We received plenty of snow over the weekend, just in time for St. Lucy's Feast Day and our annual "Christmas Lights Tour". On Monday night we piled in the car, got hot chocolate, and drove around looking at Christmas lights. It's so much more festive when there is snow on the ground!
We also started our Jesse Tree on Sunday evening.
I bought a kit from Illuminated Ink a couple of years ago and finally got it out and put the ornaments together this year. I like to do do-it-yourself things, and I like making homemade things, but this project took f.o.r.e.v.e.r. It's not the fault of the kit, the instructions were very easy to follow and you really only had to add your own markers/crayons and glitter, but it was a very tedious project. If you don't have a tween or teen you could hand the project over to (and I don't), I would recommend choosing a different option. Unless you enjoy coloring and cutting for two solid days over Thanksgiving!
With the way things at my house get broken, I am pretty sure a few of the paper ornaments will be ripped during the next twelve days, or won't survive storage over the next 11 months. I think I will look for a nice little hand sewn set on Etsy at some point.
The other thing I did was to print the Jesse ornaments from Paper Dali's site. I printed them off, cut them out, and glued them to a larger circle of construction paper. The children can then color them while we are reading the Jesse Tree story of the evening. I also punched a hole in each one so we can string the circles on hang them up. That way they are still participating in the story each night, but I don't have to try and hang six ornaments on the tree each evening.
7 comments:
We were hoping to go out Sunday night to look at lights, but due to "blizzard like conditions", decided to stay home. Hopefully we can get out tonight. Your ornaments are cute!
I was wondering if you did the lights. That is a very sweet tradition. I want to study more on St. Lucy next year and incorporate the lights into it. You are right. The snow makes it so pretty. Is that your house? Very pretty!
you are invited to follow mynblog
who is this Steve guy? he wrote the same thing on my blog. maybe we should invite him to follow our blogs!
I bought that Illuminated Ink Jesse Tree ornaments kit too. it is beautiful, but I'm so glad someone besides me also feels like it was taking forever to get those ornaments cut out and colored! when I saw your photo of the ornaments, I thought hmm i wonder if Jen is going to say anything about putting them together. ha! you did. I've got mine all ready to bring out, but I wonder if the concepts are a little too mature for my 3 year old. and a very nice idea to go lights hunting on St. Lucia's feast day!
Hi Jen~ Wow, we don't get snow here so that photo is amazing! We have the same lights tradition:-)
Our first Jesse eduction was with a tree poster. Honestly, this was the quickest and easiest Jesse tradition I have seen. It's not the craftiest but it was the best way to start. This year I bought the Illumintaed kit thinking we could "graduate" from the poster to the tree. Hasn't happened. For anyone wanting to get started, this is a GEM of a kit! We're sticking with it for now:-)
http://www.pauline.org/JesseTreeKit/tabid/343/Default.aspx
I did have teen to help but when we originally made our ornaments, but I have a confession- I kind of like to cut things out. :) Weird, but true. Surprisingly, the ornaments have held up very well. I don't even store them very carefully.
We did a whole day study on the traditions of "St. Lucia Day" last year, but this year we just had a short discussion about it. Touring Christmas lights on that day would be perfect for us- I'll make note for next year.
The snow is spectacular! Thank you for sharing. :)
who is this Steve guy? he wrote the same thing on my blog. maybe we should invite him to follow our blogs!
I bought that Illuminated Ink Jesse Tree ornaments kit too. it is beautiful, but I'm so glad someone besides me also feels like it was taking forever to get those ornaments cut out and colored! when I saw your photo of the ornaments, I thought hmm i wonder if Jen is going to say anything about putting them together. ha! you did. I've got mine all ready to bring out, but I wonder if the concepts are a little too mature for my 3 year old. and a very nice idea to go lights hunting on St. Lucia's feast day!
Post a Comment