No, not really.
In fact, it hardly ever looks like the traditional Christmas card around these parts, but now that Halloween has passed, the time has come to start thinking about thinking about this season's celebrations.
I'm definitely firmly entrenched in the "don't flood me with Santa Claus and reindeer until after Thanksgiving" camp, but a girl's gotta plan, and so my brain has already been hard at work - lying in bed at night dreaming up how things will shape up, holiday-wise, this year.
Last year, I came up with my Celebrating the Season concept and we all enjoyed adding another sticker to the trees hanging on the fridge, while focusing on a different Bible story each day and talking about how Jesus fulfilled the Law.
We'll definitely be repeating that tradition this year (and you can, too - click on this link to read all about it and download your free printables), but now that Gv is a bit older and into Cutting All The Things, I thought it might be fun to introduce a new aspect to our festivities and finally create a Jesse Tree for our house.
Imagine my excitement when I met my new bloggy friend Jen from Faith and Fabric and she began telling me about the cool new book she was working on that not only walks you through the steps to create your own Jesse Tree, but gives you all kinds of options for how to do it!
She patiently explains how to create this awesome stitched felt version (which I'm hoping to do when Gv gets a bit older in a few years, so we can work on it together):
But then she also talks about how you can choose to just glue the felt together, to cut everything out from construction paper or craft foam, to print the ornaments out to cut and color, or even to just print and laminate her photos to hang!
She even gives directions on how to make an adorable little felt tree to hang everything from!
This year, my plan is for Gv and I to create an ornament a day using the construction paper and glue method. We'll probably just hang our ornaments along the mantel, or maybe we'll scout out our stick pile the backyard and find the perfect branch to use as our "tree" (like we did here).
In a few years, when Gv is a bit older, I plan to go full-out and sew some ornaments for a more permanent collection, but I'm really excited for us to get started on our temporary edition when Advent starts at the end of the month.
I lucked out, because Jen generously shared a pre-release copy with me to review, but you can get your own copy of this fabulous book here.
I'm so excited to get working on this fun project - which type of ornament matches up with your craft skills? I'd love to hear! Either leave a comment below or email me at lisahealy (at) outlook (dot) com.