"A Jesus Advent Celebration" by Ann Voskamp

At the Homeschool Convention this past May, I bought Binding Books Beautifully Kit. I had seen the kit the year before, and I had talked to my husband about it. So, we bought it this year. I have yet to make a book yet, however when I came across this Jesse Tree Advent Devotional "A Jesus Advent Celebration" by Ann Voskamp I knew I needed to bound this thing. It is free with subscribing to her updates (which is free, too). Here's her beautiful blog, A Holy Experience it is one wonderful experience shared day after day, and how she and her family's celebration of their traditions. The other beauty to this book is the pages that talks about Compassion, and the gift of giver verses receiving.  The devotional is 80 pages long with eight pages that have the ornaments you need for your Jesse Tree. What I love most about this project was that I can see it being something that my boys will want to continue with their families as they become adults.

Binding Kit

The Pages

Pages are divided into equal parts. The pages are put into the BBB wooden binder tool. 

The directions in certain areas are a bit ambiguous, but like I told my husband, "They expect us to be smart with this!" =D We started by only doing every other nail because the space is just close enough to make it difficult to hammer it straight.

The pages need to be clip on the other side for the process after this.

Once it is all nailed. The nails need to come up, and the holes will be perfect to sew.

Reson did the first half while I began sewing the bottom half of the pages.

Here is where the directions are quite ambiguous again. You need to savvy in reading/looking at picture to figure out the sewing pattern. I used a crochet thread for this because I knew that it was going to be a big book. When doing a smaller book you can use dental floss or thread doubled.

Another area that seemed vague was the book cover. I recommend you doing AFTER you have sewn the pieces together. We did it before and it was too big even though we measured it. So, do it afterward, and you will get better results.

Book Board (not card board) with a spine.

This was the most time consuming part. If you look closely you will see next to the white paper that there is masking tape. that space is where the needle goes through to connect the pages to the cover. It was very tedious and time consuming being it such a large book. Reson and I joked that the directions say to do your first book small, but why do that when you can do it BIG! LOL.

Here she is all done:

The beauty of this book is how you learn that the story of Christmas came from the very beginning when there was a universe of nothingness. It is beautifully written and deserved to be bound. I hope that this will be a wonderful keepsake for our family. I want it to be a tradition that my boys will grow to cherish doing year after year. Here is our Jesse Tree with the ornaments that we have done so far. Today we went over December 3.