A Birthday Lamp

Oldest child's birthday is last week, and I made him a lamp for his birthday.

No, I didn't decide to take up pottery and cast a lamp on a wheel!

A friend of mine found this project on Pinterest, and made one for her son.  She posted the completed picture on her Facebook page, and I thought it would make a unique present for the kid who just turned 22.

I found the lamp base and shade at Target.  The top portion, that has the light bulb fixture detaches from the base, which is basically a giant 5 gallon jar.

As I've been cleaning out the house, I've taken all of the odds and ends of toys that belonged to him and put them in the jar.  These are the little toys that I knew he really enjoyed playing with when he was little, and they had survived our move 8 years ago.

I think it's a pretty cool memento of his childhood. As an added bonus, I got some of the extra stuff that had been laying around the basement cleaned up, and I also sorted through some stuff that has been sitting around, collecting dust for a while now!