Jesse Tree Ornament Swap #1 Ornaments

The Jesse Tree Swap ornaments for both swaps are all on their way to their new homes and should arrive in time for the first Sunday of Advent.  I'm still amazed that 1. there was enough interest to fill two swaps and 2. that the swaps both went as smoothly as they did.  I really expected there to be a disaster of some sort.  Last Monday a package arrived at my house that was damaged and had been taped up by the post office.  Shock, relief and total thankfulness pretty much sums up how I felt when I opened the box and found all of the ornaments in tact.  Crisis averted!

I've already had a few people ask if I'm going to do this again next year.  I'm considering it, but if I do it will only be one swap and I will start it a month earlier.  It will really all depend on how busy life is in our house next year.  We have some big changes coming up in the coming year so I will have to wait and see if I will have the time to take on another swap.

Back to the swap.  It was my original intention to put together a little booklet that had a picture of each ornament and the bible story that went with it.  Unfortunately I didn't anticipate spending a week battling a cold and then spending another week with a cranky teething toddler all while trying to get a handle on our first year of homeschooling.  Toss in some other happy circumstances that have pretty much sapped most of my energy and you have the reason why that little booklet never came into existence.

I'd still like to give you a run down on each of the ornaments so when you open up your box of ornaments you know which one goes with which day so I've created a few photo collages of the ornaments.

Beginning with the top row and moving left to right:

Day 1 Creation: Genesis 1:1-23 

Day 2 Creation: Continued

Day 3 Fall of Man: Genesis 3:1-15, 20-23

Day 4 Noah:  Genesis 6:5-20, 7:1-23, 8:1-17, 9:1-13 

Day 5 Abraham:  Genesis 12:1-5, 13:14-16, 18:1-10, 21:1-3 

Day 6 Isaac:  Genesis 22:1-14 

Day 7 Jacob:  Genesis 27:41-44, 28:10-17

Day 8 Joseph:  Genesis 37:3-4, 17-28 

Day 9 Moses:  Exodus 2:1-10, 3:1-12 

Day 10 Moses Continued:  Exodus, Chapters 7-14, 19, 32

Day 11 Ruth: Ruth 1:1-16, 7-22

Day 12 Samuel: 1 Samuel, Chapter 3 .

Day 13 Jesse:  1 Samuel, Chapter 16 

Day 14 David:  1 Samuel, Chapter 17, 19:1-2

Day 15 Solomon:  1 Kings, Chapter 3 

Day 16 Elijah:  1 Kings, Chapters 17 & 18

Day 17 Elisha:  2 Kings 5

Day 18 Isaiah's Prophecies:  Isaiah 8:6-7

Day 19 Isaiah:  Isaiah Chapter 6

Day 20 Daniel:  Daniel 6:11-17, 19-25

Day 21 Jeremiah:  Jeremiah, Chapter 31

Day 22 Angels:  Luke, Chapter 1

Day 23 Zechariah, Elizabeth and John the Baptist:  Luke, Chapter 1

Day 24 Blessed Virgin Mary:  Luke, Chapter 1

Day 25 The Visitation:  Luke 1:39-56

Day 26 Joseph:  Matthew, Chapter 1

Day 27 The Nativity:  Luke, Chapter 2 

Day 28 Magi: Matthew 2:1-12

O Antiphon: O Wisdom

O Antiphon: O Lord of Lords

O Antiphon: O Flower of Jesse's Stem

O Antiphon: O Key of David

O Antiphon: O Radiant Dawn

O Antiphon: O King of All Nations

O Antphon: O Emmanuel

The O Antiphons begin on December 18th.

The ornaments and the bible stories for each one are the same as what is used in the Holy Heroes Jesse Tree DVD.  You can also see the Jesse Tree videos that go with these ornaments by signing up for their free Advent Adventure.

I hope you all have a blessed Advent!  I know my children can't wait to use all of our lovely new Jesse Tree ornaments.  We will be praying for all of you this Advent.

