So, what inspired me to create a blog that I swore was forbidden for my personality type? A quiet book. A quiet book? Why, you may ask. Well, because I have spent a fair amount of my life, this summer, thinking and creating one. It is now much to big for my children to go through in an hour. I thought since I have spent a fair amount of trial and error on various perspectives, I might as well document and see if someone else could get some use out of it.
And so, if you care to join me. My quiet book journey:

It all started back in the 70's when my diligent mother (for various reasons I could attempt to explain) created a quiet book for her little kids to keep them quiet in church. I know she had two books that we would look through. One was a simple fabric "preschool" type one. Braiding hair, tying shoes, buckling buckles, mailing letters among others were the activities I remember. The memories I recall from this book were pretty simple, I would flip through the pages and be done fairly quick (I must not have been preschool age when I had this memory).
The second book is what my siblings and I remember spending the most time with. My mom bought a pattern book that I was able to take a look at this last summer. If I recall the title it was titled, "My Reverent Book." It very well could have been called, "My LDS Reverent Book." ( I will obviously have to get exact words from her).
This book was quality, pellon and all. I am sure my mom spent quite a bit of time on it, and it was well worth it. And we were actually learning gospel truths or principles from it.  From this book, the pages that stick out to my siblings and I were a Keep Sammy Healthy page (word of wisdom), Jesus Loves Everyone page (finger puppets from around the world),  Latter Day Prophets (match prophets pictures to their names) and The Nativity (cut out figures to recreate the Nativity). The Keep Sammy Healthy page would engage us for hours as we stuffed food in his mouth (or threw the bad food away in the trash) and unzipped his belly to get it back out.
Well the impact was great enough that each of my older sisters have attempted to recreate a quiet book similar to it. It impacted me enough that not many months after I got married, and started thinking about the possibility of starting a family. I started stirring up ideas of a quiet book, of all things. I had recently returned from a LDS mission in a third world country. I loved it so much and I wanted my children to learn principles that I had gained while there. Preach My Gospel had come to my mission about half way through my mission and I loved it! I also had a week training in the MTC as a welfare missionary. So, my goal was to create a self reliance book for my children for when they got out on their own (okay so I thought big, I know they aren't going to learn all those things from a book, but I thought I would give it a shot).
My initial plans included packing bags for various occasions, (day outings, trips, backpack), making a schedule for the day, planning a healthy meal, budgeting, laundry, etc. Well, if you look through the pages you may not see those, it's because I still have plans to do those. I also wanted to include gospel principles like our word of wisdom Sammy page, add a tithing page and also ten commandments, etc. I spent a lot of thought and then sketched a few ideas out (I am a slow thinker). Well, I got tired of thinking and put them away in a quiet book box. I readdressed the idea shortly when my husband came home with a stack of leather samples from the furniture store he worked for, so I made a few simple pages, but then soon I had a baby and the quiet book included leather samples. I didn't have a very good plan on how the actual pages would come together.
A few years passed, then Pinterest emerged, the quiet book sparks were kindled again. After looking at hundreds of pages, I somehow stumbled upon ldsquietbooks, which is a lady that prints pages on pellon and then you finish them. There were some similar pages to my youth, so I thought this would be my easy way out. She was having a deal for a 10 page packet for $25 dollars. I got the packet. My kids wanted to help me, I let them color the numbers, and then my perfection tendencies came out, I put the packet away in a box, only slightly colored.
So, life ran at a relaxed pace this summer, and I found the packet. I thought, "how hard could it be to finish this packet?" I had a three day period, and I spent pretty much the full three days on it (and some late nights and early mornings) and pretty much finished the ten pages. And....well.... if you give a mouse a cookie....(or me and quiet book to finish.) She may want the leather pieces that were stashed away in the "quiet book" box. I thought why not pull out my leather pieces for the fabric pieces that were required. I look in the box and discovered half finished pages and  papers with plans from years before. Wheels started turning and I thought, now that I have a page size to go off of, I will simple finish the plans. Needless to say I asked for a BIG glass of milk.