The Ladybug and the Flowers - Quiet Book pages 8 & 9

(I quite like today's post title. It sounds kind of epic. Like you're about to hear a cool story.)

Today is, as the title epically states, about the ladybug page and the flower page!

Both of these are classic quiet book pages. We had them in my mom's quiet book when we were kids, and I definitely wanted them in the quiet book for our kids.

The ladybug unzips down the middle, and its spots snap on and off. So, you can store the spots inside.

Ta-da!

On the flower page, all the flowers are double layered and attached with buttons. So, you can button on and off all the different colors, and change them around how you want.

The flower pot also doubles as a pocket, in case you wanted to store the flower petals inside. 

 And that's the story of the ladybug and the flowers! :)

To download the free Ladybug Page quiet book template, click here or on one of the pictures:

To download the free Flower Page quiet book template, click here or on the picture:

To download the entire Quiet Book template, click here or on the picture:

Here are links to the other quiet book pages:

The Lion (Texture) Page

The Farming Page (with finger puppets)

The Apple Tree Page and the Dinosaur Page

The Car Page

Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head Page

The Weaving Page

The Quiet Book Round-up

Car Page - Quiet Book pages 6 & 7

I've started a new blog, The Quiet Book Blog, at Quietbookblog.blogspot.com. If you'd like to see more pictures of quiet books and instructions on how to make one, check it out!

 

Okay guys, this is one of my favorite quiet book pages. It's simple, really, but was complicated to make at the same time. It's simple because its function is simple - you take the car out of the pocket where it's stored and you play with it on the road.

It was complicated to make because each of the little things - the bushes, tree trunks, tree tops, house bits, school, windows - needed to be hand-sewed on. And the yellow house, the little flower patch, and the flag are completely thread - no felt at all. It took a long time. And by long I mean like two whole days. But even though (and probably because) it took so long, I really like the way it turned out.

The little felt car I made :)

Random fyi: the yellow bits in the middle of the road are from a thin yellow-patterned ribbon that I cut up and sewed on with the machine. And the car storage pocket is not felt; it's some blue linen-type fabric I happened to have. In case you wanted to know. :)

I hope our kids have fun playing with it!

Here are links to the other quiet book pages:

The Lion (Texture) Page

The Farming Page (with finger puppets)

The Apple Tree Page and the Dinosaur Page

The Ladybug Page and the Flower Page

Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head Page

The Weaving Page

The Quiet Book Round-up

 I've started a new blog, The Quiet Book Blog, at Quietbookblog.blogspot.com. If you'd like to see more pictures of quiet books and instructions on how to make one, check it out!

The Apple Tree and the Dinosaur - Quiet Book Pages 4 & 5

To download the free Apple Tree quiet book template, click HERE.

Hi guys! Thanks for tuning in for day three of the quiet book pages. Today I'm excited to show you the apple tree and (more especially!) the dinosaur.

The apple tree is a quiet book classic. We had it in our quiet book that my mom made us when we were little.  The apples are on little snaps, and you can snap them off the tree and put them in the bucket.

The dinosaur, I'm excited to say, is entirely my own creation. I haven't seen anything out there like it. I just really wanted a dinosaur page, and this is exactly what came to mind when I imagined it.

He's so happy! So, the yellow spots and purple spines are velcroed on, which means you can take them off and rearrange them or stow them in the stealthy ground pocket.

 

Most everything in the book I did with a sewing machine, but I hand-sewed the dinosaur on for a couple reasons. First of all, his little hands and feet with their fingers and toes would have been nearly impossible to do satisfactorily on a sewing machine. Secondly, I made half the ground a pocket, but the other half isn't, and it would have been more complicated to machine sew him on with the pocket. So, I hand stitched him. I like the way it looks, too. :)

I really love the dinosaur. I think it might be my favorite page in the book, just because it is all my own idea and design. And I love dinosaurs. So, I guess that makes sense that I would love this guy.

So, yeah! That's the apple tree and the dinosaur.

To download the free Apple Tree quiet book page Template, click HERE.

Here are links to the other quiet book pages:

The Lion (Texture) Page

The Farm Page (with finger puppets)

The Car Page

The Ladybug Page and the Flower Page

Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head Page

The Weaving Page

The Quiet Book Round-up

Farming! - Quiet Book pages 2 & 3

Hi folks! Thanks for tuning in for the second day of quiet book pages. Yesterday was the lion, and today is the farm page!

