Alexander's Quiet Book

For Christmas I decided to make Alexander his quitebook. This way he could take it up to Hervey Bay with him and play with it. So glad that I did it and that it was finished in time. I'm quite proud of some of the pages and how they turned out. The detail on some like the phone page was me needing to make the page look real but it was worth it in the end! Here are the pages that I made for Alexander's quiet book.

Getting back into sewing

Each book has a finger puppet page so for Alexander I decided to make a Noah's Ark page. I was quite excited to have finished the first finger puppet and then remembered that there needs to be 2 of ever animal so I'd need to make the same animal again. Bah! But it was ok. They are very cute! When I was making Noah I asked James what he thought about it. His reply was 'That's an awesome galah!'. He thought he was being encouraging. It was supposed to be a person. I decided to add a few more details to make it look like a person. I cut out waves so he can make the flood and also made a sun so that it can be before or after the flood. I was quite happy with the overall page.

The rainbow and a mountain pocket

Noah and his ark

The first 4 animals

Plus 2 cheeky monkeys

The flood!

The waters have gone down. We are safe to return to land

 The next page that I made was a train page. Alexander just loves watching trains and playing with trains so it was a given that I include one. (Daniel had a racing cars page and Eliza had a road works one). I had a vision for how this page would look and thanks to Clip Art I am happy with how it turned out. The train track was very fiddly to sew all the track down but going slowly helped.

Train track

Station and lake added

Train station storage

Trains on the track plus trees and houses

Finished train track

The next page was a single page. At bedtime we read Alexander his Bible. Each night we read the following story and then he always asks to read David and Goliath. He has read it so many times, he can pretty much retell the story with only a small amount of help from us. It is just the cutest! I've probably posted this before but here he is reading the story with James one bedtime in November.

Because of this, when James and I were talking about ideas for his quiet book, we both agreed that we needed to include a David and Goliath page. I fortunately came across one when I was looking on the internet so that gave me guidance. Then I added some details to make the characters look similar to the pictures in his Bible. I decided that Goliath could come off the page so he could die when the stone hits his head but David would be sewn down. The finished product is this.

Basic David and Goliath

David with his sling shot

Grumpy Goliath

Goliath is now armed and so is David

'The stone his Goliath between his eyes...

And killed him. The Philistines fled and David became a hero.'

Because this was a single page, I looked through some quiet book blogs to see if there were any good ideas for the other single page. I came across an iPhone page and thought it was perfect! Alexander loves pretending to chat on the phone so this would work well. I again had to add some of my own details to make it more realistic. Things like the button at the base of the phone, a camera at the front and on the back and different apps that we regularly use. I thought the storage pocket was great so stole that idea too.

Deciding between coloured numbers...

Or the same. I decided on the same

The basic back

Numbers and app as well as camera and bottom button

The back including camera and light

Storage pocket

The last page I chose to do a food page. Alexander really enjoys cooking in the play kitchen so I decided to make a play kitchen in his book. I found a Starbucks breakfast page that gave a lot of the ideas and then added some of my own bits to it like the storage fridge, moving stove top dial, toast and spatula. Pretty happy with how this worked out too.

Plate a cutlery

Fridge with eggs

Stove top including moving dial

Cooking some eggs

Anyone for bacon and eggs?

Banana

Storage fridge

Egg flipper

All done. Cup of milk, serviette, toast, eggs, bacon, sausages and banana. Nice, big breakfast

All packed away.

I used the same template for the Alexander front page making his little person. I think this is my best little person.

Front page complete

Book is bound together

  Alexander got his book on Christmas day and kinda just flicked through it but I guess it was overwhelming for him with all the presents that he got. He did like looking at it on the way up to Hervey Bay and back again. It is also something that I have noticed Eliza and Daniel more playing the different activities as they have gotten older rather than younger so hopefully he will enjoy playing with it more as he gets older.