Thursday, December 13, 2012

Tour of Nativities

My Tour of Nativities continues with one of our first nativities.  
I bought this the year Beau and I were married (it's our 15th Christmas)...
It's nothing special, I'm sure I picked it up at WalMart or Target...
it's ceramic but durable.
I've always let my kids play with my Nativities...with supervision of course.


I have these mini suitcases in our living room, I use them for decor all year round, and I usually set up one of my nativities on/with the suitcases...I think it's fitting, with all the traveling this little family did!

I've always liked this baby Jesus...so sweet...When Madison was little she would always want to nap with baby Him!

Here is the far away look...it's sharing a table with our fish tank...Jesus can hang with the fish, wasn't he a fisher of men?!?
 
do you have a special way of displaying your nativities?

Monday, December 10, 2012

Tour of Nativities

Christmas isn't Christmas until the Nativity has been set up.
...or Nativities....

As a Christian and a pastor's wife, I've been asked the question so many times, "Do you put of a Christmas tree or a nativity?"...
that is such an interesting question to me.  I never thought of only doing one, not both...
We do both...
one tree and multiple nativities all over the house! (I guess I have a few tiny fake tress scattered around the house also)...

I see no reason why we would have to choose one over the other.

Anyways...
I love my collection of nativities...
and I decided to give you a tour of them over the next few days/week...

this first one I picked up at a weird yard/book sale thing that we went to a few years ago.  It was a house & property that had 1000's of books, bookshelves everywhere, inside and outside all under tarps and easy-up's, etc... and most of them were for sale...it was the oddest thing...
anyways, the girl child pointed out this glass nativity sitting on top of some books, I asked the lady how much for it and she said I could just take it...okay!  

Not all the pieces were there, I don't think, sometimes it's hard to figure out if you  have a Joseph, Shepherd or wise-man...I feel like this one is missing Joseph and Shepherds...

I set it up this year in our kitchen window on a cake stand.  I had some cranberries that I didn't use at Thanksgiving (yes, they are real)...and then some moss that I found in a cupboard in the garage, not sure where that came from.  But, anyways...I just threw them together for a fun little display...

and here is my whole kitchen window...(with a small fake tree in the back right corner!)...
Do you have more than one Nativity set?
Where do you display it/them?
Merry Christmas...

Monday, December 3, 2012

Advent Calendar

This is just a short little post to share with you the Advent Calendar I made today.

My mother-in-law sent me this link to the FREE Dayspring Printable Advent Calendar

and I just printed them out on white cardstock,
cut and glued them to colored cardstock on the back and then hung them with clothespins to some greenery that I hung around our entryway...
it's totally simple and easy...
and LOVE the Advent Calendar
all the references are about God's Promises Fulfilled, with a Bible verse and then a prompt about the promise/verse...
example
Dec 3...The Promise of Light "I am the Light of the world. Whoever follows Me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."  John 8:12... Where will you walk today in order to bring the Light of the world to the world?
be jealous of my mad photography skills!
 The greenery hanging around the entryway with the Advent cards clipped down both sides
can you find the camel in this picture?
again, mad skills!
 Close up of one side of the 'calendar'...with the Advent cards clipped..
 cards on other side...
back of cards with scrapbook paper so when we flip a card over after reading it that day it will still look nice.

Starting sometime this week I will start my Nativity Tour...I will show you my collection of Nativities and where/how I display them!

Do you have an  Advent Calendar you use?