Making Ornaments

I am very excited about Christmas this year. The girls are a little older and can help with many tasks. But the thing I am MOST excited about is making our Jesse Tree. I was talking with a neighbor about something and she mentioned that her church was making a Jesse Tree. I had no clue what it was. She fwd me the email and I knew it was something I wanted to do with my family. I sent the email to Aimee and she was equally excited. I love having such a passionate, fun friend who loves discussing crafts to God with equal enthusiasm. LOL! I googled and found many sites that explained what it was. To my delight there are so many ways to do this year. You really get to make it your own.

This explains what it is some...
The Story of the Jesse Tree
The Jesse Tree is named from Isaiah 11:1: "A shoot will spring forth from the stump of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots." It is a vehicle to tell the Story of God in the Old Testament, and to connect the Advent Season with the faithfulness of God across 4,000 years of history. The Branch is a biblical sign of newness out of discouragement, which became a way to talk about the expected messiah (for example, Jer 23:5). It is therefore an appropriate symbol of Jesus the Christ, who is the revelation of the grace and faithfulness of God.


Some churches combine the idea of a Jesse Tree with Christian symbol ornaments, making and using the ornaments to correspond to the story of the Jesse Tree. However, the Jesse Tree is really an Advent Tree anticipating the coming of Christmas. So, it may be more instructive, especially for children, to allow the Jesse Tree to represent anticipation during Advent while letting a tree with the symbol ornaments be the celebration of Christmas itself.

I found after talking to a few people and looking at my craft blogs that several people are bringing these back! How fun!! I love Santa and the "magic" of Christmas but the real magic, the real story, the REALLY REALLY exciting part is that God loved us-the horrible, selfish-so much that He sent His Son to Earth to redeem us from our sins. I want that to be our focus. I want that to be what is important to our family. I'm hoping that this tree will help the girls see that. I hope it isn't over their heads. I think it might be some but it should be a fun tradition that we will do year after year and with each year I'm sure the girls will understand the story of God better.

Here are some websites that I'm using to help me make the tree and ornaments
http://www.crivoice.org/jesse
https://www.rca.org/sslpage.aspx?=&pid=1628&srcid=1602.html

Here are the ornaments I've made so far. Its taking a while to make them. I'm making about 5 a day so I can hurry and have them ready for Sunday. Oh the stress.




I still have a zillion ornaments to make (sigh...) and then a pot to buy, paint and the branch that will serve as our tree.

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We also made some apple sauce cinnamon ornaments today. SUCH fun! We got messy and it smells like heaven. Seriously! I want to leave the house and go somewhere just so I can come back in and smell my house. We made about 40 today! The girls had a blast making these with me. Reese's favorite part was making the holes with the straw. Saige loved picking her cookie cutter out each time. She was saying all the shapes in a high pitch voice with such excitement! I can't wait to string them with ribbon and put them on the tree with the girls!!