Two years ago for Christmas, Marion got this little table and chair set from Ikea, still only $19.99

It’s been a good table that has served us well, that’s for sure

But, it’s a little plain, even with a monkey as your snacking companion

So I made a some little chair covers to jazz it up a bit

Which worked until this one turned it into an eating table. Manners, they’re not so much her strong point.

So let’s kick off the new year with a little sewing tutorial, making a tablecloth and chair covers for an Ikea Latt table!

You’ll need:
One piece of fabric 30 x 35 inches
Two pieces of fabric 12.5 x 20(ish) inches (the length varies depending on how long you want your chair covers to be)
Scissors or a rotary cutter
Cutting mat (although it’s not necessary, it makes life a lot easier!)

Take your large piece of fabric and fold it in fourth

Now this is important. Find the corner of your fabric that has NO FOLDS and cut out a square

Cut a square of 4.5 x 4.5 inches

Your unfolded fabric is going to look like this

Turn your fabric 1/4 inch under, iron, turn under another 1/4 inch, iron and sew in your hem. I used a zig zag stitch and bright thread for a little visual interest. That, and I’m lazy and the machine was already threaded with turquoise.

I used french seams on my table cloth because I know this is going to get washed a lot and I wanted to contain all the raw edges since I don’t have a serger. Usually I’m a much lazier sewer than this, but in this case, the extra step is worth it.

To do a french seam, you essentially make a shallow seam with wrong sides facing, then turn it right sides face and make a deeper seam, which encloses the first seam, making things all nice and neat

With wrong sides facing, bring the two sides of a corner together (the squares you cut out), and sew in a 3/8 inch seam

Trim

Then with right sides facing, put in a 1/2 inch seam

It will look normal on the outside

But nice and neat on the inside

Also, since I’m not very good at cutting straight lines or ironing accurately, my hems will inevitably not match up. To fix this, I prefer to sew my corners from the outside to the inside, which makes sure the hems at least look matched up, even if they aren’t.

Put it on the table, and presto, a table cloth!

Okay, so if you want to see a much better tutorial, I modified this idea from Prudent Baby’s DIY Changing Pad. Her pictures and instructions are much better than mine.

For the chair covers, figure out how long you want your cover to be, double that length, add an inch for the hems, then cut the fabric that long and 12.5 inches wide.

Put in the hem on the two 12.5 inch portions of the fabric

And sew up your two side seams. Or in my case, two sides and a top because I was using scraps. If you’re using two pieces of fabric, you’ll add another 1/2 inch to the length to make up for the top seam.

Presto chango, a new table cloth and chair covers!

I made Marion a fancy chair cover but before I could waste three hours making another one, I realized my kids are way too squiggly and anything covering the seat was just going to help them wiggle right off.

So Eliza just got a regular chair cover. Poor second child.

There you have it, the table top stays clean(er) and you have a fancy pants Ikea table for your kiddos.

And to prove how easy it was to make (and to double check my measurements)

I made another one by the time Josh had done the dinner dishes. Seriously, that easy. Putting in the darn hems took the longest time.

I hope your new year got off to a pretty start!

A quick recap, we went the first time when Josh registered for the race and I was merely pregnant with Marion. We thought a baby wouldn’t be a big deal, you know, like every first time parent. Which meant we ended up taking a six week old out for a weekend, which also means Josh got about 0.75 hours of sleep the night before the race.

The second year, Marion was sleeping through the night regularly and was a happy little 14 month old. Until she got hand, foot and mouth Saturday morning, 24 hours before the race. Which meant that year, Josh got about 2.50 hours of sleep before running 13.1 miles.

In our second time parent wisdom, we skipped taking a newborn and a toddler to San Antonio and decided to wait a year and take two toddlers instead. Third times a charm and we know what we’re doing this go round.

Until Eliza woke up from her nap on Friday afternoon with a temperature of 104.7, resulting in an emergency appointment to the pediatrician and a diagnosis of an ear infection, of course! This year, we stayed in a hotel (we normally rent an apartment) and had grand plans for sleeping arrangements. Which meant that Marion slept in the king sized bed most of the night by herself and Mama slept on the sofa with Eliza. After Eliza and I got settled down, Josh was able to sneak into bed with Marion and this year, got a whopping five hours of sleep!

