Quiet Book Part Two

Part Two!  I posted part one of Liam's Quiet Book Christmas present a few days ago.  If you missed it you can find it here.

I finally got the rest of his quiet book pages done.  I have 10 pages for the second book.  I considered doing more, but I felt like I have spent so much time on this already that I want to feel a sense of accomplishment and take a break.  I can always add more pages later and would love to come up with/find more ideas.

Also, I had some questions about selling books like this.  Once I got to thinking about how much I would have to charge, it's quite a bit.  I would probably have to charge around $80 per book because it takes me an average of a couple of hours to do each page and then there's the cost of the materials.  I'm not sure who would actually want to pay that kind of money so it doesn't look like there's any sort of business venture in my future. 

Here's the cover of book number two:

 

Page One: Baby Moses can go in and out of the basket and the basket can be weaved.  (Inspiration)

Page Two:  Moses and the burning bush.  The sandal buckle is from an old watch band.   (Slight inspiration found here)  Caleb helped me figured out how to make the foot actually look like a foot.  You don't want to see my original sketches for this page. 

Page Three: Moses parting the Red Sea.  I used hook and eyes to close the sea.  (Inspiration)

Pages four and five:  The ten commandments.  This one was created solely by yours truly.  That's also why it's kind of plain, but I really wanted a page that had to do with numbers.  So with this page he can put all of the numbers in order.

Page Six:  Nehemiah rebuilding the wall.  (Inspiration)

Page seven: Sampson  (Inspiration)

Page Eight: David and Goliath (Inspiration and free pattern)  The rock just has velcro on it.

Page nine: Jonah.  I really like this page.  The whale's mouth is a zipper and Jonah tucks safely inside.  :-)  (Inspiration and free pattern)  I modified the pattern and added a zipper though.

Page ten: Daniel and the Lion's Den.  The lion's nose is a button and his mouth can be buttoned shut to save poor Daniel up there.

 

That's the end of book two!  I haven't actually attached all of the pages together but Caleb found a grommet set thing for me today that I think I'm probably going to use on each page instead of making button holes.  But I did used some D-rings from an old belt and some cute ribbon from my baby shower to hold the book shut.  

Quiet Book Part One

If you don't know what a quiet book is, it's a book with "quiet" activities for lil tots to keep them entertained when you need for them to be quiet, like at church, a doctor's office, or whatever.  I knew that I wanted to make one with Bible stories for Liam to play with during church.  So when I saw felt on sale at Jo-Ann's for $1.99/yard, I went and got a cut of almost all of their different colors (Yeah, I was THAT person).

I started looking on pinterest for ideas because when God passed out creative juices all I got were some leftovers.  A lot of my ideas came from other people's creations so I'll try to give proper credit where it's due.  I actually found an Etsy page that had a ton of really cute and creative pages but the patterns were $3 a piece and well...I can't afford that.  I was able to make my own patterns from just looking at them.  A few pages that I made I was able to find free patterns online, and those were awesome and a huge time saver!  My goal was to get it done before Christmas and have it be Liam's Christmas present, but I got a little excited about it and started working on it during every free moment I had.

After an uncountable number of hours working on a quiet book for Liam, I finally figured out an end plan and that included making two books instead of one.   As I was about half way through making the pages that I had planned to do, I realized that I was going to need two books because all of the pages were going to be too thick to make it into one book.  So to start off I decided to make a book with all Genesis stories in it.    

This is where the Part One comes in.  I haven't finished the other book yet but I'm only a few pages away so I'll post that project once it's finished.

I now present you with the Genesis Quiet Book!

This is the cover.  I didn't do anything creative on it.

 Page One:  Days of creation.    (Inspiration came from here)

 Page Two: Garden of Eden  (Inspiration)
The little basket holds apples and those apples can be snapped to the tree.

 Page Three:  Garden of Eden Page Two (Inspiration)

The animals have magnets in them and the idea is the match the animal with it's home.  I liked this page before I started messing with the magnets.  I ordered some magnets from Amazon and I was expecting magnets around the size of a watch battery.  The magnets I got ended up being a fraction of a watch battery, but they were still strong.  I wanted to use super glue on the magnets because I definitely did not want those going anywhere!  Well the super glue kind of messed things up.  It turned everything white.  Bright white.  I was able to color over some of the dried glue with colored pencils but I couldn't fix all of it.  Also, the super glue seemed to mess with the magnetism a little bit and made the magnets not as strong.  Anyway, I still like the page, I just wish it turned out a little bit better.  I should have just gone with velcro but magnets seemed more fun.