Celebrating Advent: St. Nicholas Day

I realize I'm a few days late in posting this, but I figured I'd share some pictures of the little things we did to celebrate St. Nicholas day.

Early last week I gathered up some scraps of red construction paper and made a bishop's miter for each of our chocolate Santas.  I then took gold pipe cleaners and fashioned them into croziers.  After a few minutes I had three chocolate St. Nicholases on my hands.  Another blogger mentioned that she used candy canes for a crozier.  I think I'll be stealing that idea for next year.  Anything that keeps me from having to dig through my craft supplies looking for pipe cleaners is a good thing.

On Wednesday night after Ellie's school Christmas concert, I realized after the kids went to bed that I forgot to tell them to leave their shoes out for St. Nicholas.  So I very clumsily quietly crept into their rooms to retrieve their shoes.  How I managed to not wake Ellie and our super light sleeper Katie is beyond me. I had the hardest time finding a pair of matching shoes in Ellie's closet and I thought I was toast when I had the genius idea to use the light up Mickey ears that she had gotten when we were in Disney World.  I was unaware that they were crazy strobe light mouse ears.  Aaah! Madeline, of course, was awake. When I snuck into her room she wanted to know what I was doing.  I did the mom thing and asked her why she wasn't sleeping and left the room with her school shoes.  Well played, Mom, well played.

So after I went through the shoe rounding up fiasco that felt like it took about an hour but was probably more like 90 seconds, I rounded up the bags of chocolate coins and Santas turned St. Nicholases and set them up next to the dog's bed.  I figured it made the most sense to put the shoes next to the fire place, but I don't think the dog appreciated that I put three pairs of shoes filled with chocolately goodness right next to him.  I have to give him props.  He's got a lot more self-control than some of the kids.  He may have looked longingly at the candy but he didn't even hazard to sniff it.

The kids were pretty excited when they woke up on St. Nicholas day to find shoes filled with candy.  I didn't have any time to snap pictures of the kids with the candy.  Katie made a beeline to her shoes as soon as she walked into the family room.  Ellie wanted to eat chocolate for breakfast, but I didn't think her teacher would appreciate a sugared up kid so I told her she'd have to wait until after school.  She decapitated her St. Nicholas as soon as she got home.  Isn't she darling?

After school Madeline read The Secret of St. Nicholasto her little sisters.  It's a nice story book with beautiful illustrations.  I think it made a great addition to our celebration of this generous saint.

Preparing for Advent: Make An Heirloom Jesse Tree

After I wrote about how my family celebrates Advent using a Jesse Tree, Lisa linked to her beautiful hand made Jesse Trees, do-it-yourself Jesse Tree Kits and her awesome pattern for the same.  My girls love having their own paper Jesse Trees on their bedroom doors, but I loved the idea of having beautiful handmade Jesse Tree that can be displayed somewhere on the main level of the house. During Lent we have a felt Jesus Tree that is in a prominent location and the girls will go over to it and discuss the different bible stories that go with each of the symbols on the tree.  I imagine they might do the same with a Jesse Tree of this sort.

Lisa was gracious enough to send me a copy of her Jesse Tree pattern so I could make one for my girls and tell you about it.  The pattern is very straightforward and is very easy to follow if you have some basic cross stitching or sewing experience.  Over the course of an afternoon I sat down and cut out all of the patterns and the felt for the ornaments.  This beautiful Jesse Tree is certainly a project.  Personally I find cutting out the pieces for the pattern to be the easy part, but sewing it all together is where you need to find a bit of time to get the job done.  This isn't a project that you want to start a day or two before Advent.  If you have a toddler in the house, like me, you'll want to give yourself a bit of time to make this.  I find craft projects like this are best done when little ones aren't around to "help".

