Monday, December 2, 2013

A Bit of a Creative Bone…

It seems I grew a bit of a creative bone for something other than music tonight! I have wanted to have an advent calendar for YEARS, and never really grooved on the ones I saw online.  The one I really wanted was out of stock, so I decided to make my own this year.

We are reading Ann Voskamp’s book, “The Greatest Gift” for Advent this year, and it comes with 25 ornaments for a “Jesse tree.”  I’m not sure what that is, but I didn’t have the money to buy another tree, and didn’t really want to put paper ornaments on our big tree.  So I came up with the idea of printing the ornaments as small as possible, and doing an advent calendar instead.  I am very happy with the results.

We started with some bright red construction paper, a calendar template made up in Excel, and a banner with a pretty font made up in Word.  We printed some little snowflakes, then we got out the markers and colored little bits of green and red on each of them. We printed out the verse of Scripture from the front of Ann’s book, and then taped everything together with that wonderful new Scotch tape thingy you just run along the paper (SO convenient).  We put it all up on the wall in our kitchen, and affixed a small envelope underneath to hold all of the little Jesse stickers.  We now have a Jesse themed Advent calendar.  I saved all of the templates, and maybe we’ll use a different color each year, and a different theme!

We will read a chapter from Ann’s book every night until Christmas, and the kids will take turns putting the stickers on the calendar.  I think it will be so wonderful! I remember my mom making little sashes that hung on the wall with a cute little poem on top (wish I could remember what it said, and wish I still had my sash), and a piece of candy for each day.  We ate one each night and when we ate the last one it was Christmas!  I loved that as a kid, but wanted something a little more meaningful for us as a family.  I think this calendar and book will be just the thing.  We are getting a late start because we were too busy partying for my birthday yesterday, so we’ll read two chapters tonight and put TWO stickers on the calendar.  I can’t wait! 

Here’s what Morgan and I came up with…

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Jesse stickers and a closer view of the snowflakes…

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The lovely verse of Scripture from Isaiah 11 that is at the beginning of the book…

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Full view, though a little blurry!

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I’ll let you know how the book reading goes. I’m really looking forward to this. It is something I have always wanted to do with my family!

PS…I used the font “Adorable” for the December banner and verse, and the font “KidPrint” for the calendar numbers.  I always like to know that when I see others’ creations, so thought I’d share that too!

2 comments:

Heather said...

Hi Kathryn! My name is Heather and I wondering if you would be willing to answer my question about your blog! If you could email me at Lifesabanquet1(at)gmail(dot)com that would be great!

Kathryn said...

Hi Heather! What is your question?