I, like everyone else on the internet, got this idea from Homemade by Jill. There's a couple different versions I've found and pinned on my pinterest quiet book board, and took my favorite things from each of them and combined them.

 When you open up the barn doors, you find...

farm animal finger puppets! And you can take them out and play with them on the next page.

I used part of Jill's template to make the barn, and partly I just winged it. The grassy farm page next to the barn was my idea; I wanted children to have room to play with the finger puppets. I also just made my own finger puppet templates, going off of the finger puppets found on Jill's website, and here, and here. Again, I made my own little changes to make them just how I wanted them. I was a bit worried the barn doors wouldn't stay closed when the finger puppets were stowed in their pocket, but Jason had the genius idea of putting a little latch on the front of the doors that buttons closed. So they're all safe and secure.

And that's the farm! Tune in tomorrow for more quiet book pages. :)

To download the free Farm Page quiet book template, complete with Farm Animal Finger puppets, click here or on one of the pictures:

To download just the free Farm Animal Finger Puppets template, click here or on the picture:

To download the entire Quiet Book template, click here or on the picture:

Here are links to the other quiet book pages:

The Lion (Texture) Page

The Apple Tree Page and the Dinosaur Page

The Car Page

The Ladybug Page and the Flower Page

Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head Page

The Weaving Page

The Quiet Book Round-up

The Lion! - Quiet Book page 1

So, we start off the week of quiet book pages with the lion page! You open the quiet book, and the first thing you see is this guy smiling back at you.

This page is all about textures. The lion's mane is made up of all different sorts of ribbons: soft and smooth, bumpy, wiggly, rough, and so on.

Our baby will be able feel and grab all the different ribbons. Hopefully that'll be fun for her and keep her entertained (at least for a couple minutes)! ;)

To download the free Lion Page quiet book template, click here or on the picture:

To download the entire Quiet Book template, click here or on the picture:

Here are links to the other quiet book pages:

The Farm Page (with finger puppets)

The Apple Tree Page and the Dinosaur Page

The Car Page

The Ladybug Page and the Flower Page

Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head Page

The Weaving Page

The Quiet Book Round-up

Quiet Book Templates

Butterfly Quiet Book

 

The Quiet Book

*I've started a new blog, "The Quiet Book Blog" at Quietbookblog.blogspot.com. If you'd like to see more pictures of quiet books and instructions on how to make one, check it out!*

Hi everyone!

Guess what? Bum ba da dum (that's a trumpet) - today I'm 36 weeks pregnant! That's eight full months! Which means, my friends, that my due date is exactly four weeks away. Yay! We're so excited. We're going to have our baby with us so soon! I'm trying to get everything together and ready now for when she gets here.

Tomorrow I start my once-a-week doctor appointments. I'm excited about that. So far it's usually been once a month, and the last two times it was every two weeks. Now we're so close I go in once a week! And I've finished my prenatal class. I definitely feel more prepared than I did, but I still feel so unready. I've never had a newborn before; am I going to know what to do? She's going to be all fragile and breakable - what if I break her? What if I do something wrong? What if I'm bad at everything? Logically, I know that everything will work out just fine, but I'm still nervous.

Sorry I haven't posted anything in the past couple weeks. I've actually been super busy working on a new project, and wanted to finish it all before I posted any pictures of it. I've made - bum ba da dum (that's another trumpet) - a quiet book!

Aren't you just so curious to know what each of those pages is?

For those of you unfamiliar with quiet books, they're soft books made mostly of fabric that have different activities your kids can play with during times they need to be quiet (like church). I know that me and Jason's baby hasn't even been born yet, but I figure this is the perfect time to get started. I'm sure I was able to get far more done right now than when I actually have a baby to take care of.

I got the idea from my friend Jill, who's also making one. We (my siblings and I) had quiet books that our Mom made when we were kids, and I loved them. So, whenever Jill would mention her project, I got this huge desire to make one too.  I started finding lots of ideas online on blogs, and basically built my pinterest account on quiet book pages that I liked. And then I got busy!

Everyday for the next week, I'll be posting pictures of each page of my quiet book, with a big final summary post of the whole book at the end. The only thing I haven't done is bind it - I'm having trouble finding metal rings that are big enough. But, I hope you forgive me for that and, in the meantime, enjoy all the different pages I've made!