Christ is Born Advent

One of my favorite Christmas memories from growing up is the Christmas advent calendar we did every year. It was a big piece of felt with pockets for each day in December. Every pocket held a piece of the nativity (i.e. the stable, the angel, Mary, Joseph, Jesus, animals, etc) that we then put up on the felt to make a complete nativity scene. It was a fun way to count down to Christmas. I have been wanting to make an advent calendar for my home, and after lots of looking, I decided to make one with pictures and scriptures of Christ. I invited Beki to make one with me and we had lots of fun planning and constructing our advent. Our hubbies helped out too! Here's what we did:

• I found a list of scriptures on line that followed the life of Christ.
• I then found pictures on lds.org that went with each scripture (you can download the pictures there for free for personal use!)
• Next, I re-sized each picture to 3x3 to fit on the 3" wood squares I had purchased.
• Beki was then able to add the scripture on to each picture (you can access these pictures/scriptures here if you'd like!)
• Bryce printed the pictures for us, and then we mod podged them onto the wood squares. We mod podged scrapbook paper onto the other side of the pictures. I ended up spraying the squares with an acrylic sealant because the mod podge seemed to dry a little tacky and the squares were sticking together a bit.

• Matt cut down some pine boards for us and then attached each board with small strips of wood on the back. He also sanded the wood for us so we could paint it.
• Beki and I painted the boards, added the vinyl lettering, and added nails for each of the squares to hang on (Matt drilled all the holes in the squares for us!).

Here is our finished product. I love LOVE it! And Kylee has really been enjoying it so far too. Every day she asks to turn the square and we have loved reading the scripture stories as a family. I hope she (and Tyler and Bradley) will look back on this (new) tradition with fondness as I look back on the nativity of my youth!

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