As a child I enjoyed opening a little door on the advent calendar every day as I waited for Christmas. I wanted my children to have that joy, but know I’m not always successful in follow through with my ideas. Once I had the devotional written and illustrated (the illustrations in the published book were done by Jason Hutton with Tate Publishing) I got the idea to make an ornament for each day. I used my illustrations to do our ornaments. I used many of my original illustrations on the downloadable ornaments as well.

The ornaments have worked well for my family. The children are always excited to put up their ornament so they remind me to do the devotion; to keep me on task, no hanging the ornament until I’ve read.  I have three children, which divides nicely into 24 so it’s easy to figure out whose turn it is. As we spend our days at home the ornaments hanging where we see them often helps to start more discussions about Jesus and what we have read. Some years they have been hung on a small tree. One year I hung a string of beads to hang the ornaments from. Another year we made a paper tree on the bulletin board and stuck the ornaments on there.

As you consider how to focus on Jesus this Christmas season I hope the ideas our family has used are helpful, and that you will share ideas that would be helpful to others. Remember sharing enters you for a set of free ornaments. The ornaments I created are available in Books & Things. They are downloadable with printing instructions.

I hope you are enjoying your preparations for Thanksgiving as well, hopefully creating new habit of true gratitude for all God’s blessings.