Jesse Tree Shrinky Dinks

Our family has done a variety of advent devotionals over the years.  We rotated through them depending on the ages of the kids.  We have done Adornaments (from Family Life - I don't think they sell them anymore), Jesse Tree, What God Wants for Christmas, Symbols of Christmas, Family Countdown to Christmas & Before and After Christmas (both by Debbie Trafton O'Neal), Stories of Christmas Carols, Twelve Days of Christmas, etc..  The hardest part is what to do each year.  I tend to want to do some of all of these instead of picking one focus for the season which may be the better plan.  I told this to Kyle and he said, "But I like it all!" 

The older kids have done all of these pretty thoroughly.  But Lila, my six year old, probably only remembers What God Wants for Christmas.  So I think I will do JESSE TREE this year with her and everyone else.  We already have ornaments.  Mara made them several years ago with shrinky dinks by tracing the pattern for the ornaments and coloring them.  They shrink down to the perfect size for a small advent tree.  Maybe I'll have Lila make another set to add to the fun this year.  We loved doing the shrinky dinks, so I thought I would share the idea.

You can buy books to go with the Jesse Tree ornaments.  Ou local library even has a book.  A Holy Experience blog has a devotional and ornaments as a free gift to download.  You can find more devotionals and patterns online as well.  Years ago we used the patterns here.

Here's a picture of how some of the ornaments turned out! 

This post is linked to Works for Me Wednesday and Women Living Well.