Advent Calendar Photos!

 Before we took down our advent calendar, I got Chris to take a couple of GOOD photos of it. Here they are...

Beginning of Advent

End of Advent. Artwork courtesy of the talented Kimberly Swait.

With the ornaments

Jesse Tree Advent Calendar project

Having a young child has really made me want to start establishing some Christmas traditions that keep us focused on the "reason for the season," if you will. Last year I learned about the Jesse Tree advent calendar from my church's Children's Pastor, and I really liked the idea on a number of levels. It seems like a simple way to introduce children to the Bible stories that lead up to Christmas, with just a short reading each day, and I love that it's reinforced with an image for each day. So this year, since my fall calendar is already pretty full, I decided to get a head start on Christmas by making my own Jesse Tree Advent Calendar that will last us for many Advent seasons.

I used this book, The Advent Jesse Tree to get the idea for the symbol for each day, as well as the Bible verses to read to children for each day leading up to Christmas. Our church uses the same book on Sundays during advent, so I wanted to stickHide all with the same thing to keep it familiar (Google searches taught me that there are a number of lists of verses and symbols to choose from). And after many Etsy and Pinterest searches, and some crafting advice from friends, I finally settled on what I wanted to do for our family. I wanted something I could make myself, that would be lasting and could help build tradition for the years to come.

There are a few components to the final result.

1. Advent Calendar - made out of stiff cardboard and purchased at Hobby Lobby; the drawers are 2" cubes. I used Modge Podge to glue 2" squares of scrapbooking paper to each drawer, and after searching high and low at the craft store for some number stickers I could use, gave up and made the number labels myself.

2. Ornaments - I made each ornament out of Paper Clay, which is pretty nice air-dry white clay. It was my first time using it, and was actually pretty easy to work with. For more of the symbols I just made round ornaments that I could paint symbols on, but I had appropriate cookie cutters for a couple of them, and a few more I decided to hand sculpt just to add some variety to the ornaments. Once they had hardened, I used water color pencils to add the symbols to each one. Then I wrote the day and symbol name on the back of each one just so it will be easy to return them to their appropriate boxes at the end of the season.

3. Verses - I typed out short verse cards to accompany each ornament in their respective boxes. Every day had a short memory verse and a longer Bible passage to read. These verse cards contain the name of the symbol, the full text of the memory verse, and the name of the other passage to be read. Verses are rolled up and tied with a bit of string.

4. Tree - so this part isn't done yet, because I haven't decided the best way to go about it. But I need a small tree that we can hang one ornament on every day. My requirement is that it be something simple and affordable (if I need to buy anything at all), and it can't take up too much space in my closet during the year. This isn't to take the place of a traditional Christmas tree, it's in addition to it. (Not that we're very traditional when it comes to the tree anyways).

5. Oh yeah... I'm also planning on one extra piece to this whole thing, but it's hard to explain so I'll just post about it when I'm done.

Ok, so I showed you mine. Now it's your turn!

What's your favorite Christmas tradition? Do you have any projects planned to make your holiday season special?

Christmas from Laos!

We just got a box of Christmas presents in the mail from Sam & Nicole (shipping from Laos takes a long time), and man is it some cool stuff! Chris layed everything out all cool-like and took pictures to share. This is my stash of cool Laotian gifts.

Complete with a set of cool chopsticks, yummy Lao teas, a hand-made book, a tshirt, and a beautiful Nicole-crocheted scarf. Now it just needs to get cold one more time so I can wear the scarf this year! Coolio.

The Skeene's Annual Tour de Florida

Well, the Skeenes have just completed their annual Tour de Florida, with a grand total of 7 cities over 13 days. This year's tour included stays in Jacksonville, Fort Myers, Lakeland, Fort Meade, Riverview, and Orlando/Lake Mary, with a cameo in Gainesville. Phew! It was great to see everyone and we had a good time everywhere we went... we're just a little exhausted. Next year we plan to do it again with Baby Zeke, but we're going to have to shorten it to a 3 city tour (with a cameo in Gainesville, of course).

Some highlights of the trip include:

1. The crazy seafood shack we ate at with my brother in Jacksonville - even if the waitress was evil and told me they don't accommodate food allergies - the dozens of taxidermied animals all over the place were still crazy cool.
2. Finally felting a bunch of my crochet projects, so I can get Chris to take pictures of those once we get home.
3. Cooking with my momma
4. The awesome seafood cookout in Fort Meade, where I ate my weight in shrimp and stone crab claws.

The low point? Realizing just how many allergies I have to deal with that are easy to deal with at home, but take a LOT of planning and special purchasing and whatnot away from home... kind of exhausting sometimes, but our hosts were all super-understanding and helpful about it.

Chris only thought to pull out his camera in Fort Meade, however, so other than the photos my dad took in Fort Myers, we only have some cool shots of the farm at Fort Meade. Chris will probably post some later, so I'll just leave you with a couple of my faves:

Walking off all those crab claws!


Emily and Duncan

Christmas Ideas

If you're overwhelmed by the thought of asking for more "stuff" for Christmas (or people gifting you stuff even though you didn't ask for it), try asking for something a little different this year... like a sheep, or a crocodile, or an irrigation system. Not for you, of course, but for people for whom a gift like this could change lives. Oxfam Unwrapped has a ton of new gift ideas since the last time I talked about them, so you should check it out and see if there's anything in there that strikes your fancy.

I know that personally I'm afraid to give these gifts to most of the people I need to get gifts for, because I'm afraid of offending them by not giving them something tangible that can clutter up their homes. Maybe I'm totally misguided, but I keep hearing everyone's unenthusiastic "uh.. thanks... this is... just... great," when I think of giving these gifts. So if you would like something like this, make sure to tell people so that they know this is a gift you would enjoy. I'm all for it, in case you were wondering. :-)