Last Minute Gift Ideas for Her, Him (or whoever): Kids Funny Quote Book

I don't know about you, but if it wasn't for the funny stuff my kids say and do I'd pretty much pull my hair out six days of the week.  Somehow just one of their unintended, hilarious one-liners can turn a bad day good any day of the week.   I used to write them all down in a MS Word document...and then I had my second kid.  Yeah, I haven't even written the poor guy's birthday in his baby book yet.  He's 2.5...years not months.  But what I do, nearly daily, is share the funny stuff my kids say on Facebook.  Turns out FB is actually a perfect way to keep all the quotes in one place.

This year, I decided I would go back through my year's worth of Facebook status updates as a way to remember all the funny stuff my kids said and turn it into a little book.   It's the perfect last minute gift idea for daddy...or if you're a dad, mommy...or grammy or pops or whoever!  I can just see my husband now flipping through it while sitting at his office....those little nuggets of kid wisdom melting the frustrations and stress of work away.

I know I say this about every project, but this one was really easy to do.   I worked in Powerpoint because, well, that's just what I do.

I started by dividing a slide into four equal sections with one vertical and one horizontal line.  I used the lines as a guide for my pages.  Each of the rectangles is one page.  The vertical line is the center fold line and the horizontal line is where I cut the two pages in half.   TIP: To add more slides, DUPLICATE the first slide so the lines are in the exact same spot.

Now just go through and type in the funny quotes and/or pictures of your kids....

Print half of the slides on card stock (or regular paper, although you may be able to see through the pages if you don't use card stock).  Once they are printed, load the pages back into your printer so they're oriented in a way that when you print the other half of the slides, they will print on the backs. 

Print the second half of the slides.

Cut your pages apart...ONLY cutting on the horizontal line.   I bet you can tell why that picture my daughter drew is included in our 2013 funny stuff book, eh? 

Take half the stack of pages and sew - like with an actual sewing machine - down that center line to bind the pages together.   I used a pretty large (#3) straight stitch. Repeat with the other half of the pages.  

And here's what it looks like after it's bound. 

 

To design the cover, I used PicMonkey - a free online editing program with lots of font and overlay choices.  Then I saved it to my computer and uploaded it into PowerPoint.  FYI - It's actually better to use a landscape photo, but I just love this one of my little guy even though it didn't fill the whole cover.  (BTW If anyone knows what a NootNoot is, please let us know....once he got out of the phase of telling everyone "You are nervous",  he switched to calling everything a "NootNoot" or is it "NewtNewt"?

The cover design should be in one of the right boxes so that when you fold it, the fold is on the left.  Print out the cover.

Now stack the cover piece and the two previously-bound sections of pages together.  Sew them all together to bind the whole book together.  Fold down the center binding and you're done!

I told you it was super easy and what a great way to preserve all those funny things your kids say. 

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