 Page Four:  Noah's Ark (Inspiration with a free pattern)

The ark is magnetized (with a magnet from an old purse) and when you open the door there are animals in the ark.

 All of the animals.  I put little bows on all of the girls.  :-)

 Page Five:  Sodom and Gomorrah.  (Inspiration)

The inspiration from this page wasn't exactly the style I wanted for my book but it's where I got the idea and then just came up with this page on my own.  That is Lot and his wife and if you turn her around she becomes a pillar of salt.  I used a piece of sandpaper for the "salt" but after a few coats it was hardly recognizable as sandpaper so I added some more sand for texture.

 Page Six: Abraham and Isaac  (Inspiration)

This page is pretty self-explanatory.  They have belts with d-rings that can be undone.

 Page Seven:  Joseph and his coat of many colors (Inspiration)

His coat is a puzzle with velcro.

 Page Eight - a catch all bag.  (Inspiration)

This way if we are at church and Liam has pieces everywhere and I don't have time to put them all back in the right place, they can all be shoved in here for safe keeping. 

 That's all for this book!  And this is how thick the book ended up being:

I attached it using binding rings and making button holes in each page.  I need to get bigger rings for them but this is just what I had on hand right now.

Hopefully I'll be posting book number two soon. 

Week of August 17

Sunday - My parents, grandparents, and sister all got to come to church with us!  We went out to eat after church and then they all headed back to St. Louis.  :-(

Monday we went to Fulton and met up with Caleb's family to celebrate his parents' 30th wedding anniversary.  We had a fancy lunch at the Bell of Tacos.  

On Monday when we got home our internet wasn't working.  In the past few weeks this has happened a few times and every time I call they tell me that there is an outage in our area.  Tuesday morning it was still out so I called and there wasn't an outage.  They said they would have to send a technician out to take a look at it.  The tech came out and tested our modem and said that we had absolutely no internet signal at all.  He went outside and checked the cables in a box on the back of our house and said that there wasn't any internet there either.  He climbed the telephone pole in our back alley and said that it looks like someone had cut the line.  He had to go up and replace the whole thing.  I'm not really sure how that happened but it must have been while we were gone on Monday.  I don't know how it could have happened though.  Our internet went out again on Saturday but according to Facebookland it seems as if it was a whole Charter thing.  Even friends in St. Louis were making comments about their internet being out.

The next few days Liam took lots of naps.  He was pretty tired from a long weekend and then being gone most of the day on Monday.  He also cut his fourth tooth on either Monday or Tuesday (still all on the bottom).  He's been pretty crabby the rest of the week and his gums are really bumpy so hopefully he will have several more come through soon. 

We've been in a heat wave at the end of this week and Thursday it was really hot.  I got Liam's turtle sandbox thing scrubbed and cleaned out while he was taking a nap.   This feller was hanging on the pool.  This is no false alarm cicada this time.  This one was as alive and active as the Word of God.  I got the longest stick I could find and flicked it off, but it still just hung out right around where I was.  I "accidentally" dumped the sudsy water on it.  In my defense, it was Method soap from Target and was all-natural.  Oh the monsters I slay for Liam's sake.

I also found lots of those creepy brown shell things like I found last time but they were hanging all over the back deck.  I don't care if they aren't real bugs.  They still shiver me timbers.

 Once Liam got up the next door neighbor started mowing so we had to wait a little while before we could go outside and go "swimming".  Perfect time to get out the turtle tent that Aunt Amy got him for his birthday!  Now, I'm no country bumpkin and have honestly never even been camping.  So, from the size of the tent bag I was expecting something around the size of a pop-up hamper.  You know, just big enough for Liam to fit inside it.  Heh.  Right.  It's probably about 4.5 ft x 4.5 ft.  Really, all three of us can sit comfortably in it.

Liam loved going in and out of it.

Eventually, we made it outside and Liam got to play in the water.

 "Look, mom!  I found Nemo!"

 This is where he sat while I got all of his stuff cleaned up.

We gave Liam his abacus back for his birthday now that he is walking and doesn't just pull it down on his head.  He has had fun playing with it...and stacking toys on it.

