Fun Lenten and Easter crafts

 I wanted to share two links from Holy Heroes for fun Lenten and Easter Triptych crafts.   They are very well drawn and are free downloads too.  I hope to have my three youngest children make them.

I pray you all have a blessed Holy Week!

God bless!

+JMJ+

Saintly Silver

I want to introduce you to an amazing Etsy shop named Saintly Silver.  Saintly Silver is owned by a dear friend of mine, and she is a very talented seamstress.  She creates the cutest saint felt dolls, named Felt Saint Softies; my children have a few of them and love them.  After the birth of my youngest, Erin, the owner, gave him one.  Many times this little saint doll has comforted him or made him happy again.  We are very grateful to her.  In Erin's words:

"We live in a world where everything is made by machine and processed in an assembly line fashion. Machines have provided the ability to produce items faster and make larger profits for companies. However, not enough attention is paid to detail, quality, or the individuals that work in these places.
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We chose to do something better. We do not focus on the amount of money we can make, but on how many lives we can impact.
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We want something bigger than us. We want to use our God given talents to create a Saint Softie that not only rewards our team of artists, but our family of customers. We want to provide a product with high quality craftsmanship as well as Faith inspiration.
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Our designs are always made with quality materials. We use wool blended felt and polyfill made in the USA, embroidery floss made in France, and thread made in Germany.
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There are no assembly lines here, just a team of warmhearted artists striving for excellence in a caring work environment. It is hard to believe, but true; we choose not to make decisions off of dollar signs, but spiritual rewards.
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We pray together, create together, and ask for blessings from God for all of you."

Saintly Silver has nearly 200 different felt saints for sale, and she is willing to take custom orders as well.  Thus if you do not see the Saint for which you are looking, just ask.  :)  A few of these adorable dolls are shown below.

Immaculate Heart of Mary

St. Zelie Martin

St. Jude

St. Patrick

St. Rose of Lima

May God reward you!

God bless!

+JMJ+

Fun for the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls

As I mentioned last week, I wanted to tell you about a craft for the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls that my children enjoy creating.  I apologize, but I cannot remember where I first saw a similar idea to this one, but thank you to all of you who provide wonderful Catholic ideas that help our children learn the Faith.

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For the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls, we first discuss the Church, explaining that the Church is not just those Catholics on earth.  The Church consists of three parts:  the Church  Triumphant, the Church Suffering, and the Church Militant.  The Church Triumphant are all those souls, canonized or not, those who we remember on the Feast of All Saints, who are now in heaven with our Lord.  The Church Suffering consists of the Poor souls in Purgatory, those to whom the entire month of November is dedicated and for whom we must remember to pray and sacrifice.  The Church Militant are all of the Faithful on earth, those of us who are still struggling to grow in holiness and reach our heavenly goal.  As a visual explanation, I have my children create a poster--one year's poster is shown below.  I think this was done a few years ago.  That year I printed pictures from the old Roman Breviary; they are no longer copyrighted.  The kids colored the images, glued them in order, and then we labeled each corresponding part of the Church.  Sometimes we write names of people who have died to help us remember to pray for them.

Sorry for the poor image.

This  year my younger children are coloring this image from Catholic Playground for the Feast of All Saints.  Catholic Playground has so many great free coloring pages!  My children always enjoy them.

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Another new idea we are going to try this year is from Jessica at Shower of Roses.  I loved her Ora Pro Nobis Candy Boxes and Calendar ideas and am adapting them for our family.  We printed her beautiful calendar, filling each square with a name of someone who has died; a few of the squares are also labeled "the soul most forgotten" and "the soul closest to reaching heaven."  We will offer extra prayers and sacrifices for this soul.  For the Ora Pro Nobis Candy Boxes idea, which I love, I simply placed 60 pieces of candy in a bag, labeling it with one of Jessica's labels.  I did not have enough candy for each child to have their own bag of 30 pieces, so each day two of the kids will have the option of choosing a piece of candy after saying a prayer for the Souls in Purgatory or leaving the candy behind as an additional offering.  I love this idea!  While it seems like a simple act, small sacrifices teach us to think of others' needs and lead us to greater and greater acts of love.  (Thanks, Jessica!)

