Happy birthday "2" you!

Today our baby Davin turned 2! It's hard to believe we've had him in our lives for two whole years! I would say one year is more like it ... but I am wrong:) Caden and Tessa still call him Baby Davin!

We had a fun day celebrating, playing party games and making his cake and wrapping presents. All day we kept trying to wish him a happy birthday but he'd say, "No! No hup buddy"!" Until we brought the gifts out ... then he started singing it to himself and continued the rest of the night :) We threw together this super easy and rather lame dinosaur cake this afternoon, with the kids helping to put on the candy and sprinkles and such. Caden kept reminding me that the cake had to bake for half an hour. I love bettycrocker.com for their yummy, easy and cute (if applicable) ideas!

I've been working away all week making this quiet book as Davin's main birthday gift. Which is a little sad because I don't even want him to play with it until Sunday :) I had been looking at quiet books at Christmas but was having a hard time paying $25+ for something that wasn't as cute and I thought it should be. Then my cousin-in-law inspired me by posting the book she made on her blog, and I did some internet searching and found other ideas, so I bit the bullet and accepted the hard work and just did it! It was very fun and I think the kids will enjoy it. My goal was to do 12 pages so each kid could have a couple of pages at a time at church, and everyone would be quiet :) We'll see!

I made it out of felt. I first tried using muslin lined with felt for the pages, but then I had to do a quilt binding and that wasn't working out so well for me, so I just stuck with the felt. In hindsight I'm a bit worried because already I'm like, "Be gentle! Don't stretch it!" That felt just gives so easily when it is used for pockets and things! So some of these pages won't last, but ... c'est la vie! Also, I had to take these pictures really quickly while Caden tried to distract Davin, so I apologize for the poor photography :) I must also admit that pretty much every page is stolen and plagarized down to the last detail, like the font and the placement of planets and the same finger puppets. Copying is the greatest form of flattery, right? I figured why fix something that ain't broke. So here are links to those I owe credit to for such great help in my project!

Inspiration #1: Alyssa
Amy - the one most of my pages are swiped from

Mormon Chic book

Fowler Family book

I wish I had remembered that Amy had hand-drawn most of her city that I copied ... that would have saved a lot of time! This city right now has car-shaped buttons until I can find the little teeny dinky cars I know are hiding somewhere in the toy room. I wanted to run a strip of magnetic tape under the roads, but couldn't figure out a fun way to keep some sort of attractive car on it, so I didn't do it.

Amy's cute stuffed fruit basket idea. I just love it.

The planets are velcroed on so you can switch them around. This was Davin's favorite in the 5 minutes I let him play :)

This is the first page I did and one of my favs. The bottom of the boat is a pocket and inside are laminated cards with animal stickers on them. There are 2 of each kind of animal, so the idea is to play concentration and match the animals.

I thought for sure I got 6 bees in the package, but when I got home I found that one of the bees had separated and there were actually only 5. So that's how we got the heart in there :) These are just button bees and you slide them down the yarn. They all hide under the brown flap door of the hive.

This page was my own idea :) These are wood animals and they velcro in place. Each of their coverings open a different way, then you can take out the animals and play with them. I like it.

The flowers button on and off. I gotta figure out a way to spice this page up a bit - the kids tend to turn right past it. And it was one of the longest to make! Grr.

Finger puppets from IKEA hide in the flap. Another cute Amy page.

On the left is a table cloth with outlines drawn on (rather poorly). In the pouch is a set of sticker dishes that I laminated and stuck velcro to. It's supposed to be table-setting practice. On the right is such a cute page that I know will be destroyed quickly. I laminated some punch-out clothing I had made years ago to scrapbook with but haven't. Written on the clothes is the first line of 3 different songs. So the idea is to clip the clothes to the clothes line in order to write out the song. The kids don't quite get it and can't keep the songs separated, but oh well. I just love the colorful tiny clothespins.

There are lots of mistakes and I have a few more pages in the works, but it has been a true labor of love for my sweet little boy. We love our Davin and are so glad we have him (despite him screaming "Dada!" from his crib as I write).