Oh, you know.  Just chillin.

Curious George snuggles.

Eating frozen strawberries make his teething gums feel better!

This was him before church this past Sunday.  When did he get so big??

Here's a video from last week, actually.  I had two blog posts to write about last week and didn't feel like taking the time to add this video.  I'll warn you ahead of time that it's not that entertaining but I'm posting it for those grandmas who can't get enough of him.  It's of Liam and Caleb reading Liam's favorite barn door book.  He starts trying to make a few of the animals names out in this video, but he is still learning those sounds.  I just think it's cute how he likes to lift each flap and remembers exactly which ones lift down, lift up, and lift to the side.  What a smart little cookie.

Liam's Batman Birthday Party!

Liam's birthday party was quite a job, but it was great!  I am very grateful for everyone that took pictures for me that day so that I could just enjoy the day.  Thanks to Lydia, Lori, my mom, and Amy for the pictures in this blog!

We started the celebration Friday night.  Amy gave Liam her present.  He was pretty excited about them!

He loved his jacket, sippy cups, and turtle tent.

Friday night I hung Batmans from the ceiling.

 The next morning Liam was so excited and kept pointing and saying "Baht! Baht!"

 That morning Liam also enjoyed some snuggles from Cody who was singing him happy birthday.

 I attempted to make a Gotham City in our dining room.  (Can you spot Batman?)

 My dad brought us a helium tank he got from a yard sale and we had Batman balloons!

 

Here's the cake.  It was supposed to have the Batman logo but it ended up with just a bat on it.  So I added Liam's beloved Batman to it

 This is the smash cake that Schnucks provides free with first birthday cakes!

 For the food we just had simple things like hotdogs, chips, beans, cole slaw and stuff.  I made labels for everything.  Caleb helped because honestly (and don't judge me) I've never even seen any Batman movies.....or really any superhero movies.

Liam's friend, Ellie, came dressed as Batwoman! 

 Ha, I'm not totally sure what's going on here.

 Her cape had ruffles on it.  :-)

 

Batman!  He wouldn't wear his mask on his face, but I thought it was cute on his head.  Actually just about an hour before the party I lost his mask and had to go make him a new one really quick.  I still haven't found the first one.

 Hanging out with my birthday boy!

 With Grandma Suzy-Q!

 Grandpa!

 Great-Grandma!

 Great-Grandpa!

 

With Aunt Amy

 

 Hee hee  Two goofballs

 Liam just being the life of the party.  :-)

 Lots of Batmans all around!

 

Stripping down so he can eat his cake.

 Ready for his cake!

 The first taste

 He can't get it in there fast enough!

 I think it might be time to get cleaned up

Heading to the bathroom for clean up.  Do you think he enjoyed that?

 I tried just wiping him down but that wasn't working so well.

 We had to do a full-on bath.

 Just some post-bath play with Batman toys!

 Time for presents!

 Ezra enjoyed Liam's presents.  :-)

 Some post-party entertainment.

I am so grateful for the love everyone has shown to my baby boy.  I'm glad that all of our family that lives within a couple of hours were able to show up to the party.  When we announced the party in the church bulletin, I really didn't expect very many other people to show up because I knew that there were other things going on that day but we ended up having a house full of people for almost 4 hours straight!  Also, I put in the church bulletin to not bring presents.  It's not that I minded for people to give him presents, but I didn't want anyone to feel obligated to get him one.  For some people gift-giving is a love language, others don't necessarily share in that.  For those who would be getting him a gift just for the sake of having something to bring to his party, that really wasn't necessary.  I also didn't want anyone to not come to the party because they didn't have a gift or didn't know what to get him, etc.  Just coming and hanging out was more important to us than the gifts.   Liam already has so many toys and clothes and things and I didn't want to be overwhelmed.  I knew that if I asked for no presents that he would get a manageable amount of presents from those who insisted on bringing them, and that's exactly what he got!  Some people blessed Liam with goodies, others blessed Caleb and me by not giving us more stuff than we know what to do with.  :-)  It was a win-win all around.

Thanks to everyone who came and enjoyed the day with us, and to those who couldn't be there but still thought about us that day.  We are blessed to have all of you in our lives!

Also, Liam, don't expect a party this big for your second birthday.  Or third. Or fourth.