Quiet Books

This year I decided to make Quiet Books for my sisters for Christmas. It was A LOT of work, but they turned out so cute that it was totally worth it. A girl at church had one and offered to help me get started on one. It was so nice to have her help me realize how simple it is and to help me with things like the button holes and zippers. Each of the pages in the QB were 9x10 which was enough room to do some super cute things on but not too big to fit in a church bag.

This will be very detailed so don't feel like you have to read everything. I tried to include links to my pages of inspiration and will put all of the patterns that I have at the end of my post. Please leave comments, they make all this typing worth it!!

Here is the cover. Sorry the picture is so blurry. I totally stressed over the colors and patterns because I wanted to be sure that it could be used for a boy or girl. I really like the corduroy on the front as a nice texture and color. I wanted to put a pocket of corduroy on the back of the cover to put any orphans or paper or whatever, but I forgot to sew it on before I sewed the whole thing together.

Page One

The first page was a house. The is the only place that I didn't use felt in the whole book. I put pictures of the kids behind the windows and a family picture behind the door. It was really hard to get the windows square. Looking back, I wish I would have laminated the pictures then put velcro on the back so that the kids could take the pictures and move them around to the different windows.

Page Two

For the second page I did some cute flowers that the kids can unbutton and move around. I was planning on using normal buttons for the center of the flowers, but then I found these super cute bug buttons at Hobby Lobby and thought they would be super cute. I am worried though that little hands will have a hard time doing the buttoning/unbuttoning because of the unusual shapes.

Page Three

This Noah's Arc page was super fun. To make the rainbow, I just sewed on scraps that I had around. At one point I found a felt fabric that had a bunch of animals on it. I cut those out and was planning on using those, but then I found these animal felt stickers. I thought they were cuter and a different/stiffer texture. I just stuck them to felt and cut out around them. So far the backs haven't fallen off, I'll keep my fingers crossed!!

Page Four

I really like the Tic-Tac-Toe boards that I saw on different blogs. I found some really cute flannel that had these monkeys and bananas on it, but couldn't find a place to use it. When I got to this page, I decided to switch up the game by using the bananas and monkeys as the game pieces. My kids LOVE it and play the game as well as play with the monkeys and bananas.

Page Five

Here is a Lunch Bag with a sandwich, apple, banana, and cookie. I thought this one would be boring, but my kids like to take it and pretend to eat it. I was really excited to find the black/white flannel as the background. I thought it looked like a picnic blanket or a diner floor.

Page Six

I saw this on someone's blog and LOVED the idea. It seems like EVERY two year old loves to snap and unsnap these clips. I put two different kinds of clips on this one.

My husband suggested that because I have it that the life jacket opens, I should put a hairy chest under there. :) While I'm not on board with that I had a friend suggest I put a yellow ducky under there which would have been cute. By that time I was ready to be done with the whole thing and just left it with the background.

Page Seven

This is a fishing page. I didn't get a final picture, but I took a sucker stick (a clean one from a make your own sucker pack) and hot glued some ribbon to the end. I then hot glued a magnet on the other end to use as the lure. I found these foam stickers of the fish and put felt on the back with a paperclip in between. For the ocean water, I put two snaps to help keep the material closed.

It's super fun to go fishing! My kids love arguing over whether you can actually catch octopi, turtles and sharks. It's really funny!

Page Eight & Nine

This is my absolutely FAVORITE page!!! It was definitely the most labor intensive but it was TOTALLY worth it!!!

The gas station has a shoe lace attached so that the kiddos can "fill 'er up" as they drive past. In place of the pine trees I've seen QBs that have a road sign with miles to grandma's house and stuff. I didn't have the patience for that so I added some pine trees. I really like the tire swing. When I took the pic, I didn't realize that it was all wonky like that. For the string I used a piece of burlap. For the words, I used printable iron on paper. My only word of advise is to test it on the same color of felt you will be using. I almost destroyed one page b/c I was in too much of a rush to test it. I used 1/4 inch flat satin ribbon to sew the lines on the road.

This second page has the house and garage. I had a micromachine around the house and was able to use this little guy as the actual car for the road. This one has a round metal ball on the bottom. My husband suggested putting magnets under the street so the car would stick to it. I totally could have done it, but he didnt' suggest it until AFTER I had everything stitched on. Totally not worth unpicking all that!

My son suggested putting a mail truck by the mail box, and my daughter suggested putting some birds in the trees by the house, but once again...too late.

Page Eleven

Of course we have to have a shoe tying page. I put white stitches down the toe to add some visual interest across the toe. I used white stitching along the red to make it pop and white eyelets for the holes. I tacked the shoelace down in the middle so it won't get away and the tongue most of the way. I put it on a textured background so it would look a bit more like the road.