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One idea our family has incorporated for the month of the Holy Souls for many years now is the recitation of the St Gertrude prayer 15 times daily throughout the entire month.  You can read more about this devotion in the following post:  St. Gertrude's Prayer for the Souls in Purgatory.  One year we created simple sets of 15 beads, each with a cross.  Using these, we could easily keep track of the number of "Eternal Father" prayers we had said that day since the beads stay in place when slid backward.  I think this year we may have to make some of the kids (and me) new strings of beads as eventually the string wears through.  If you would like directions to make these prayer beads, please let me know.  I would be happy to provide them for you.

I pray you and your family  have a very blessed Feast of All Saints!

God  bless!

+JMJ+

Our Prayer Corner

In the upcoming week I plan on providing a post with all of the links to Lenten posts from last year, so those prayers will be easily available for use. I will also continue to add prayers throughout Lent. Eventually I plan to include a page in the top bar that has the prayers sorted by month and Liturgical season to simplify prayers even more. I will also post about some of our family’s Lenten plans.
Today, however, I wanted to share our family’s prayer corner. I would love to have a separate room in our home with a few kneelers just for family prayer or anytime someone wants some quiet time with God. However, with six kids that will never happen in this house. Perhaps someday…:)

Currently we have set up a corner in our living room where we gather for family night prayer. (Please ignore the thermostat).

 It began with this beautiful crucifix my brother gave us when we got married and has progressed from there.

Now our little prayer desk includes my son’s Infant of Prague statue, my St. Anne and Mary statue Seamus gave me for Mother's Day one year, and this beautiful holy card that my mom gave me years ago. I have always loved it, since it depicts Mary so gently and beautifully!

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Two items, the candle and vestment on the cross, get changed to represent the correct liturgical color, depending on the feast or Liturgical season.

Black is used for All Souls Day and Masses of the Faithfully Departed; traditionally it is used for Good Friday as well.

Red is used on Feasts of Our Lord's Passion, Death, and Cross.  It is also used on the feasts of martyred saints, Palm Sunday, and Pentecost.

Gold can be used to replace white, red, or green; however, it cannot replace violet or black.

Rose is used for Gaudete Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent, and Laetare Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Lent.

Violet is used for days of Advent and Lent.  In the Traditional Mass it is also used for days of Septuagesima, Rotation Days, Ember Days, and Vigils.

White  i is used during the Christmas and Easter season, on the feasts of Our Lord, excluding feasts of His Passion, feasts of Mary, feasts of angels, and the feasts of saints who were not martyred.

Green is used on days after Pentecost and days after Epiphany.

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The idea for the vestment I found from Jessica, and I even printed her pattern, which can be found at the end of her post, to use for the Traditional Roman fiddleback vestments. I love the traditional vestments! (Jessica has so many great ideas, doesn't she?  On her site Jessica provides links to the various blogs which inspired her design.)

While they took some time to complete, I enjoyed making the vestments, and I am very happy with how they turned out. I used Jessica’s pattern to cut the vestment from fabric. Then I used a fabric glue to attach the trim around the edges and the detail on the front and back.

I gave the set of vestments with the wooden cross stand to my kids one year as an Easter gift.

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The candle holder contains a simple white pillar candle, blessed by our parish priest. The glass holders I found at our local Catholic books and gifts store. They were on clearance for $2 each, so I picked up a color for each liturgical season, except white and black, since they did not have those. I know blue is not actually a Church color, but since there was not a white option, we decided to use the blue one for Marian feasts.

Each night after family prayer we look ahead on the calendar to the next day’s feast and replace the color and vestment with the correct color. I use this planner, which includes traditional, new, and historical feasts for each day, and the beautiful calendar from the FSSP (the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter). This provides a brief preparation for the upcoming feast day early, which is helpful since mornings can be rushed around here. I find this helpful since I can quickly gather any prayers, saint books, or materials I might need for the next day’s feast.

This week we will be praying the Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes and the Consecration to the Holy Family, besides are nightly rosary or decade. I am gradually preparing our family prayer ideas for Lent, which seems to be approaching quickly.

God bless!

+JMJ+

Homemade Christmas Gifts

I wanted to share some of the Christmas gifts I made for our daughters this year.  Although making gifts adds to the to-do's I have to accomplish during an already busy time of year, I love giving the kids gifts I/we have made.  

This year for Christmas I painted two more wooden dolls.  First was the promised uncle who is a priest.  He was challenging since his attire is all black, forcing me to outline objects to set them apart, but I think this figure turned out great.  My daughters were very excited!

