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An angel or Holy Innocent (she couldn't decide)

Last Thursday it being All Saints Day was a little unusual for us.
It started out as the monthly homeschool group meeting day that our children were excited to be going to for the second day, but also we had been invited to an All Saints Day Party.
This was a very low key affair as our lovely hostess told me quite late the night before.
Simple a dress-up as your saint and tell a little about them and we will have a few treats for the children and adults as well.
This was something we had always wanted to do as we have always celebrated this at home and the thought of sharing this feast day with others was wonderful.
Once again we did not go all out for costumes but simply used what we had at home and could be assembled very quickly. Anna-Lisa was still visiting and made a chocolate cake (for the third time in four days) and we took that with us to share.
It was a great idea, the cake, as we used it to sing a version of "Happy All Saints to you" and then cut the cake and of course the children all were very saintly and ate of this heavenly food.

St Agnes

We actually never got around to telling the saints as the children had a very exciting time playing together and we adults were very content to talk and monitor the children.
I did have to get these photos after the very exciting day and so perhaps they are not the best ones we could have had and the idea of getting the children who had dressed up in a group photo was another thing that just was not a viable option.
I love these roses in Vellvin's hair. They were picked form the garden where the party was held and I was given some for my hair as well.

St Stephen

Rogan had lots of fun creating the blood on the stone for St Stephen as well as the gash on his head.
He almost convinced his Dad when he came home that he had had a terrible injury......almost but not quite.

St Dymphna

St Dymphna this year was Myffwyn as we love these peasant style saints as they are so easy to dress up for
They also make playing at a party easy too, lol

St Anne

Moran wanted to be Mary's mother this year and so we created this outfit for her.
She especially wanted this head scarf and insisted I take a photo of it from behind.

St Francis of Assisi

One of the beauties of owning a Jedi cloak is the fact they can be used for many purposes. This time it was St Francis and all we needed was some rope, rosary beads and some puppets.
Of course we discovered when we got home that St Francis had not only lost his rope and rosary beads but his feathered and animal friends he had taken with him had somehow been, well, misplaced.
So he being the saint he is was soon found some other animal friends and his habit was help together with some string instead.

On Sunday when preparing for Mass I found his feathered companions in my hand bag!

So a very simple and happy All Saints Day for us this year.
Perhaps one day we will have a major feast with much food and games....perhaps!!

Blessings to you and your homes,
 

All Saints Day has passed so quickly and with our busy time with Trahaearn and the schedule I am keeping with him I am afraid to say that once  we had completed our trip out to get Trahaearn weighed and our simple meal organised and the children dressed up in their costumes that we did not play any of the games we had planned for this day.
Our younger children were a little disappointed with this as they had anticipated this for a 'whole day' after the Halloween Celebration and my idea of sharing what we do on this day is once again not quite up to scratch.
I do want to state that we DO NOT go out and buy costumes or accessories for our dressing up for All Saints Day. I know this is a big thing for some people, especially in the USA but as we usually need to do these home based activities well within our budget, getting new costumes is pretty much out of the question.
So we tend to think of the Saints the children would like to come dressed in and then find appropriate clothing from our regular clothes that can be adapted with some accessories and we make liberal use of our play cloths and silks from our everyday 'dressups'.
Therefore  Blessed Jacinta (above) is dressed in a peasant shepherd girl looking clothes and a couple of toy lambs and headscarf.
Funnily enough Arwen thought we were going to Mass because she was getting dressed up and and wearing a headscarf. Then she was quite put out to discover that we were not going then and insisted we go right there and then!
St Dymphna also had a fairly simple outfit. Skirt with a blouse and headscarf with a bible/prayerbook.
Moran has a special devotion to St Dympha and she really loved playing the part for All Saints Day.
The costume for  St Joseph  was a simple one with a shirt underneath some play cloths wrapped around the body and a cloth on his head held on with some wool
A staff was easily obtained from outside that 'St Joseph' loved carrying around.
St. Maria Goretti  was another peasant style saint and easy to dress for. Myffwyn was a little tragic through out the afternoon filling her role perfectly
We have some ferns around the property that we were able use as a substitute for the palm usually seen in her image.
Baby Moses just too cute what else can I say!!!!
It was quite an effort to get a shot of all the children together., with  little people moving or not smiling etc. I love these group shots though
St Joseph Yuen was Rogan's choice and we were not surprised as he seems to have quite a devotion to China in his saints.
We actually took two cloths and hand sewed them together at the shoulder, so they could be taken apart again. He used an old pair of black tights for his braid and beard and then sewed up an old table cloth to go underneath the red over robe
Later in the day St. Joseph's beard fell off and was replaced with black tape.
St Cecilia was who Vellvin decided to be.  A reasonably easy costume to ensemble.
For her toga we used a double-bed, and another bed sheet and pinned it up and tied it around her waist with a ribbon. A pair of sandals and a violin and she was set! Said violin was out of tune producing some very.... interesting sounds and  causing our dogs to howl, but the  little saints loved dancing around to it. I simply adore impromptu additions.
St. Maximilian Kolbe  was who Saxon decided to come as.     Super easy!
A pair of his stripey blue pajamas  with a paper prison number pinned on , a bible and his Dad's old glasses and there he was!
Bring on the Pajama party!

