Felt Jesse Tree Ornaments

Last year my friend Mandy posted her beautiful set of Jesse tree ornaments on her blog, Everything Beautiful.  They are truly gorgeous, don't you think?  This year in my continual attempt to bring more meaning into Christmas I shamelessly copied her ornaments for our own little Jesse tree.  I thought briefly about trying to come up with my own Advent tree curriculum and ornaments, but it made my head hurt.  Thanks to an early Thanksgiving I had a whole week to whip these up, and now on December 1st I am almost done. 

Here's my version of the first six...

Day 1: The World - symbolizes Creation - read Genesis 1

Day 2: Apple and Snake - symbolizes the Fall - read Genesis 3

 Day 3: The Arc and the Rainbow - symbolizes Noah - read Genesis 6:9-8:22

 Day 4: The Camel and the Tent - symbolizes Abraham - read Genesis 12:1-7

Day 5:  The Lamb - symbolizes Isaac - read Genesis 22:1-18

Day 6: The Ladder - symbolizes Jacob - read Genesis 28:10-22

 

I will post the rest after I finish them up, hopefully soon! 

 

In reading a bit about Jesse Tree/ Advent traditions on the Internet I found that the Jesse Tree is actually an older tradition and there are a lot of variations of the theme of following the lineage of Jesus through out Advent. 

Chevron Fabric Basket

I saw this little basket made out of fabric on Etsy awhile ago.  So cute! So I tried my own version.  The result was too short, too wide, and my interfacing not stiff enough.  Matching up the chevron pattern on the seam was more of a challenge than I expected, too.  It looks good sitting at the end of my bed, though!

Thankful Tree

I saw this Thankful Tree on Pinterest earlier this year.  This is our version:

I put it on the wall next to the landing halfway up our staircase.  We put leaves on it every night on the way upstairs for our bedtime routine. I used faux bois wrapping paper from Target's dollar section for the tree trunk and branches.   The leaves are mostly silk leaves I've picked up here and there over the years.  I write what we are each thankful for on slips of paper and tape it to the leaves.  The kids love sticking the leaves to the tree every night.  Last year I had the kids write down something they were thankful for every night, but it took forever to get them to do it.  This goes much quicker...

We even put a little owl in our tree...

Brave Party

This is my Merida.  Isn't she cute?  There was talk of a Rapunzel party this year, but then D decided that she HAD to have a Brave party for turning five years old!

 

 I loved going to see this movie with D.  Pixar really knows how to make a movie, right?  And since it was all about the mother/ daughter relationship it was special for the two of us to see it together.

  This was D's first party with friends- it was fun to throw a party for little girls!  Unfortunately my time management skills the day of the party where lacking, so I didn't get around to taking photos of everything.  Most of my inspiration came from Pinterest finds- check out my party board here for more ideas.  Most importantly D had a great time at her party!  Here's details-

Invites...

My second attempt at pinata making.  This time I made an old school paper-mache over balloon kind of pinata.  This is supposed to be a wisp from the movie, but D said it looked like a squid.  Either way it turned out a lot better than I was expecting.  It came apart just as the last party goer got a good whack at it so I'll count it as pinata success...

 

 

 I filled the pinata with Merida fruit snacks and set them out for the party, too...

I was going for a medieval/Scottish feel for the birthday banner...

 

This is another paper craft printable from Spoonful.com that I used for decoration...

Arrow cupcakes...

 

I didn't want to go all out with Scottish food that the kids wouldn't eat, so this was my only themed offering- prosciutto pinwheels to look like archery targets.  The rest of the food was very run of the mill party food...

Activities: decorate your own princess crown.  I found the template here...

More Brave printables...

Thanks for coming to my party "goody bags"...

 Sources for goody bags-

metal pails- Target (dollar section)

Merida stickers- Wal-mart

star wands- Target (party section) - dressed up with purple tulle and teal ribbon

butterfly rings- Target (party section)

blue wisp lollipops- covered with squares of tissue paper and tulle

Not So Sweet Halloween Treats

Every year I am dismayed at how much candy my kids bring home from school on Halloween.  Trick or treating yields plenty of sweets in our house- enough for my kids to have a piece or two and then I gobble up the rest.  I am always trying to think of non-sweet goodies to send to school on Halloween, Valentine's Day, birthdays, etc.  This is what we did this year. 

I made up these little cards for D and printed them on card stock.  She colored in each one...

and we attached it to this little tissue paper bundle...

 filled with a little individual Play-Doh.  I think I found these at our local supermarket this year, but I have bought them at Wal-Mart, too.

For I's friends I printed up these cards, and we cut slits for glow stick bracelets (from the Target dollar section.)  I thought I had enough for two sticks for each kid, but I must have lost some along the way

 I used two fonts: Halloween Spider for the lettering, and MTF Sweet Halloween Dings for the little pictures.  I loved all of the images in this font- it was hard to pick just a couple.  Here is the whole set:

 

 

Mehndi Inspired Embroidery

I've been trying to learning about mehndi design- it is amazing!  I'd love to learn how to do actual henna decoration for my daughters someday.  This is a shirt I embroidered for D (she will not wear it, of course) with a Mehndi-ish design.  Mehndi is much more intricate, and I obviously took liberties with the color.

 

Cars Party 2.0

M is crazy obsessed with Cars, so when it came time for his 2nd birthday a "Pa-Chow" (Lightning McQueen) and "May-May" (Mater) party was a given.  Fortunately I was able to reuse a lot of things I had used for I's two previous Cars parties. 

Even though I swore I wouldn't do it again, I made a Lightning cake using a molded cake pan.  It went a lot faster the second time around.  Apple cars with blueberry wheels (thank you Pinterest) were a hit. "Dipsticks" - chocolate dipped pretzel sticks were another Pinterest find...

I reused the checkered flag birthday sign, but replaced I's name with M's.  Though they were a little tedious to put together, I really liked how the Lightning and Mater printables turned out.  Find them here and here from Spoonful.com.  From the table I decorated with a yard of checkered flag fabric, orange cones (that we use for soccer practice,) and a movable road I made by cutting up a piece of black poster board and white tape for middle of the road dashes.  We pulled out ALL of our Cars cars for the kids to play with M's new twisty track.

  

The kids have all requested pinatas this year, so I am learning how to make pinatas!  This checkered flag was my first attempt.  I was inspired by this paper bag tutorial for my checkered flag pinata.  Unfortunately I doubled up on the bags because I used small lunch bags that I thought where too thin to handle a pinata beating.  We ended up having to cut into the pinata to get the candy out after the kids  beat on it for quite awhile.  My next pinata was more successful, but that's a different post.

Cars fun was had by all!  Dad-gum!