I have to find my own objects to fill the boxes, but I am so excited about doing that. The first one was easy, since the theme for day 1 is the tree of life, I just put a little christmas apple ornament inside. Phew! I'll need to be creative this year, but I know I will have so much fun collecting symbolic objects for all 25 boxes in the years to come. I also want to print out each days verses on pretty cardstock tags and put them in their appropriate boxes as well.
Tonight we began our 25 night advent vigil, complete with
first Christmas baking
Tree up and ready for decorating
lighting of the first advent candle
scripture readings, (the tree of life)
(Gen 2:9; 3:22-24; Isaiah 11:1-5; Rev 2:7; 22:12-14)
and songs from our beloved Readers Digest songbook.
Deck the Halls, Haul Out the Holly, Here We Come a Caroling; The Holly and the Ivy; O Christmas Tree;
Being the non-conformist rebel that I am, we completely keep advent to the tune of our own drum. I like to put a different series of symbolic ornaments or decor out each day and have developed my own symbolism and scriptures stemming from that. So day 1 centers around the tree and parallels the tree of life, day 2 we string up the garland which parallels Jesus being the vine and we being the branches, etc; day 3 the lights and Jesus being the light of the world. (as you can tell from the pictures I usually get a bit ahead of myself as we already have some garland and lights up. I get so excited about decorating I have a hard time holding myself back!)
Stay tuned for more as we rejoice over the Savior who came as a helpless babe and will come again as conquering king.
17 comments:
Wow! It all sounds awesome! I'm going to look forward to copying, I mean, er...reading, many of your ideas! Happy Advent!
Do you bake every day of Advent??
And love the cabinet "calendar"!
Lovely:) We started decorating today but have more to do.
The cabinet calendar is LOVELY. I don't have an advent one yet cuz I haven't found just the right one... still on the hunt:)
TTFN
How beautiful and exciting! :o)
How very pretty everything looks. Blessings to you and yours at this holiday season!
I like that calender! Looking forward to viewing all your wonderful plans this Christmas season. I hear you on the decorating part... I get so excited, too!
I love the calendar too. And I'm impressed and exhausted with your advent diligence. I'm lucky if I remember to put out the advent calendar, and then I'm lucky if we remember to do it every day (lol) I'm such a slacker.
ach.... nothing to get exhausted over dear friend! It really just involves a few years of collecting meaningful decorative items and tying them into a symbolic celebration that spans 25 days, it really only involves minutes a day...
I love your photos! And your calendar is great! I just love coming here to see what you have been up to or what you are going to share with us today.
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
truly lovely...
Love your advent ideas. It all looks like great fun and learning. I am using the abc's this year. I used the book B Is For Bethlehem by Isabel Wilner. I have mine all ready for the girls. The families are coming tonight. They will take it home with them. Target has great boxes this year (with the little drawers). Have fun.
Great idea!!! I am going to try to think of some idea for my family... Everything looks beautiful and delicious!!!! ;-) Leanne
We have a very similar advent calendar "box" that I got at a Restoration Hardware store several years ago. I'll have to make sure I post a picture of it in one of my upcoming holiday posts. Do you have your advent info in electronic format? I'd love to see it.
Blesssings!
You truly are so creative. What lovely ideas. Your children will cherish the traditions you've begun.
I'm off to see what today's scripture reading is. Thank you so much for this.
I love your advent calendar... I like it a lot better than mine! And I love how you are finding your own symbolic ornaments and using the scriptures to go along with them... I might use some of your ideas, thanks for sharing!
Blessings!
oooohhh.... lots of excitement over advent I see =) I love it. I got all your emails and I would love to accomodate you and give you my full plan in advance. Truth is, this is yearly work in progress with regular tweaking, and like I said, this is my first year actually using the calendar cabinet. In past years we have just kind of "wung" it with me reading the kids verses as we put up certain ornaments and stuff, and singing a few songs that we looked up in our songbook.
And we maybe only did this 10-15 times through the month of December, not every night. This year I hope to start to establish a more "precise" and regular schedule to follow, and like I said, start collecting special treasures for the advent cupboard.
I was just going to fine tune each day as we went, but since you all are so eager to have something in advance, I tried to plan what our themes and verses will be for this first week of advent. I still need to decide what songs we will be singing. But for those of you who wanted MORE. INFO. NOW. here is what I have in mind.
Themes
1 Wreaths, God's Eternal Existence, Love, Forgiveness.
2 Tree, Tree of Life
3 Garland, The Vine and the Branches
4 Lights, Light of the World
5 Red apples, the fall
6 Pinecones, Dead in trespasses.
7 Balls, God So Loved the World.
Scripture Readings
1 Isaiah 9:6; Psalm 103:17, Jer 31:3; Isaiah 45:17
2 Gen 2:9; 3:22-24; Isaiah 11:1-5; Rev 2:7; 22:12-14
3 John 15:1-6; Romans 11:17-21
4 John 1:1-5; 3:18-21; 8:12; Matthew 5:14-16
5 Genesis 3:1-6, Romans 5:12-19
6 Ephesians 2:1; Colossians 2:13
7 John 3:16,17; 1 Timothy 1:15
love it! and i love that you have made it your own unique celebration. kudos.
Thank you, thank you!
Post a Comment