Judith from Old Testament was Eden's choice.   Her costume was a little more time consuming then most of the others  but, was very lovely when completed.
Using the dress she had worn to Autumn's Deb. Ball. Eden was then very creative with two pretty shawls. Using one as a shawl of sorts and the other as a head covering.   At the back of her hair she plaited in two ribbons as well adding to the eastern looking costume. For the head of the king that Judith cut off, she used an orange from Halloween and pinned on yarn hair and a little paper crown.    A  very successful and  pretty costume.
Our painted saints once again graced our table . Simple pizza and (a planned salad) for dinner.
Once again there was talk of which saint out of them was liked most by whom etc.    It was a lovely day and one of the many happy memories I  hope we shall share forever.

Blessings to you and your homes,

Last week while in hospital with Trahaearn my friend Erin asked me if she could use one of my old posts about All Saints day for the  Australian Catholic Families Blog, I said sure no problem and assumed all was well.

It wasn't until I came home and started to look at my own blog to plan our own celebrations that I couldn't find a post on any of these three feast days that I began to wonder what was wrong. I knew we had celebrated these days over the last few years as well as pre blogging days and 'why can't I find the posts on this?"

The reason why was that, um, well,  I never actually posted them and I found them partially done in drafts. Oh dear how I hate my drafts, so many posts I part;y do and then leave some never to be published at at all.

So although we have celebrated All Hallows Eve today - commonly know as Halloween I wish to share these past photos of how we have celebrated in our home.
We have no parish parties here or home school groups to join in with for these and so essentially ours are 'home made feasts' in our Domestic Church

We have a wonderful opportunity  on this special three days to celebrate the Liturgical season of All Hallow Eve, All Saints and All Souls day this year and we will gradually do so with out trying to do too much.

So with out further ado  what I would like to share is some of our older photos of our feasts of these days and the celebration we have at home.
The reason we celebrate this at home is we have never lived where it was celebrated within the Church as a parish or had other homeschooling celebrate with us.
So over the years we have clelbrated many of these traditions with in the context of our family circle.
When instituting these traditions into our family, before blogging was a big thing on the Internet. I gleamed most of our ideas from the 4real message board and Catholic Culture.
I have a folders full of ideas I have printed out of Liturgical and seasonal ideas to do with our family, along with lots of handwritten notes over time.
As our ideas had to be home based one of the most influential  articles in how we spend these days was on Catholic Culture but written by Jennifer Miller and I will go into more depth as we cover the feast days per post.
AS you will see the children look a whole lot younger and our little Arwen does not even feature as she was  a babe in arms or a 'thought in the mind of God' still.
These photos are of our dressing up for All Saints Day and the 'party' we had at home. They continue for a while down the page
This is our procession for All Souls Day and our subsequent bonfire for it
Home made graves for the remembering the souls of the departed.
An earlier year again with a combination of All Saints and All Souls Day
Another year-we celebrated in typical  Halloween fashion.
We carved our first ever Pumpkin Moonshine (finding a pumpkin the right shape is harder down under as it is Spring not Autumn season)
We also had a new party complete with Paper Bag Pinata
Rather than Apple Bobbing we had Cheese Nibbling

Braedon has always been a comic and wonderful actor for these type of events.
Decorating our home for appropriate events is a huge must do for our family
Well with this blast from the past published finally I hope to write up today's events in another post and share our fairly easy day of celebrating  All Hallows Eve together.

Blessings to you and your homes,