The Jesse Tree

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Each year I'm looking for creative ways to share the Christmas story with the boys, and I'm so excited about what I found this year. I will be up ALL night tonight preparing for it, but it will be worth it! This is one of those things that will be able to be used for years to come, and maybe even passed down from generation to generation.

I got this idea from Ashley at The Creative Place. I googled "Mini Advent Book" and came across her blog, which is amazing!   She created this cute Mini Advent Book for her kids, and last night I got started on it myself.

http://www.thecreativeplace.blogspot.com/

Unfortunately, my envelopes are not turning out as cute as hers! :)

In the process of creating the envelopes for that project, I emailed her last night and she said she is updating the advent book to include the verses from The Jesse Tree. I first heard about The Jesse Tree last year from Ann Voskamp's blog A Holy Experience.  However, when I tried to print out the downloadable book, I didn't have enough toner for the 68 pages, and the content seemed way over my 3 and 5 year old's heads, so we didn't end up using it.

Ashley and I were writing about this dilemma and she referred me over to this blog, where the author had simplified the Jesse Tree for younger children.  Ashley had a great idea to incorporate the two ideas (the mini advent book & the Jesse Tree), and a new idea was born!

Now I'm working all night to finish the envelopes and stuff them with the Scriptures used from The Jesse Tree blog.  Each reading also has a corresponding ornament, so guess where I'm headed tonight? I'm going to be the crazy lady at Joann's at 9:30pm!

In addition to reading the boys a Scripture passage each night and putting a special ornament on the tree, we're also going to continue a tradition we started last year.  I have an old Starbucks advent-calendar "tree" that has 25 boxes. When all of the boxes are turned over, it makes a cute picture.

In each of the boxes I put a fun activity that we will do each day during the month of December.  My problem is going to be coming up with 25 different activities!! (Enter PINTEREST).

I think those two projects are going to keep me busy for awhile.  Thanks to Ashley at The Creative Place and Catherine at Our Jesse Tree for the great ideas!