Happy birthday to one of the most amazing, miraculous little babies around. We love you so much sweet John Paul!

Down this path lies total destruction of our house. Or at least our ER slush fund.

Eliza vs the Pork Chop

Marion loves the show, Dinosaur Train. Loves it. She can play Dinosaur Train with all her babies for hours and has an impressive vocabulary of almost unpronounceable dinosaur names. As well as being convinced she’s nocturnal, but well, that’s the topic of another post.

If you’re at all familiar with Dinosaur Train, than you know the role of Mr Conductor and the tickets. Which always leaves me amazed at why do they even have tickets on this train when certainly they aren’t buying them because none of these dinosaurs have jobs and certainly no pockets to carry change in. But I guess without the tickets Mr Conductor couldn’t show off his Troodon claw. Can you tell I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing this?

I digress.

So Marion often plays games with her babies that involve them needing tickets. She’ll ask them if they have their tickets, she’ll say she has the tickets, she sees if we have tickets, etc. When sh asks if we have the tickets, we always tell her no, we don’t have them, maybe go look in the playroom. Essentially, just brush her off because man, the ticket talk can go on all day.

Today though, I was feeling like being super involved mom, so when she asked me if I had the tickets, I told her “I do have the tickets!” After all, I could spare 30 second to go grab three sheets of note paper. She was shocked. I said, let me go look in my special ticket drawer (the buffet drawer if you must know) and I’ll get the tickets out. I was tearing the sheets off the note cube and said, “Hey look, I’m like Mr Conductor” and she said, “You sure are mom! This is so exciting!”

I handed her the “tickets” and she said, “Thanks mama!” and I started to walk off, I was mom of the year, you better believe it. She stood there, inspecting the tickets more closely.

“Mom,” she said, “I really need something more amazing.”

And that folks, is why you have kids. They keep you humble.

Whether you want it or not.

Anyway.

So for Marion’s birthday, yes, back in September, her gift from us was ballet lessons.

Really, nothing cuter in the world than a little ballerina

Unless it’s a line of tiny ballerinas!

So I sent that picture to my mom and she immediately responded, in true Grandma fashion, “KATI! SHE’S THE ONLY GIRL WITHOUT A TUTU!”

Now you know if it had been me as a child complaining I was the only girl in class without a tutu, she would have said, well if everybody in class jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?

But I guess that’s the joy in being a grandma.

So anyway. By the time the next class rolled around

Marion had her tutu

I’m posting all these pictures now because I had been planning on doing a big long post with all these photos and videos but then, the laptop ate my photos and my lesson has been learned. Also, today was the first day of ballet since Christmas break and I realized I have never talked about her ballet lessons on the blog. Oops.

We had parents’ day before the holidays where we got to come into class and watch the girls and oh, the cuteness!

Just see for yourself

And this would be mama’s favorite part of ballet class…

What dining with two toddlers is like

The shoulder shimmy at 0:03 is awesome

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!