Decorative handmade trees for Tu b'Shevat

The celebration of Tu B'Shevat  is the New Year of Trees which is one of the four New Years referenced in the Mishnah or Mishna. This is a minor Jewish Holiday in modern times serving as a tree planting festival and celebration. The holiday is believed to have originated as an agricultural festival indicating the onset of Spring and the fiscal new year of agriculture.
The Hebrew spelling of Tu B'Shevat is ט״ו בשבט‎. This holiday occurs each year in the month of Shevat on the 15th day. Tu B'Shevat is known as the New Year of Trees, Rosh HaShanah La'llanot (ראש השנה לאילנות). Each year on Tu B'Shevat Israelis and Jews across the globe plant trees to celebrate, along with commemorate and honor loved ones on this Jewish Arbor Day.
Decor your home with handmade trees.

Decorative trees

 

Tu B'shevat - Coloring Book For Adults - Jewish 'New Year for Trees' Festival: Tu B'Shevat Colouring Collection For Teenagers & Grown ups

Trees, Earth, and Torah: A Tu B'Shevat Anthology

Tu b'Shevat paper letters

Creative letter paper cutting for a Tu b'Shevat decoration.

Burlap napkin rings for Tu b'Shevat table

Although there are no specific dishes that have traditionally been prepared for Tu B’Shevat, the custom of serving dishes that contain fruits and nuts has emerged. There is also the custom of consuming the Shevah Minim or "Seven Species," the five fruits and two grains found in the land of Israel. According to Gil Marks in the Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, the seven species are either eaten in the order in which they’re mentioned in Deuteronomy, namely wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates or in order of their importance in ancient Israel, wheat, barley, olives or olive oil, dates, grapes or wine, figs and pomegranates. Some people also eat fruits, such as apples, quinces, walnuts, pistachios and carob, which are mentioned in the Torah or have come to be associated with Israel. With the various ingredients that one can choose to include on their table for Tu B’Shevat, there is room for much creativity and the possibilities are endless. Decor your Seder table.
Do you think pumpkins are quite an old cliche in decor? Be different this year,
and if you've been kind of obsessed with empty toilet paper rolls lately, there’s so many cool DIY projects you can do with both of them 
As these burlap napkin rings I've made. These are very inexpensive to make and fairly easy and they cost next to nothing to make!
Burlap napkin rings will add a touch of rustic charm to your table top. Burlap rings are wrapped with  cotton lace and accented with a miniature button in a creamy, wood color. Just slip them on your napkins for a bit of rustic Tu b'Shevat elegance.

 Burlap napkin rings table decorations

 

Tu BiShevat Seder: Volume 1

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You may use wine during an holiday, and if you love drinking wine, then you have probably asked yourself many times about what you should do with the wine cork. You can actually use wine cork in a very creative way to make ornaments for Tu b'Shevat tree ...

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Wool tree decoration for Tu b'Shevat

In 2018, the "birthday of the trees" begins at sundown on Tuesday, Jan. 30
Tu B’Shevat or the “birthday” of all fruit trees, is a minor festival. The name is Hebrew for the 15th of the Hebrew month of Shevat.
In ancient times, Tu B’Shevat was merely a date on the calendar that helped Jewish farmers establish exactly when they should bring their fourth-year produce of fruit from recently planted trees to the Temple as first-fruit offerings.
In the 16th century, the Kabbalists of Tzfat in the Land of Israel created a new ritual to celebrate Tu B’Shevat called the Feast of Fruits. Modeled on the Passover seder, participants would read selections from the Hebrew Bible and Rabbinic literature, and would eat fruits and nuts traditionally associated with the land of Israel. The Kabbalists also gave a prominent place to almonds in the Tu B’Shevat seder , since the almond trees were believed to be the first of all trees in Israel to blossom. Carob, also known as bokser or St. John’s bread, became another popular fruit to eat on Tu B’Shevat, since it could survive the long trip from Israel to Jewish communities in Europe. Participants in the kabbalistic seder would also drink four cups of wine: white wine (to symbolize winter), white with some red (a harbinger of the coming of spring); red with some white (early spring) and finally all red (spring and summer).
Complete with biblical and rabbinic readings, these kabbalists produced a Tu B’Shevat Haggadah in 1753 called “Pri Etz Hadar” or “Fruit of the Goodly Tree.”

Wool tree

The Month of Shevat: Elevating Eating & Tu b'Shevat

Felt birds tribute for Shabbath Shirah

The Shabbat on which the Parsha of Beshalach is read is called Shabbat Shira, because it contains the song sung by Israel after the splitting of the Red Sea.
Tradition teaches that there are only ten true Songs (Shirot, the plural of Shirah) in the history of the world. These true Songs are not mere melodies; they are expressions of the harmony of creation and mark monumental transitions in history. Another of these Songs appears on the haftarah portion for the week (Judges 4:4-5:31): the Song of Deborah. The Song of Songs is, of course, one of the Ten Songs. Interestingly, the Tenth Song has not yet been sung: it is the Song of the coming of the Mashiach, which will be sung at the End of Days (see Isaiah 26:1).

To celebrate Shabbat Shirah, the Rabbis suggested, in addition to the customs connected with the synagogue Torah reading, a home-based ritual: on Shabbat Shirah we feed the birds. Some have suggested that we do so to acknowledge the birds’ singing in praise of G.d and his great miracle at the sea. Others have linked feeding birds with their role in the biblical story of the double portion of manna that miraculously appeared on Friday so that the Israelites would not have to gather manna on Shabbat. A midrash tells us that two trouble-makers, Dathan and Aviram, put out manna Friday evening so that the people would discover it on the morning of Shabbat and Moshè and G.d would be discredited. But the birds gobbled up all the manna before the people awoke, preserving the miracle of the double portion of manna on Friday and its absence on Shabbat and, thus, confirming the leadership of Moshè. 

Tribute to the birds

 Homemade garland with handmade felt birds decoration for Shabbath Shirah.