It was enough for him to set a PR of 1:38:19! Imagine what he’d do on a full night of sleep

Again, in our parental wisdom, we decided to only spend one night in San Antonio, figuring one night away from home was enough for the girls. So we left Saturday morning, got stuck in traffic due to a closed interstate, and neither girl slept a wink on a five hour trip that should have just taken three hours. Oh well. We got there eventually!

Marion in front of the Alamodome

It was so fun this year to take Marion. She knows what a race is now and she got very excited seeing all the fanfare around this race; she knew it was a big deal!

My super speedy husband was in the first corral

Eliza got to run some energy off

Her outfit makes her look a little bit like an escaped convict

Daddy and his girls

Yoga mat, check. Foam roller, check. Pack n play, check. What packing for a race looks like these days.

Making herself useful

We had a corner suite with a balcony. Pretty awesome. And not at all dangerous.

A little trip down memory lane if you don’t mind:

2008

2009

2011

A brief moment of quiet

Between all the stroller pushing

And squirrel chasing these two were doing

I tried (and failed) to get a photo of the girls together

Then tried (and failed) to get a picture of just big girl

Sounds about right

Then nighttime

And race preparations. We had some serious spectating to do!

Eliza finally passed out on the couch

And then everyone was up bright & early!

Hugs and

Kisses for dada

Although all Eliza wanted to do was to steal his visor

Not a bad spectating spot!

This is how we roll

And this is how we cheer

Josh felt good enough to smile and give us a wave at mile 3

He was a bit more focused at mile 8

And too fast at the finish for a good picture!

That, and we were too busy cheering our hearts out. He had such a great race and I’m so proud of him. It takes a lot of dedication to train for a half marathon through the heat we had at the end of this summer and into the fall, but all his hard work paid off big time. And I’m sure having the cutest cheerleaders out there didn’t hurt either

I think it’s safe to say that we won’t be trying to make the trip again though!

If you’ll remember last time, there was this little thing called Hurricane Ike and two weeks without power that hindered my finishing efforts. That, and the fact my sewing machine went nutso on me until I (a year after she was born) literally, literally, fixed it by smacking it with a hammer.

This time, I’m determined to get the project done before Baby Sister is born and another hurricane hits and my sewing machine is unfixable with a hammer.

With seven(ish) weeks left to go, I’m proud to say I’m halfway done! That’s a pretty big accomplishment for me. Marion’s bed is completely done and really, the only must do projects that are left are Sister’s crib rails and bed skirt. There are a few other little things I’d like to do, but those are just icing on the proverbial cupcake.

(Apologies in advance, but this room is really hard to photograph and often the best pictures are with my camera phone, so there will be a mix of good and not so great photos.)

Before we even moved, we picked out fabrics for the new nursery and picked this mix of fabrics from Michael Miller

And this is what we started with after we moved (at least on Marion’s side of the room)

And this is what we have now! (That thing in the bottom left corner is my ironing board)

One of the first things we had to do was to get a new blind for the room! The girls’ room faces due east and so the sun comes up bright and early.

So we bought this dark gray blackout shade from Ikea, and it was wonderful, but in the end, it didn’t work with the drapery rod we chose.

Which meant, not only did I have to make curtains for the first time, I had to make curtains lined with blackout material.

I think they turned out pretty good! (I promise there are two of them, it’s just really, really, really hard to get a picture of them both straight on.)

This is my favorite little spot in the room, Marion’s little reading nook

It’s constantly in use! (And yes, it’s meant to hold books, but she usually just has them scattered on the floor.)

A rare moment of cleanliness

And even though she’s pretty well past teething (we’re just waiting on the two year molars), I still did her a set of teething rails just because I like the way they look

She’s been sleeping with a pillow for a while, so I made her a pillowcase to match

Well, she got two actually. I think Mr Brown Dog likes the bird better than the polka dots

Along with two new changing pad covers and a bow board. However, I realized with TWO girls, I’m going to have to make a much larger bow board!

One little storage basket (we need a few more of these, but that’s a scrap project for when I have nothing else to do, hahahaha!)

It’s only taken me three and half months since we moved in to get this stuff done, we’ll see what else I can knock out in the next seven(ish) weeks!

(Warning, very picture heavy post)

This is what we started out with

Lou Bear demonstrates where the crib is going (also note the beginning stages of our hurricane supplies in the form of bottles of water.)