Page Twelve

Here's the shameless plug for love. I put all of our pictures here on the back so that the kids can remember us. I laminated the pics and put velcro on the back so the kids can pull them off and move them around. Also, it'll be easy to update/change this page. The label at the bottom also doubles as a little pocket.

Here are all the patters that I still have. A lot of them I just printed out and then cut them out and traced them onto felt.

Reference Material

I used the flowers from this template.

I used this shoe as an original template then messed around with it to make it look like what I wanted. Sorry, no idea what I did...

Here are the templates for the town. My only real tip is to make sure the roads line up across the two pages before you sew them on.

TONS of Quiet Book ideas: http://vi.sualize.us/bayliss85/quiet%20book/

Lifejacket and Town: http://seanandjennyricks.blogspot.com/2010/09/ricks-family-quiet-book.html

TONS of QB links: http://pinterest.com/originalandrea/quiet-books/

Christmas Lights

One of my favorite things about living in Arizona is going to see the Christmas lights and not freezing to death. Not only does the temple do amazing lights, but there's a neighborhood that closes down their streets and they go ALL out. It makes it SUPER fun!

Happy Birthday Ivy!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY IVY GIRL!!

It's so hard to remember that Ivy's birthday is so close to Christmas. In fact this is the first year that we did anything special for it. The other years we figured she just wouldn't remember it at all. But this year she was so excited and planning it for weeks!

The tradition in our family is to wake up and first thing in the morning and have a crack of dawn celebration. Dave introduced a 6 verse birthday song that does NOT sound great with our early morning voices. Luckily the kids love it anyway.

Zach loved Ivy's Mermaid barbie and took some time to play with her pretty hair before going to work.

Ivy's birthday was on Sunday this year. So I forced her into a pretty dress and made her do her hair. I barely got a smile out of her for this picture because she was ramping up to a good sized fit because she didn't want her hair in ponies.

We even let her have a birthday party this year. She was pretty excited. It was nice and simple. Each kid got a cupcake with their own candle that they got to blow out and a balloon as a party favor. They all loved it! That's totally my kind of party!

Thanksgiving 2011

I have been a little lazy about posting our Thanksgiving trip to San Diego. But my sister-in-law Wendy got hers up right away. So I pretty much just copied and pasted her blog and plan on making minor adjustments. I think I'm brilliant!

This ranks among the best Thanksgivings we've ever had! They're all good (how could a holiday centered around food be bad?), but this year was extra special. We got to go to San Diego to crash at Dave's sister Wendy and Paul's house. It was really awesome because Ryan and Liz got to come too (they've been in France for the last two years so it's the first time we're really been able to spend a good chunk of time with them.)

We got in Wednesday night, and the kids hit it off immediately. We were lucky that we have such great cousins. Owen was happy reading and drawing with Eva while Porter Ivy and Reese took advantage of every square inch in the apartment to leave toys around.

I lucked out and got to play with Amelia the whole weekend! She is so happy and smiley and I LOVE those chubby cheeks. I can't get enough of them!!!

While everyone else was busy making dinner, I took the kids to the park to play. I was so excited because they have trees there and the leaves are changing colors!! I had forgotten how beautiful the leaves can be! It was awesome because there were a ton of leaves on the ground. So we put them all in a pile and spent a ton of time jumping in the leaves. My kids LOVED it! They see it on the movies but never really get a chance to play in them.

Of course we can't be within 5 hours of a beach and not go. So Friday we hit the beach. Luckily it was only a 15 min drive and so AMAZING! We went to La Jolla Shores and let the kids run wild while the boys braved the freezing water to do some boogie boarding. Dave was a little disappointed that Beach Bumm Teresa didn't jump in the water...but I'm just not that crazy...the water was COLD! Porter couldn't get enough of it though. He spent the whole afternoon jumping in the waves. He would only come in to warm up when we yelled at him. Eva and Ivy were more sane, they were content to run away from the water and play in the sand. Dave was a super hero and got in the water to play with the kids and try his skills with a boogie board.

We went to Balboa Park to look at the trees and see Santa. They had the best Santa in the world. He was REAL! Eva didn't get a chance to tell Santa what she wanted for Christmas. She was in tears. So I whipped out my cell phone and called Santa on my phone. Eva asked if it was the REAL Santa and I told her it was the Santa that brought me my presents every year. So she was able to tell him what she wanted and to feel very special and loved.

OK so I didn't end up stealing EVERYTHING from Wendy's blog, but I'm glad she got me started. I love you all and am so grateful for the blessing of family and friends in my life!

Pumpkin Patch

The last night that Kiley and Brent were here we went to Schnepf Farms to the pumpkin patch. It's such a fun place to go play. They have a bunch of fun rides the kids can ride on, a corn maze to get lost in, face painting, dirt to play in, bugs to catch, and bats to watch. Needless to say we ended up not getting home till about 10:00 that night. The kids were exhausted...or maybe just the grownups were. :)