Celebrate the beauty of Christmas all year long when you visit the National Christmas Center in Pennsylvania.
This what has been keeping me busy the last week. Our church put on a Free Interfaith Nativity Exhibit for the community. We invited friends to bring their nativities to be displayed (around 400 nativities came to the church) and they could also sing in an adult choir, kids choirs and other musical numbers. Great event to bring everyone together. I was amazed with how many people came. It was a packed house every night. The picture on the stage was painted by a local artist. It was very beautiful. Live nativity was outside so you saw this as you are driving by the church. I sang in the adult choir. I love singing Christmas music. All the time and effort was worth the out come. I am ready to enjoy the rest of the holiday season.
As I have indicated in my two previous posts I have been involved in helping create a Festival of the Nativities. Our goal was to stick closely to the time period when Christ was born. I thought I would share some photo comparisons of some of the construction. Here is the beginning construction of the side walls of the gym where tables would be set up and some of the nativities would be displayed with the next photo being the finished project. Next is the gate at the door of the gym where people enter to view the nativities. The next photo is the finished gateway. The pile of rocks you see are to the well that was constructed near the stage where the live nativity was displayed. Below is the finished well looking at it from the other side. Notice the rock wall behind the well? Believe it or not that was made by forming newspaper into rock shapes, spray painting them and glueing them to cardboard. We then tucked pieces of spanish moss here and there to fill in the gaps. And lastly was the live nativity area. This was the part of the project that was my assignment. My son constructed the stable and a friend from church built the manger. A mother and her son built the backdrops and painted them for us. ' We used different shades of brown and beige fabric on the floor then spread raffia around to look like hay (we were not allowed to use hay or straw because of fire code so raffia was a good substitute.) Adding lots of dried grasses, weeds, fig brances and bamboo helped to fill in areas and hopefully made it look authentic. I will be posting one last time in the next few days with final photo's taken from my new camera that just came today.{Merry Christmas to me ;-)} Hopefully I can figure out the basics of it and the pictures will turn out better than my little point and shoot camera.
While unloading my car , preparing for "A Night in Bethlehem" ward activity....I noticed that we have finally received a little fall....in the parking lot no less....Beautiful still the same. I was asked to prepare one of the "tents/booths" for...
Last weekend I helped a few ladies from my church plan our wards Christmas party: A Night in Bethlehem. We wanted to create a Christmas experience that celebrated the life of Christ. I'm on the enrichment committee,
Tips for planning a festival of nativities or church Christmas party. Lots of ideas for displaying Nativity Sets.
This what has been keeping me busy the last week. Our church put on a Free Interfaith Nativity Exhibit for the community. We invited friends to bring their nativities to be displayed (around 400 nativities came to the church) and they could also sing in an adult choir, kids choirs and other musical numbers. Great event to bring everyone together. I was amazed with how many people came. It was a packed house every night. The picture on the stage was painted by a local artist. It was very beautiful. Live nativity was outside so you saw this as you are driving by the church. I sang in the adult choir. I love singing Christmas music. All the time and effort was worth the out come. I am ready to enjoy the rest of the holiday season.
Tips for planning a festival of nativities or church Christmas party. Lots of ideas for displaying Nativity Sets.
reflect on the true meaning of Christmas with these nativities from all around the world displayed at the Parkway Nativity Festival in South Jordan, Utah.
The first weekend in December was the Festival of the Nativity at the church again. We went on Saturday to check it out. (Right after An...
Charleston born living in Atlanta. Unapologetically Southern. Thrifter extraordinaire. Style and design with thrifted finds. Co-host of #thriftwithus
Tips for planning a festival of nativities or church Christmas party. Lots of ideas for displaying Nativity Sets.
This was a night like no other. In and amongst all the hustle and bustle of holiday preparations it was so nice to walk into this humb...
