Toddler Seat Cover

When we were looking to move our toddler out of the high chair, my hubby let me know he wasn't thrilled with the idea of booster seats.  He feels that they aren't that secure and safe.  His solution?  A bar stool with the legs cut down a little.  I was fine with the idea until I started pricing stools, particularly ones with backs.  Yikes!  They get pricy really quick!  Luckily I stumbled on a floor model that was on clearance and snatched it up.

The seat was covered in a micro-fiber like material so I thought it would work out great.  But we noticed it was staining easily and my mom warned me that it would looked well used very quickly.

Enter my husbands idea to make some sort of cover for it.  Of course it was one of those "WE should make a cover for it" statements that meant  "I should make a cover for it."  We'll just assume it was a manifestation of his confidence in my ability.

So I grabbed some PUL fabric on sale, and this is what I came up with.  The design is a combination of  my hubby's idea and my own.  It ties on all four legs, but also has flaps that are long enough to wrap around part of the bottom to be joined with a small bungee cord.  It's been in use for a few days now and it seems to be working out okay.

It stays in place, cleans up easily, and our little one seems to be happy with it.  Better yet, it was one of those one day projects.  Love those.

Toddler Quiet Book

Man!  Between the holidays and getting ready for these twins to come I haven't been spending much time on the computer.  And since the twins will most likely be making their grand debut in two weeks there's a good chance that it is only going to get worse.

I do still have some projects to share with you, so we'll see if I can't get one or two in before they rock my world.

Back in September a friend of mine organized 16 of us to make Quiet Books together.  The idea was we would each pick a page to make and we would make 16 of that page.  The organizer made sure nobody was duplicating pages, and was our go to person.  Once they were all made and turned into her, she divided them so that we each received 16 different pages.  Brilliant!  It was easier, faster, and cheaper to do it this way.

The goal was to get the pages to everyone in early December so that they could be put together for Christmas presents.  I decided that I would hold on to mine until the twins came so I could use it as something to help entertain my 2 year old when I have two new babies to take care of.

Here is my finished project finally!  I bought extra Pellon to make the front and page covers.  I covered them with some fun fabric and hand sewed on the foam letters.  I tried using my sewing machine, but I didn't like the look of it.  Of course!  Don't we all tend to prefer the look the more complicated methods give us.

I put some eyelets in each page then joined them with metal rings.  Even with 1 1/2 inch rings I couldn't fit all of the pages.  I figured I could switch them out every so often to help revive her interest in it.

There were some fantastic pages made: Barnyard Finger Puppets, Tic Toc Clock, Abacus, Match the Socks, and many more.  I decided to do the Peek-a-Boo Mittens page.  I'll be honest, I wanted to pick one that was cute, but not too difficult to do.  I'm still amazed someone chose to do the Barnyard Finger Puppets 16 different times.  Wow!

I wanted the kids to be able to put their hands in the mittens if they wanted.  So I made a few trial sizes and tested them out on my little one.  I wanted to embellish the mittens somehow, but again, didn't want to make it too time consuming.  So I chose a decorative stitch on my sewing machine and went to town.

Rather than buying photo pockets which were a little more costly than I liked, I cut page protectors down to the size I needed and sewed them on with a zig zag stitch.  I ended up getting four photo pockets out of one page protector.  Not bad, huh?

Then for the wording I didn't want to write "Peek-a-Boo" sixteen different times.  Lazy, huh?  So I used my method for printing Fabric Labels and printed it out on fabric then sewed it on to the page.

I finished it all off with some cute little snowflakes I bought from JoAnns and there you have it!  A fairly simple, but cute version of Peek-a-Boo Mittens.

I still haven't given the book to my toddler yet.  Hopefully it will provide hours of fun, educational play to help keep her entertained!

P.S. - If this post is full of typos, it's because I was playing pretend with fish, horses, cars, and ducks with my toddler as I typed it up.  Where would we be as moms if we couldn't multi-task?