Coby’s Birthday Book

Our precious grand baby, Coby, recently turned 2. He loves the zoo (mostly the train at the zoo), so they decided to hold his party at a pavilion there at the zoo. He had a precious birthday party, with lots of family and a few friends from his Mother’s Day Out group. Of course, we thought he was adorable.

For his birthday, I made him a really cute Quiet Book (if I do say so myself!). I had never done one before, and as many of my projects do, it kind of took on a life of its own. Here are some of the pages:

This is the front cover of the book. Our little guy loves cars and trucks of all kinds (mostly trash trucks!). This is a picture at the beach house, of him pushing his Little Tykes car around the kitchen (only at Nana’s, right?).

This double page is the road to the zoo. In the little yellow and black checkered pouch, I put a Hot Wheels truck. Of course, he knew exactly what to do!

The entrance to the Zoo!

This tiger is held back only by some string….

Coby does love the monkeys!

This kangaroo page may be my favorite. Her pouch unzips, and yes, there is a Joey in there!

For his first birthday, and now his second, Papa and I have given Coby and his family a year’s membership to the Fort Worth Zoo. They go to the zoo a couple of times each week,  for an hour or two. That’s the nice thing about a Year’s Pass….you don’t have to go all day to get your money’s worth (actually, I think 2 visits cost as much as the pass – it’s a great value!). Anyhow, Coby’s treat at the zoo is always an ice cream cone.On this page, I’ve made detachable “scoops” of ice cream, attached with velcro. He can make his own treat!

This page folds out to show a birthday cake with 2 velcro’d candles.

Here are the cake and candles.

This photo is not great, but I put it here because this page is one of my favorites (I’ll try to get a better picture next time I’m babysitting). This is an “aquarium” page. There is a clear transparency (one of the old ones that we used to use on the overhead projector in the old days…I have boxes of them!). sewn over the water. Coby loved this one 🙂

Of course, he would ride in a truck to the party!

We’re goin’ to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo…How about you, you, you? (ok, I couldn’t help but break out into a song or two!)

Papa does love the pachyderms!

Nana loves giraffes!

This was actually one of the first pages. I scanned the invitation onto card stock, cut it out and made its own little felt envelope. The mailbox opens and closes with a loop and button.This little “paper doll” gets dressed for the party with felt shirt and pants, attached with velcro.Mailbox – shut

Our precious Birthday Boy!

I have fallen in love with felt over the past few years. I will show some other felt projects in another post. This little book was made mostly with scraps from other projects. I did buy a tool for making grommets for this project. My friend Betty had given me a gift certificate to Hobby Lobby to thank me for a favor I did for her (certainly not necessary…but ever so nice!) I used that gift card, along with a 40% off coupon to purchase the rather pricey item. Another thing that I bought was a plethera of animal-print ribbon. It was on 1/2 price (as it frequently is) at Hobby Lobby.

I had such fun with this project and could have gone on for another 20 pages! Fortunately, time was my constraint, and it ended up to be only slightly bigger than a breadbox. I wish I could say that this is Coby’s favorite read. He looks at it occasionally, and I think that he might appreciate it later. Every time I make a project, I swear that I’m going to make two so that I can keep one for myself. That never really works out. Maybe  next time 🙂