Every year, around Christmas time, I seem to find myself in need of some Bible costumes, whether to play the part of prophets from the scriptures, or to play the nativity scene. This year, I finally decided to make my own. These Bible costumes were so easy to make, and I was so pleased with how they turned out. I made a few in my own size and tried them on to make sure these would work since it was such a boxy pattern. The costumes pictured above range in size from 3 - 10 years, at a guess, but I also made larger ones. Since the tunics tie with a sash in the middle, you can billow out the top above the sash if a child is too short for the costume. Initially, I Googled to look for patterns and found several different DIY blog posts that sounded fabulous, but I wanted to sew the costumes, not glue them, and the directions to sew them were either too vague or too complicated for my skills and time constraints so hopefully this helps someone else in that in-between area that I found myself. Originally I was going to cut the fabric out in the shape of a “T” and sew around it, but I was worried that the placement of the sleeves would look awkward so this is really just a simple box. In a few cases, I did make the sleeve area slightly wider when I cut the fabric, but I dropped that after a while and it seemed fine. Here’s a basic sketch of what I did, but I tried to explain it better below. 1. I doubled the fabric by folding it in half, then cut a rectangular piece of fabric approximately the length and width of the age of child I had in mind. You can lay a child’s dress out on the first piece of fabric to get an idea of the required length and width. I did this with the first piece. Where possible, I like to cut the fabric so that the fold was on one side of the fabric, as this was just one more piece that didn’t need to be sewn. 2. Once I had a width of costume that I liked, I cut out a neck line. I was originally just cutting them out like below, but then I started folding the fabric vertically (so it would be down the long edge in the picture below), and cutting along the corner created by that fold, to get the same neck cut, but with slightly less effort. I made the mistake of cutting the first one too wide so I tried to make sure to accommodate head size after that, but not so much that the neck would cause the tunic to fall off the shoulders. (On the one I cut too wide, I made the neck into a v-shape by folding the fabric in the center and sewing a line onto the fold to keep it in place.) 3. I sewed along the long edge of each side of the fabric, leaving a 6-10 inch opening on each side for arms, and stopping about 6 inches early at the bottom to ensure that the fabric would not hamper walking. This did not matter as much on fabric that I left really wide like the one above, or really stretchy fabric but I cut some of my pieces in a much more narrow line. By the way, I found my favorite fabric was the stretch, thin, wrinkly fabric that reminded me of muslim. 4. I turned the completed tunic inside out, and voila, done! I cut strips of fabric to make belts for the tunics and just left the costume at that for the most part, but for a few of them, I also made a robe/vest. See step 5. x 5. To make the vest/robe, I did the exact same thing as I did with the base layer, except that I made the vest/robe piece slightly more narrow – once again, eyeballing it, so if it’s wider or narrower, it’s not really a big deal. After I was done creating the second piece in the exact same style as the first, I cut the fabric down the center of the tunic. For a little embellishment, you can also take a contrasting piece of thread and sew all around the edges of the vest/robe. I did this with the sash that I cut out as well. 6. For the headpiece, just cut out a rectangle of fabric and a sash – no sewing required! About me: I love to create stuff! Find me @iliketocreatestuff. Goodreads Book Giveaway My Nativity ABCs by Esther Yu Sumner Giveaway ends November 20, 2017. See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter Giveaway
This weekend we went to a Nativity display in the city done by our church. Ben and I had gone last year and were so impressed, and we wanted to make sure and take the kids this year. We went Friday night. There were thousands and thousands of nativities on display, and they decorated so beautifully! I was amazed at all the different ones. They had a fun 'search and find' activity for the kids. Miss E enjoyed that. This whole village display was awesome. The whole things was beautiful and a great way to start the month off right remembering the true meaning of Christmas. If you hear of a nativity display near you, I would encourage you to go. So fun!
Wow! This December meeting was incredible! We combined with our Temple 1st ward and Spanish Branch sisters, and also encouraged everyone...
James Trippett from Bon Air Church of the Nazarene in Kokomo, IN brings us this styrofoam manger scene. They used black landscape fabric to create a backdrop for cotton balls hung from fishing line. They made 6 trees out of small dead trees found in the woods and spray painted them white and front lit them for effect. […]
Outdoor Nativity scene at Pine Grove Methodist Church
