Yummy Advent

This year we are not having a Christmas tree. The reason is simple...not enough room! We feel bad about this since our kids love decorating a tree but thankfully, Mimi and Grandpa are all too happy to have help with theirs and they are close enough that we will enjoy theirs almost daily, when we go by for Alley to practice the piano as well as other visits.

Since we are not having a tree at home, we are trying to do some other fun things to make the holiday season special. One of those is making a gingerbread house. We are doing that tonight as well as making gingerbread boys that we can actually eat! We are also putting up our advent tree that Mimi made for us about five years ago. It is a felt tree about 3 feet tall and you put it on the wall and then each day you read a Scripture passage pointing to the birth of Jesus and then you place the felt ornament for that day on the tree. The ornaments are symbols from each Scripture passage (an ark, a burning bush, Joseph's coat of many colors, etc). If I was a bit more savvy with posting pictures on my blog, I would post a pic here. :)

About now you are probably wondering what the gingerbread has to do with advent or what the tree has to do with food, and the answer is....nothing! Our "yummy" advent is actually another project that we did last night. I got the idea from a book and I was hoping it would be a success. You roll out about 3 feet of plastic wrap and then you give each child 25 Hershey kisses. You lay the Hershey kisses down the middle of the plastic wrap about one inch apart. Then you carefully lay each side of the plastic wrap over the kisses. Then you cut 25 little pieces of ribbon about 6 inches long and then you tie one between each kiss. You can curl the ends of the ribbon so it doesn't look so much like a centipede! Then you attach another piece of ribbon for a loop to hang somewhere. You let your child eat one kiss each day until Christmas, if they give you a kiss first, of course! We made one for Alley and one for Liam but next year I might try to get away with putting 3 kisses in each section to avoid cutting, tying and curling so much ribbon! I wish you could see how cute and festive they look...maybe my New Year's resolution should be to learn to post pics on my blog!

Merry Christmas!