Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Are You Ready For Some More Quiet Book???

I spent a good two days googling Quiet Books on the internet and coming up with Quiet Book page ideas. I wrote down everything that I wanted to do (far too many ideas) or my own variations and would make basic little sketches of what I wanted a page to look like and proceed!


Here is the rest of what I have done so far:

Counting Page

Counting the caterpillars page.

We tell Tali that the little one is her or the baby, the next biggest one is Mommy, and the biggest is Daddy.

Tali loves this page. We either count the stars as we move them across or name the colors.

Our Seasons Page!

You build the snowman, the rain drops have movement, hanging by the string, you add the sun and flowers to summer, and the leaves fall off the tree.

Our good ol' shoe page... I had such a hard time figuring out how to construct the shoe, but finally came up with something and now I really like it.

Our glove page!
Pretty much only Tali can fit her hand in this glove, I should have made it a little bigger.
Those cotton balls are supposed to represent snow. I always feel like I need to clarify that.

You can clip the butterflies on the flowers, leaves, or grass.



And lastly, the alphabet!

I still plan on adding more!

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

My Quiet Book: It's Just The Beginning

Okay, so I'm making a Quiet Book. I've been making it for the past few months and I am very ready to be done with it, but the perfectionist inside me won't let me. (Curse you, perfectionist Laurissa!!)

I still have to bind it and sew the pages back to back.... and I want to add about 10 more pages. I may have to turn it into 3 different Quiet Books. Right now, it is about 5-6 inches thick. All hand stitched (partly why it is taking so long) and it is made up of mostly craft materials that I already owned out of my craft box. Can you tell that I'm trying to impress you before we move on and actually see it? lol

Okay, this is just a third of what I have done... more to come...

Are you ready...


BAM!
lol I hope I didn't talk it up too much and now you are disappointed. (Can you tell all my insecurities of sharing my handy work are coming out?) So, that is the cover. The 'Q' is for Quiet Book (I know I've already had to explain that to the few (and privileged) that I've shown in person.) I'm not camera savvy and the glare of the flash made it all smudgy.

These two color pages took me FOR-EV-ER! Lots of hand stitching.

This is our ribbon page.
What do you do with this page? Braid it? Feel the different textures? Name the colors? I don't know, but I like it.

Our balloon page!
One of my more favorite ones. You match the balloons to their colors.

Shapes page!
One of the more boring ones. I tried to add different textures to some of the shapes to make it more interesting, it helped maybe the tiniest bit.

The barn.

With farm animal, finger puppets!

And buttoning on the matching fish! This is one of Atalia's favorite pages for some reason.

There will be more, so stay tuned!

Monday, August 8, 2011

Gateway Mall Fountains

Last Monday, for family night, we went to the Gateway Mall and let Tali play in the fountains.

Loads of fun!

She hardly let the water touch her though, the lil' wimp :)






It was a lot of fun and a free activity. Double whammy.
When it was time to go, we coaxed her home with a chocolate sunday and it was a pretty perfect evening.

What I love at the Gateway mall:

1. Z Gallerie- I dream about decorating my home in all of their decorative things. Seriously, check it out!

2. A TWO floor Forever 21!! Yes, indeedy.

3. Their amazing theater! When you buy a ticket, they also have you pick your seats (the down side being the stress of making sure you find your right seat), and their concessions are amazing with SOOO many more choices than any other theater I've ever been to.

I also dream about checking out their Discovery Kids museum-thingy-place!

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Wildest Hair In The West

Atalia has THE CRAZIEST hair sometimes.

In the picture below, I had washed it and brushed it all out and pinned it back, yet it still looked like a mad women's hair lol. I'm hoping as it gets longer, it'll get easier to manage. It cracks me up.

I have no idea where she gets it from.


Mommy discoveries as of late:

1. Do not ask Tali if she wants to eat this or that because she'll just say no to everything, instead just give it to her and she will be happy most of the time.

2. Putting too many sides on her plate will overwhelm her. Fist put on the thing you need her to eat the most of, usually starting from healthiest to least healthiest and she'll have a more complete meal.

3. How I talk to her when I'm mad, is how she will talk to me when she's mad. Like telling me that I'm not being nice.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Happiness In A Tub

It's no secret, my world revolves around Atalia and I wouldn't want it any other way.
So, when she jumps in her tub of toy food, I run (or maybe I just hustle) and get the camera.

I love it when she wears something that brings out the red in her hair.





I thought I would add some updates of new happenings:

1. We've upgraded Tali to a toddler bed and she has been fantastic about it. I think it is the perfect timing for her and she's really shown that she is ready for it.

2. Atalia seems to think that the prophet is anyone wearing a suite lol. After our home teachers left she said, "Where'd prophet go?" indicating to where our home teachers had previously been sitting.

3. I think the terrible two's comes in waves starting at about 1 or 1 -1/2. Right now when Atalia gets mad at me she tells me that I'm not nice.

4. Atalia loves to sing the clean up song while putting her toys in her basket then dumping it back out and doing it again.

5. Tali's been singing a lot lately and it is my new favorite thing.

Hmmm... do all of those updates have to do with just Tali? Yup. That is a good representation of my life lol.

Monday, August 1, 2011

A Hike And Out To Eat

We hiked up Big Cottonwood Canyon. I absolutely loved this trail, it was a lot of fun and beautiful. Tali was an amazing little hiker. We want to get her some nice hiking boots. Wouldn't that be so cute in her little size? We think so.

We didn't make it all the way up to the lake. We thought we should head back for Tali. She cried when we turned around though.

Look at those identical hair colors!








I think Tali had a lot of fun hiking up the mountain with grandpa.

I really want to try to hike this trail again!

After Tali's nap (and a few others), we went out to eat.
Tali ate a whole salad! That made me very happy.







Then we said our goodbyes.

Love that we got a picture of Tali giving Izzy a kiss.

And hugs.


Thanks for coming down Hansen's! We had a lot of fun!