I had hoped to have most if not all of this Jesse Tree finished so I could show you how well it turned out for me, but after being sick and then having to tend to sick children I'm afraid I haven't gotten much further than cutting out the ornaments.  Comparing this pattern to the Jesus Tree I made two years ago I'd say they're very similar but I like how complete the directions are with Lisa's pattern.  I also like that these ornaments are stitched together.  I learned the hard way that gluing felt doesn't work well when I made our Jesus Tree and that meant I wound up having to make several of the ornaments twice.

Lisa's pattern comes with the readings for the Jesse Tree.  After paging through our Catholic Picture Bible,I'm pretty sure you can match up most, if not all of the readings with this bible.  I also compared it to the Holy Heroes Jesse Tree.  For the most part, the symbols and reading from the Holy Heroes version match up with this one.  To keep my girls happy, I'll be making a few additional felt ornaments to coordinate with the Holy Heroes Jesse Tree.

If you think you'd like to make a beautiful Advent heirloom for your family check out Lisa's Etsy shop Navy Mango.  If you're not the crafty type and you love the look of this great Jesse Tree, you can purchase a ready made one from her.

Preparing for Advent: The Road to Christmas Day

During the Advent season I like to have an assortment of books available to them that help to prepare them for Christmas.  There are a lot of lovely books out there that do an excellent job of steering children towards the real reason for the Christmas season instead of focusing on the secular consumerism Santa theme that seems to be quite prevalent these days.  Jan Godfrey and Marcin Piwowarski's The Road to Christmas Dayis a beautifully illustrated book that takes children on a journey from the annunciation to the wise men seeking out and finding baby Jesus.

I really liked the cadence and repetition that is found throughout the story.  By the end of the story children will not only know the story of Christ's birth, but they'll likely be able to tell you it was two thousand years ago and they will surely have picked up on the fact that everyone involved in this story looked and listened and listened and looked all along the way to Christmas day.  And isn't that what we want our little ones to do this time of year?  We want them to listen to the true meaning of the Christmas  season.  During Advent we're not in a countdown to a big gift grab on December 25th, but rather we're preparing our hearts and minds to celebrate that our God came down from heaven and became man to save us.

The conclusion of the book ends with two lines that can be turned into a wonderful conversation starter with young children to help them further understand the importance of the Christmas story "Now the world was different. The world had Jesus, born on the very first Christmas Day."  Those two final lines are the perfect set up to discuss just how profound the birth of baby Jesus was to the world.

The illustrations in this book are really quite nice.  I'm not sure what medium was used, but the pictures have the richness of oil pastels, and there's a look of texture that just makes these pictures seem very interesting.  My littlest one enjoyed looking at the pictures.

Overall, this would be a very nice book to add to your Advent and Christmas reading for your children.    It would be a great book to read to children in religious education from about preschool up through first grade.  It will be one of the books I read to my kindergarten religious education class this Advent.

I was provided with a review copy of The Road to Christmas Day by the publisher, Pauline Kids, in exchange for my honest review.  To learn more about this book or to purchase a copy visit Pauline Media.

Preparing for Advent: Jesse Tree

A few years ago I introduced the Jesse Tree to my older girls as a new Advent tradition.  Each night from the first Sunday in Advent up until Christmas Eve we gather in the dining room.  We light our Advent wreath and since a verse from O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.  That is followed by us praying a decade of the rosary using the joyful mysteries and then we round it out with our Jesse Tree.

The first year we did the Jesse Tree I was all over the the place with it.  I had found some free printable ornaments which I liked, but I didn't like that there were only twenty four ornaments.  That same year, Holy Heroes released their Jesse Tree DVD.  Midway through Advent I abandoned the Jesse Tree ornaments we started with and switched over to the Holy Heroes one because I liked the ornaments better, there were enough for every day of Advent, they included the O Antiphons and best of all, they had videos for each ornament where my girls could listen to the story and see either a felt story board display of the story or something similar such as the Holy Heroes Adventure guides acting out a scene from the bible.

Last year I wasn't sure if we were going to watch the videos.  Instead, I was going to have Madeline read the corresponding stories from the picture biblewe use for our Jesus Tree during Lent, but the girls insisted.  The Holy Heroes Jesse Tree has become family tradition.

