The Quiet Book

This Christmas - our family got to buy a gift for my husband's brother's family. They have two older children (10 & 9) and then a little 2 year old girl. She wouldn't have any fun with games or movies that we could pick out so I decided to make a quiet book for her.

Thanks to all the many ideas that I found on the internet and various blogs, this is what I created:

The front was made up of 11 different fabrics of varying textures and colors. It took me a long time of changing letters and re-cutting different fabrics to finally come up with this combination. I laced it together with a yarn needle threaded with ribbon. Hopefully it stays together!



The first page is an apple tree and basket to put the picked apples in. The apples have snaps on the back.


The next page is a clock with moving hands. Page 3 is a treasure chest with a thick plastic dubloon that my boys donated from their toy treasure chest.

Page 4 is a purse with a button closure. Inside I made a little pink wallet to hold a variety of cards. The next page is a learn to braid page. If she wants, my niece can put hair thingys in the purse on the previous page. It makes a good storage spot!

My personal favorite was the drivers licence card. I'm sure that she won't need Id anytime soon - but she loved the fact that her picture was on a card.

Page 6 is a mail box that opens up with a letter inside. The next page has clear and yellow beads for counting.

Here is the letter. When you open it up - there is a few pages of pellon that I drew pictures on. It turned out really cute. The tutorial for it is here: http://skebba.blogspot.com/2009/09/little-letter-needle-book-tutorial.html

Page 8 is a butter fly that you can flap it's wings. Not much to do - but she likes butterflies and it has lots of sparkly parts to it. Then there is a flower page with button flowers that can be removed.

I got the inspiration for this page here: http://quietbook.blogspot.com/2009/06/page-14-15-oven-cupcakes.html. I love how it turned out!

Next was an ABC page. It took forever to sew on the velcro to the letters and the page.

I made a lace tying page next. I loved the shoes - and it turns out that my nephew (same family) has a pair just like them. The Noah's ark page took a long time. I hand sewed all the little finger puppets that go in the zippered pocket. I made a rabbit, snake, lion, mouse, deer, pig, panda and chick. Not the normal variety that you usually see for the ark, but I was going for what I thought was a variety of colors and the easiest ones I could make!

The next page was a winding down page of two little girls being put to bed. My niece's hair is blond and her older sister has brown hair - so she was quite excited to see "herself" and her sister on this page. The last page I made was just a pocket in case you have to gather everything that was taken out quickly. You can store things in this pocket and re-sort them out later.

Anyway - I need to thank my mom for letting me browse through her fabric supply. This whole project hardly cost anything!

I am so excited about how this turned out! It took me three months to do it start to finish, but the look on my niece's face when she opened it was definitely worth it!

Joeseph and the ...What?

Last night we were invited out to dinner with Melinda, Kwade, Keely and Raleigh.  We went out to their favorite pizza restaurant Tops.  Great food - but the wait was HORRIBLE!  I think we waited for about 50 minutes for our order.  I hate waiting.  Keely suggested a counting game where you go around the table and each person can say up to 3 numbers in a row starting at 1.  The person who lands on 20 is out.  It was fun for the kids, although I had to kill the suggestion to count to 30 because Wesley is still learning his numbers, and 20 was a stretch for him!  Luckily we were there at 6:oopm because we had tickets to go see a play at 8:00pm.

After supper, I took Mark home and the boys and I went to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat.  (Mark is NOT a fan of musicals.)  There are friends from our church who were in it and I've always loved live theater.  It was good, but I good mixed reactions from Adam and Wesley.  Adam sat in his seat glaring at the stage when he realized that it was a Bible story. (There was a huge picture saying

 "Children's Bible Stories" on stage before the play started.) Then, about 10 minutes after it started he asked, "When is this music going to stop?!?"  Apparently - not a musical fan.  He warmed up to it when they started throwing people to the ground, and they brought out the skeleton of a sheep they had "eaten" because they were so hungry.  I even caught him clapping and laughing in parts, so maybe there is hope for him yet.  We also checked out the band pit at intermission and they both were really interested in what goes on down there.  My favorite theory that they had, was that to get into the pit, the band members had to leap over the side like crazy people.  I guess they missed the stairs to the right leading up from the basement.  I love their theories, though.  It makes life alot funner.

Wesley, on the other hand, loved the beginning and clapped along with everyone.  He laughed and seemed to be really enjoying it.  Then, after intermission, he hit a wall. He couldn't get comfortable, and then with only 10 minutes left of the show, he fell asleep on my shoulder.  Everyone we passed afterwards  gave him, and me, a look that said, "Oh that little boy fell asleep. Oh isn't that cute!"  It would have been cuter it they had actually held the door for the mom with the heavy sleeping 5 year old.  Needless to say, I'm never taking them out to a play at night again.  We may check out matinees, though.  Y

Halloween: The Tough and the Scary

So, this year, after much agonizing over what to be, my boys finally decided on their Halloween costumes. Adam picked Ghost Rider and Wesley chose Green Arrow. Mark and I spent WEEKS sewing, painting and glueing and whatever else had to be done. The funny thing is, that I told Mark that I wanted to go really cheap this year, but obviously, being our (Mark's) favorite holiday, it didn't happen.

Adam had a little trouble adjusting to the makeup around his eyes. He has really long eyelashes and the paint brush kept hitting them. After a few tears, I grabbed some black eye shadow and got as close as possible. Note to self for next year * NO COSTUMES THAT REQUIRE EYE MAKEUP!!!* Anyway - Mark was trying to turn Adam's face into a skeleton quickly so he wasn't late for school and I was trying to get him to eat Something so he didn't get a sugar rush from all the treats he would get at the class party.*Another Note to Self - Eat BEFORE putting on makeup!* Needless to say, I thought the makeup turned out really good. No one at school knew who he was - and I have to say that he had the best costume in the whole school! I also liked the way he totally gets into character. He had a cocky, aggressive walk - obviously what he thought Ghost Rider would be like! He got ALOT of stares and it was kind of fun to see people' s reactions to all the work we had done.

On the down side, he did frighten his little cousin, who hid behind his Grandma for 1/2 an hour saying, "Hide me Grandma!" and refused to play with "Scary Adam" until he saw me re-touch the skeleton makeup. Maybe Adam can be some thing cute and fuzzy next year. As if Mark would allow that!!!

Wesley loved his costume also. He chose Green Arrow - a lesser known superhero from the Justice League.

Older kids and Adults who watch Smallville knew who he was, but unfortunately, the smaller kids and alot of Adults just thought he was a Teenage-Mutant-

Ninja Turtle. Easy mistake, I guess. They're both green. We went with the Smallville version because it was a little cooler looking and -we thought - a little more well known. Oh well. He loved dressing up, we thought it was awesome - and that's all that matters.

Fun was had by all this year, and the weather for Trick-or-treating was awesome! There was no wind and it was practically warm! No snowsuits or long underwear in sight! We went out with 4 of their younger cousins and proceeded to canvas Stirling. Wesley tired out after half a bag of candy, but Adam stayed strong. He went back to Grandma's house, emptied out his FULL bag of candy and went out to get 1/2 a bag more! Sadly - he doesn't like the chocolate bars that much, so I have to sacrifice myself and eat those for him. Poor me!