Mommin' It Up!

Remember when Emily and Kate had a super-amazing adventure at Nike headquarters in Portland last year? It was during that time that Emily fell in love with the Nike Free shoe – and luckily, since I’m riding her coat tails, my kids have recently had their chance to fall in love with these shoes, too!

Nike gave Emily and me the opportunity to have our kids design their own NIKEiD shoes – these are Nike Free shoes that you get to custom-design yourself as far as colors and features go. Joshua and Sophie LOVED the design process, and it was really simple. (Jonah got to have Mommy-designed shoes, fortunately, his Mommy has excellent taste.)

Here are a couple of screen shots of the design process – you can change all the colors of every part of the shoe, from the laces to the heel loop. It’s so much fun! Joshua and Sophie just had a blast choosing colors, changing their minds, and finally settling on a design. And yet the process went very quickly, too!

And here are the amazing shoes my kiddos came up with!

Please note that you can design what it says on the tongue, and Joshua wanted to make sure everyone on 4th grade knew WHAT WAS UP!

Nike Free shoes are excellent for plotting Ninja moves. FYI.

And now here are Sophie’s shoes! I did have to convince her to leave orange out of this design. Sorry, I pooped on  my kid’s creativity. For the sake of MY EYES.

I really love the way hers turned out. They are so…Sophie!

And finally, here are my Jonah-Jo’s shoes. I couldn’t get a great shot with him in them as he is less willing to pose than my big kids!

I love them so much! He looks so cute in them and he seems to be really comfortable in them.

We loved designing our NIKEiDs! Both of the big kids wore theirs proudly on their first day of school, and they got compliments on them wherever we go. Plus, they are helping the kids’ feet feel good while they’re being active or sitting in class like angels.

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Oh hi, this is Emily now! As Jenny mentioned, Kate and I became obsessed with Nike Frees when we were on the Nike campus a year ago April. We both got a pair while we were there, and since then, we’ve gotten her another pair, and I’ve purchased two other pairs for myself! I wore them as I trained for and completed a three-day 60-mile walk last year, and they did me right!

Here’s my beloved Nikes about 30 miles into the trip.

But anyway, this post is supposed to be about designing shoes from NIKEiD, right? Sorry – I just really, really love those shoes!

So – Kate had designed a pair of Nike Frees at the Youth Athlete Summit, and she wore the heck out of them for months and months until she outgrew them. She was beside herself excited by the prospect of creating another pair!

Unfortunately, I failed to hit “submit” on her order and didn’t figure that out for a couple of weeks, so her shoes aren’t here yet. They’re getting ready to be shipped, though, and they are very cool looking! (And bright! Shield your eyes.)

I video taped her designing her shoes, but the video is 12 minutes long and I can’t figure out how to edit it, so I will spare you! But the process was easy and fun, and the only reason it took 12 minutes was because she just couldn’t decide on a color scheme! (So, clearly, she went without one.) She thought having “K8” put on the tongue was extremely awesome, too. Thank goodness her beautiful name has a text abbreviation (enter sarcasm punctuation point here).

Sam’s process was much quicker – he decided he needed some Super Man shoes, so it was red, blue, and yellow all the way for him.

From a practical standpoint, I love that the little-kid version is velcro. And, according to Jenny’s retired-preschool-teacher mom, his teacher will love that too!

NIKEiD is a fun way for your kids to express themselves this school year. I highly recommend checking it! You can see more cool designs people have created on the Nike ID Tumblr and on their Facebook page.

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Nike provided us with these shoes. The opinions – and colorful designs – are our own.