I also added to our saint doll collection and painted a St. Clare of Assisi holding the monstrance with Our Lord.

 The next Christmas project I tackled was making a set of paper dolls for the girls.  I had previously printed the dolls at a different time, but as can happen with paper dolls, they were not holding up well with use.  I decided to try to make them more durable.  I printed them again from this website.  I remember my sister and I having a set like this when we were growing up, but they are out of print now, so you can print them for free from that site.

After printing them and cutting them out, I traced their outline on a piece of 1/4" plywood, and my husband kindly cut out the shapes for me.  He did such a great job!  I then glued the dolls to the wooden cutouts, modge podged them, and let them dry.  

Meanwhile, I cut out all of the clothing pieces, cutting off the tabs, laminated them at our teacher resource center, and cut them out again.

After the dolls were completely dry, I super glued a small velcro dot on the chest of each doll, again allowing the glue to dry completely.  You can see the white velcro circle on the doll, but it is not a big deal since the dolls generally have clothing covering it.  I placed the opposite side of the velcro to the corresponding spot on the back of the dolls clothes.  This allowed me to get rid of the tabs.  My girls can simply push the velcro pieces together to keep the clothes in place.  They like it so much better than trying to hold the clothes in place, since the tabs never work well.  They do need to remove the clothes from the dolls gently to ensure the velcro on the doll holds up, but otherwise the dolls are now easy to use and durable.  I really like them and so do the girls!

I also undertook a few sewing projects for them this year, including a new apron for Erin, my youngest daughter, but I think the girls like this gift the best out of those I sewed.  Last year I purchased two bonnets, one purple and one yellow, although I probably could have made them.  To match the bonnets, I made Moira a purple colonial dress, and Erin a yellow one.  I love watching them dress in these and play together.  They are so cute!

I hope you are having a blessed Christmas season!  God bless!

+JMJ+

For the Feast of St. Nicholas

I hope everyone is having a blessed Advent!  I meant to finish this post prior to the Feast of St. Nicholas, but last week was very busy for us.  The Feast of St. Nicholas has always been a significant feast for our family.  When the kids were younger, I always selected a new religious Christmas tree ornament for each one of them to give to them on this day.  However, it just became too expensive for me to keep up the tradition, so last December 6 I decided to make my own ornaments to give to the kids.  Each year I plan on altering the design, so they have a variety of ornaments.  (Hopefully my creativity keeps up with that plan.)  I thought I would post this year's ornament in case anyone is looking for similar ideas.

This year I chose a rugged look for the ornaments, and I love how they turned out!  I simply chose a dead branch from our yard, and my husband cut me six circles from it.  I then chose six religious images, sized them to fit the wooden circles, and printed them in color.  After gluing each one to the wood, I covered the entire piece with Modge Podge.  This kept the bark from peeling off the edges and protected the images.  My generous husband then drilled a hole in the top of each ornament through which I strung a piece of embroidery floss, so the ornaments could be hung.  The kids all seemed to enjoy receiving them on St. Nicholas' feast!  I hope you had a wonderful feast day!

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 I also wanted to share some sites whose products I love!  I have not ordered from all of these, but their products seem beautifully made. 

 The first shop is Stella Marigold Art.  They sell beautiful scapulars and well-drawn paper dolls of various saints.  

I also love the product made by Catholic Embroidery.  Last year my husband purchased the beautiful Ave Maria apron for me, and I purchased two of their pouches for other gifts.  All of these products are truly as nice and well-made as they appear on the website.

I recently stumbled upon Lilla Rose.  She sells beautiful hair clips and hairbands.  I would love to buy my daughters each one for Christmas.  I am not sure it will happen this year, but I am definitely keeping them in mind for future gifts.  I know my daughters would love the designs!

Finally while reading Jessica's recent post, I was introduced to these adorable saint blocks.  I love finding Catholic items, and these are another product I think my daughters especially would love!  They would also make great godchildren gifts.  

I hope you find these links helpful.  I will try to add more as I come across them.

God bless!

+JMJ+

Soap Carving

A few years ago I gave my oldest three children two books entitled Carving in Soap:  North American Animals and Soap Carving for Children of All Ages.  I believe both of these books I found on Amazon.  These books provide an introduction to carving, but instead of teaching with knives and wood, which is more difficult to carve, the author uses soap and tools made from Popsicle sticks.  He gives step-by-step instructions and pictures, explaining to the readers how to make any necessary tools.

