Making Quiet Books for Church

** I had to add these links after finding them on UCreate's Top Ten Tutorials. (My friends Kathryn and Melissa and their cute blog Nannygoat are featured in the list!)

Here are some links for making Quiet Books:

Homemade By Jill Quiet Book (Oh so cute and free templates)
How To Make A Quiet Book Her instructions are very detailed with supplies needed and good pics of finished pages.
Modest Maven's Sew A Quiet Book Post She was able to keep her costs under $10! She has great instructions as well
Nap Time Journal's Quiet Book Ideas She used a coloring book for inspiration and drew the pages onto muslin. I like how her pages aren't attached to the cover. That way each child can work on a page, instead of making individual books for each child.
Crafty Chic's A Girl's Quiet Book The puzzle page in her book is one of my favorites. She doesn't give detailed instructions, but has some cute ideas.
Linda Stocking's Quiet Books These are the patterns I used to make my books. The advantage here is that she preprints her pages on Pellon. The disadvantage is the cost of the kits, $35 plus materials. I love how mine turned out. They were perfect for someone with no sewing skills and no ideas of my own. She's having a January sale so check it out!

I Still Have All 10 Fingers

I know y'all like to spend December doing fun things with your families, creating great traditions and celebrating the spirit of the season, but personally, I enjoy spending the month of December cursing, inflicting wounds on my hands and experiencing a general feeling of incompetence.

Every December I experience "Craft Delusion Syndrome." While the Thanksgiving turkey is still settling and people are out buying laptops and beating each other up for the latest toy, C.D.S. sets in for me. I begin to imagine lovely, handmade gifts for all the special people in my life. Visions of blankets, books, and cuteness dance before my eyes. I don't remember that I suck at crafting until late at night Dec. 24th while instead of being jolly and excited, I am crying about my failures in the cold, dark basement and wondering if perhaps I have some gift cards hiding somewhere that I can give instead of my half-finished project.

This year, I decided that I needed to finally make the quiet books that I'd been dreaming of since the beginning of our Fight-to-the-Death sacrament (church) meetings. I kind of knew what to expect since I had made a few pages for my niece and nephew once, but, like childbirth and pregnancy, my memories had faded. So I've been hiding in the cold (there is no heater vent in our tv room), dark basement SEWING! of all things.

I'm happy to say that I actually have a finished (kind of) project with only minor injuries to my hands and soul (for all the cursing). The girls took them to church today and were entertained enough to make the C.D.S. worth it. Although, I did vow that next year all C.D.S. projects had to be completed by Dec. 22nd, so I could at least save a little bit of my soul.

Now I just have to pull myself together enough to make covers for the dang things. Here's a few pictures of the dang cute things. Before you are overly impressed, these are made from a kit that can be purchased from a really nice lady at ldsquietbooks.com.

Each cute vegetable detaches and reattaches with velcro.

More velcro matching fun. Each number and prophet picture detaches. On each number is a well-known thing about that prophet.

This page is supposed to have an I-Spy bag on it. But I didn't have the stamina to make one of those after all the other sewing I did. But it has some dolls and clothes that the girls can play with. Also those boots lace and tie (just like it says! Wow!) Each book has 10 pages of different activities.

This was a huge time commitment and a little bit of money for me. The kits cost $35 each, but don't include all the materials you need to make them. I had a "Party" and was able to get one kit free. I spent roughly $14 for pellon and wonder-under (with two 50% off coupon at Joanne's) and then, since I only experience C.D.S. once a year, I had to buy a lot of supplies like thread, material and crafty things that other people have rolling around in their underwear drawers. That was about $90. That's a grand total of about $73 per book. wowsa! The Pioneer book was more expensive because it required a lot of little crafty things like mini clothes pins and ox fur. I know you can do this cheaper if you play your coupons right and buy the pages on sale, individually. (She has sales twice a year, I think). Anyway, I love these books and hope they will last a long freaking time.