Crib goes here

Josh hard at work

All done! (If only….)

The nursery fabric

The bedskirt all done

Another shot of the crib skirt. I used a quilted material to form the base since I wanted something thick enough that the springs wouldn’t stand a chance of poking a hole through it.

Dot dot dot

This project would have been a thousand times harder without a quilting board and a rotary cutter

Of course the springs are adjustable, so I when I made the skirt, I made it just long enough to hang below the edge of the base of the crib. That way, when it’s on it’s lowest setting, it just brushes the ground.

The lamp is probably one of our favorite nursery pieces. It was a discontinued item from Pottery Barn and they were out of the shade for it.

So I made my own! One self adhesive lamp shade + fabric =

One darn cool lamp

It works – bonus!

In progress.

More progress (and more bottles of water)

Empty shelves mean progress, right?

And now, all done!

Such a big girl room

Bird’s eye view

Instead of making bumpers for the crib, I opted to do teething guards.

Sweet Mr Brown Dog and her blankie

Our reading/rocking nook

Shared space between the nursery and the office/craft containment unit

Her night-night light

The dresser/changing table

Lamp and basket (I freehanded the pattern for the basket liner and I’m so proud it actually fits!)

For my cloth diapering friends, drawer number one. Fuzzi Bunz, Happy Heinys, BumGenius 3.0s, Gro Babies and our wipes

Drawer number two, prefolds, covers and all-in-ones

Her outrageously large for a 11.75 month old stuffed animal collection

Our favorite corner of the house

I finished the back teething rail this weekend after fixing my sewing machine with a hammer (oh yes, a hammer fixed it) and took some pictures before we start making more changes to the nursery. Since Mar is such a big girl now and she loves to play (how this kid loves to play!) we’re going to get rid of the office area and make it a little playroom area for her. Hopefully that will be done before she’s five!

Josh got a new bike

Which is pretty exciting

He’d had his old Trek since before we started dating so it was time for a new bike.

I got a new carrier

It’s a Beco Butterfly 2

And we love it!

It’s so cute!

And so is this. Even though that’s the face of concentration she makes when she’s doing this

So I just wear my hair really high now. After all, the higher the hair, the closer to heaven.

We also went to a new eatery Saturday night for family date night. Little Bigs and it was fantastic. We walked there, which made the milkshakes totally justifiable!

And in news of something I haven’t managed to do in quite a while, I got some sewing done!

Long story short, or as short as I can make it. Marion has developed a fascination for tags of late. Which this company has capitalized on.

She won’t take a paci anymore and we’ve been really struggling with helping her learn to self soothe at night so that we all sleep better.

So momma and the handy-dandy sewing machine stepped in and made Marion the best security soothing blanket money can’t buy

And nights have gotten considerably better around here lately! We’ve stopped swaddling her and most nights, she rubs the blanket on her face or sucks on the tags and puts herself to sleep. She’s only be waking up to eat (full meals, not just snacks) so if she is waking up at night, she’s putting herself back down. Yay for progress (we hope!) Maybe it’s been so quiet around here because we’ve been catching up on sleep …

Something that’s not knitting!

I bought two sewing patterns this week and I tried this one out today. It’s so cute and so simple. When I showed mom the pattern, guess what she did? Cried. Imagine that! But she said she made me countless dresses just like that one.

The pattern is so easy, the next time I break out the machine, I think I’ll cut three or four at a time. The cutting really is the hardest part of it.

I made a 6-9 month size. It’s been harder than I thought to buy seasonally appropriate clothes – Houston really doesn’t have much of a winter, so I’ve been doing mostly lightweight, summer things. The only winter (and it’s not even really heavy winter) things I’ve been buying at 3-6 months. Assuming a fairly normal growth pattern for Poppy, she’ll be in that size December through February. I’m trying not to make too many things though – I fear I’ve misjudged her size and the seasons and I’ll end up with a wardrobe full of handmade clothes she’ll never wear!

It was a long weekend, so of course I did do some knitting.

Poppy’s pants are finished and I’m so pleased with them!

They’re so cute and it was so much fun to knit – I’m sure she’ll have several pairs.

Plus, how can you resist the little bell bottoms? I’m already planning on ruffles for the next pair.

Look, a weekend knitting post without a single pair of socks!

Full details of knitting on my Ravelry page

Click here for my sewing album