Advent Ornaments Part II

We started this tradition our first year of marriage (or was it last year...I can't remember) to put up the Christmas Tree on Thanksgiving and not put ornaments on it until the week of Christmas.

Instead we decided to celebrate Advent and put up a "Jesse Tree" well we really just use our regular tree for the Jesse Tree but it still works. Last year all I had were pieces of paper that I printed to put on the tree and boy did it look sad, you couldn't even tell what they were so this year I decided to make the ornaments. I was already planning to make ornaments out of light bulbs and was collecting them from everyone so I decided to use all of the standard size bulbs for the Jesse Tree ornaments.

I luckily had some images to work from and started last week while I was home sick and managed to get all of them finished (28 in all) on Monday.

Here is a picture of all of them on the "Jessee Tree" and I am so excited to use them next year the way we intend to use them, one on the tree at a time.



For those of you who do not know about the Jesse Tree, it is an Advent devotional that helps you prepare for the coming of Christ before the Christmas season. The Jesse tree represents the genealogy of Jesus and it tells about God's salvation plan from creation to the coming of Christ using readings from both the Old and New Testaments. Each day you put a different ornament on the tree that has a symbol on it corresponding to passage you read from the Bible, it starts in Genesis and continues though the Gospels to the Birth of Christ.

These are a few of them close up, notice the stump of Jesse, the apple and the serpent, Noah's Ark, a shell, a candle, and at the bottom Joseph's amazingly colored coat!

Some ones you might know...the ten commandments and baby Jesus at the top! Not only do we think that these are fun but we can not wait to share this tradition with our kids one day. Who wouldn't love to put one of these on the tree each day!