Dec. 12, 2008 - Advent Basket of Joy
This has been the absolute BEST idea I have seen for many years. I'm on a Crafters 4 Christ elist and one of the members sent this idea through, plus shared her files.
I've adapted some of the ideas (updated them a bit) and added more into the basket. It originally came as tags that you put on each present. Let me back up and say what it is exactly!
It is ideas for each of the 25 days in December til Christmas. There is a scripture reading, a service idea, a warm your heart idea, a quote, AND a suggestion of a carol to sing EACH DAY, with a small present to open.
I ended up typing everything in and making it into a booklet, so it could be reusable over the years.
So I have the ideas on one side for each day AND I went online and found 26 carols to sing - which was harder than you think!, and put them on the opposite side for each day.
Smile There are a lot of carols that we sing over and over, but it actually was hard to find 25 AND then on the last link I looked at, I found 2 and I had to include:
It is on the last page of the booklet.
I did two last year - one for an auction and one for a friend. The auction one was harder, because i had to make it generic, so it would fit anyone. Much easier to make it fit one family!
This year, I had been watching for small things all year long - garage sales would be great for that! Small Christmas items, books, home schooling extras, etc.... and I started to make some Baskets in late Nov. (smile - Hard to get things done before you need them!)
I prayed about what families I should make one for - a friend, a family going through a hard time (one lady from our church has cancer and I thought it would lift her spirits), a shut in / gramma or another Home Schooling family. All of these families had been a blessing in our lives over the year and I just wanted to bless them back in some way.
I loved putting them together - what fun looking at what I had gathered and deciding what might work for each person or family. I wrapped them, then tagged them and put them in a box for delivery.
It really brought me a lot of joy putting them together and I know the different families appreciated it. Perhaps this is something you might want to think of doing next year.
