Christmas Decorating

I woke up Tuesday morning knowing I was going to have to get pretty much all of my holiday decorating done that day.  I'm SO thankful Cary surprised me and told me he was staying home to work on some projects.  I'm also SO thankful Ellery had preschool, one less set of hands to occupy while I'm busy at work.

It was a lot of fun to pick her up from school and see her face when she walked into the house to see her Christmas tree with lights and a bow, all ready for her help to hang the ornaments.

We have a box of ornaments from Cary's childhood that are fun, whimsical and perfect for her little hands.

My advent calendar is my favorite part of the season (and decorations). 

I made these cones from scrapbooking paper and under each cone is a small object and a slip of paper with the meaning of the object.

For example:  Under day #1 is a small box of raisins.  The meaning of the raisins is, "Grapes make jelly and juice, raisins & wine, but Jesus didn't need grapes to perform his first miracle.  Read John 2:1-10"

My hope is to do this mini devotion with Cary and Ellery each day so we can focus on the REAL meaning of Christmas.  I love the significance of each item.

And just to give credit where credit is due, a girl from my MOPS group found the advent activity.  She shopped for 4 hours to find all of the little pieces and one night at MOPS we just assembled bags of the materials.  The cone idea is from here.

I was up pretty late but got the majority of the decorating done and boxes put away.  There is something about having a decorated house that can warm a heart and put a smile on everyone's face.