I have shared before how I volunteer to help with decorations at our church (Mother’s Day, February) . It’s been a lot of fun creating things I wouldn’t normally do and last week was no exception. When determining what we are going to do for decorations we focus on two things: what the message will be and how creative can we get to use as little as a budget as possible. Since Christmas is one of the bigger holidays for church, we wanted it to be a little bit larger scale than we normally do. We first went into storage to see what was already there.

We found these four white trees, burlap, old lamp shades, and a fake tree that I had deleafed earlier in the year in hopes of using it at some point.

We first put the trees up with the burlap and decided to go get some fake snow stuff to go in between. It ended up being a layer of felt like blankets we found in storage, snow batting spread out randomly, and fake powder snow flakes sprinkled on top. We already had a bunch of branches I had used on a thankful display for Thanksgiving, so we reused them here along with some wood logs and pine cones. The Bible verse focus for this display was to be Luke 2:10-11, so I used my Cricut Explore to cut out a few phrases from that text and tied them onto the branches. Oh, and we found these plug in can lights that we used to add some lighting in the middle.

We wanted to hang something from the ceiling as well. It took a while, but we finally found these large and small snowflakes at the Dollar Tree to use.

I fixed up some of the broken old lampshades a few ways. The bare one was actually one of mine I just stripped the fabric off of. The top beige one needed a little oomph so I glued on some trim. I added a pom pom to another and then that bottom one looked like it had been painted, so I glued yarn all around it to cover that up and add some texture.

We found a little tiny lampshade at Walmart to be a filler and I covered that in doilies I had collected from Michaels and JoAnns. I added a strand of pom pom trim to hang on the next one and then spray painted that one on the end white to lighten it up some.

Then this tree was the one I had deleafed. It was old and dated, but I figured it could pull off a wintry look with no leaves. I added some sticks to the base to help fill it in and then added some fake snow stuff and lights. I think it’s always worth looking at what you have to see if it still can be used or repurposed. Look for the beauty in what may not look quite so beautiful as is, but with a little love it will shine. The same goes with people too. It’s the time of the year to remember it’s not all about us especially when we are tempted to make it all about ourselves. -Jess

“¹⁰ But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. ¹¹ Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.’” Luke 2:10-11

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