My boys had no problems following the author's directions, and each one soon had a set of tools and began experimenting with their new craft.  The pictures show some of their creations; other carvings were given away as gifts.  While the author often leaves his carvings white, my  boys always chose to paint them.

Heart, robin, Notre Dame helmet, Christmas tree

Robin, butterfly, Christmas tree, heart

Immaculate and Sacred Hearts and chalice

I have a book for the next step:  wood carving.  It is entitled Carving for Kids:  An Introduction to Woodcarving.  However, I have not given it to them yet.  I want to acquire the necessary beginning tools for the projects in it.  We do have two pairs of gloves already, though, which do an excellent job of protecting their hands against any accidental slips.  (These are not necessary at all for soap carving).

Enjoy, and God bless!

Family Wooden Dolls

After seeing this post from Jessica at Shower of Roses, I knew I wanted to attempt painting these little wooden saint dolls for my daughter as she learned her alphabet.  As you can see, I fell way behind. (She already knows her alphabet).  However, I have plans to finish them.  So far I have completed St. Anne, St. Bernadette, and St. Catherine of Siena, and both of my daughters love to play with them.

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Once my daughter began playing with the saint dolls, I decided to paint Moira a family of dolls for Christmas based on our family.  Notice Dad and the four boys are all wearing Notre Dame attire; ND football  is very popular among our family!  Of course the little girls had to be dressed in pink and purple, their favorite colors.  :)


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When I ordered the blank wooden dolls, some of them came with a blank cardboard house, which I also painted for Moira.  The 8 family members fit perfectly within the house for storage, and my daughter loves to play with them together.  Later I added a wooden Grandma doll, and Moira has requested another addition to her family of dolls, an uncle who is a priest.  Perhaps I will get that one and some more saints completed for 2014 Christmas.  

Homemade Saints Calendar

After reading about Our Saints and Feasts Sticker Album from Jessica at Shower of Roses, 

I loved the idea for our family! These stickers are based on the Traditional  calendar, according to the 1962 Roman Missal; however, many of the feast days are the same as the Novus Ordo liturgical calendar.  We follow both liturgical calendars, so it was okay with me.  For anyone following only the Novus Ordo calendar, you could use this as a way to teach your kids about the saints no longer listed on the new calendar as well; included with the stickers is a booklet with a small biography of each saint, which is very useful for those lesser known saints.  The album comes with a full-color sticker with the name of the saint and the date of their feast day.  There is a separate page for each month.  In addition there are stickers for special days, such as Good Friday and Ash Wednesday.

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When I began planning this for our family, I decided I wanted to make a calendar that was less expensive than the magnetic calendars in the store, and I think I accomplished that.  This calendar was so simple to make too.

Supplies Needed:

• Sticker Album
• Metal Cookie Sheet
• Magnetic Tape
• Permanent Marker
• Drill with around a 3/8" bit
• Ribbon
• Other religious images (optional)

To create my calendar, I began with a cookie sheet that I bought at the dollar store.  Their cookie sheets are a little smaller than normal, but I couldn't beat the price.  On the cookie sheet I drew the calendar grid with a permanent marker and labeled the days of the week.  (If you notice, my calendar grid is actually one week too short for March, since March began late in the week this year.  That is why I have March 30 and March 31 in the top left corner.  It didn't really bother me, but I just wanted to point it out to you in case you decide to make this.  Remember to add an extra row of weeks.)  After drawing my grid, I had my husband drill a hole in the top center of the pan, and I threaded a piece of ribbon through it.  I decided it would be really cute to use a ribbon that is the color of the corresponding Church season and change it as the season changes.

 For the saint magnets I simply attached each sticker and the corresponding name and date label to a piece of magnetic tape.  I cut the tape after attaching to ensure I always had the correct size.  I also created a magnet from the month label and created my own month dedication magnet.  For example, March is dedicated to St. Joseph, so I made a magnet labeled St. Joseph and placed it under the month.  For the pictures of the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts, I took images I  already had and attached magnets. Those images are not part of the sticker album.

Now each month I simply change out the magnets for the correct month.  I store the previous month's magnets in ziploc bags.  I love that nothing is permanent, so when certain days, like Ash Wednesday, change dates, I can simply place the magnet in the correct spot.