In all honesty I was going to wait another week or two to write about the Jesse Tree, but Holy Heroes sent out an email today saying that their Jesse Tree DVD is their Deal of the Day.  So you might want to head over there and check out their sale price if you're interested in this Jesse Tree.

The DVD includes the file for the printable ornaments.  I tinker with the size a bit and make ours about half the size they have on the PDF document.  I then take our shiny green foil wrap and cut out a tree for each of the girls.  They hang their trees on their bedroom doors and tape a new ornament on it each night.  They really enjoy coloring in their ornaments by candle light each night during Advent.  I hope when they are grown that they have fond memories of celebrating Advent.

In Advent, Christmas Epiphany in the Domestic Churchthey also have a nice Jesse Tree.  With this one you can print out and color the symbols for each of the readings and read the corresponding story from the bible, or if you have the time, you could match up the stories with those in a children's bible.  They have some great ideas for different ways of setting up a Jesse Tree.  In addition to the Jesse Tree, Advent, Christmas and Epiphany in the Domestic Church has a lot of other great ideas for celebrating these seasons with your children.

If you want to do a Jesse Tree but aren't sure you can commit to doing a story/ornament each day, you might like the St. Joseph Picture Book Celebrating Advent with the Jesse Tree.This book has eleven Jesse Tree readings each with a corresponding full color illustration.  The readings are divided among the four weeks of Advent with the first three weeks having three readings and the fourth week having two. 

Preparing for Advent: A Catholic Family Advent

Advent can be a hectic time of year.  You're busy doing a million and one things trying to get ready for Christmas.  It's important to take a break from the hustle and bustle and make yourself and your family slow down here and there and take a few moments to focus on what Advent really is [a time to prepare your heart and mind for the splendor of the miracle that is Christmas].

Susan Hines-Brigger's A Catholic Family AdventPrayers and Activities is a nice book to help you focus yourself and your family on Advent and preparing for Christmas.  Unlike some daily Advent books, this is one that can be used year after year since it offers an entry for the maximum number of days you can have in any given Advent season.  For each day this book offers an entry with the following categories: scripture, reflection, talk together, prayer and activity.  The entries can be read over the course of a couple of minutes so even the most impatient children should be able to sit still and listen and discuss the topic for the day.  The author suggests you read through the book ahead of time and check out the suggested activities so you can make changes to fit your lifestyle where necessary.  For the most part, the reflections seem like that are primarily geared to the adults, but the other categories are all perfectly suited for the whole family.

The book has beautiful full color pages that both children and adults will find attractive.  I'm so used to white pages with black type that I was pleasantly surprised to see the colorful pages.

I like how the book essentially brings Advent to you.  If your family is busy and you think there simply isn't any way you'll have time to celebrate every day of Advent, I'd suggest you take a look at this book.

I was provided with a review copy of A Catholic Family Advent by the publisher, Franciscan Media, in exchange for my honest review.  You can purchase this book here.

Preparing for Advent: A series to help you get ready

Year after year I feel like Advent sneaks up on me before I have enough time to prepare for it.  I assume I'm not the only one who realizes a day or two before Advent begins that I didn't order the books I wanted for myself or my children.  So in an effort to be better prepared myself and to hopefully help some of you plan for this season, I have decided to do a series entitled Preparing for Advent.

I haven't decided everything that will be included in this series, but there will be a number of books aimed at helping you get ready for Advent and Christmas.  I'll share reviews of some of the Advent and Christmas books that are in my review pile as well as some of my favorite story books to read to the girls and my religious education class.

I know it's October and it may seem like I'm super early with these posts, but I think it helps to have some lead time in case you decide you want to order a book or look for it at a local bookstore.  I've had more than a few instances where I saw a book that was perfect for celebrating a particular feast day the day of and found myself wishing I had known about it a week or so beforehand.