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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,
 

I have given very little thought to this feast day this year and it suddenly struck me that it marks the start of a couple of weeks of intense feast day celebrations.

So for now looking at Saturday, I think we will be focusing on ~
colouring in pictures,
making a row of angel folds,
making some felted angels,
read the story of St Michael in this book,
 and some simple foods perhaps a cake of some sort.

If you are looking for more ideas than these simple ones I have written up plans in the past HERE

 We have also clebrated by performing two plays in the past : The Battle for Heaven and Who Reigns Supreme?

Have a most blessed feast day of St Michael
Prayer~
Saint Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray;
and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host -
by the Divine Power of God -
cast into hell, satan and all the evil spirits,
who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen.

Blessings to you and your homes,

Our simple and easy plans for the Feast of the Assumption of Mary were in fact achieved!
Hurrah!

As I had to go shopping for the ingredients after Mass we did not have a lot of the day left and so really only prepared the foods and coloured in our pictures
Here is more information on why we celebrate this day
It is tradition to bless both fruit and herbs on this feast day we tried to use herbs and fruits. Below are examples of how we incorporated them into our day.
We made up this chicken recipe with chicken breasts sliced and then stuffed them with both tasty and camembert cheese and then sprinkled with Italian herbs after rubbing the chicken breast with olive oil.
Our chocolate gluten free cup cakes (I admit I was going to make grain free from scratch but used this packet mix instead) with whipped cream and a strawberry heart on top
Our meal as we were ready to eat.
Chicken, fluffy mashed potato, cauliflower, onion all white to represent Our Lady's purity.
Pumpkin cause it is my favourite vegetable and peas and beans too
Our Heavenly punch which is apple and blackcurrant juice with strawberries on top
Sweets consisted of  strawberry hearts on fluffy whipped cloud cream
or creamy cloudy yogurt with blueberries ( the blueberries are for Mary)
Mixing up the blueberries in the yogurt
The table decoration was prepared by Myffwyn and we always use this book for special occasion grace
Our muffins compliment a warm drink of hot chocolate with marshmallow clouds on a cold day
Myffy and Corbyn colouring in some of the pictures I printed from our plans
Moran did some too.
And as a special  'sugar full/wheat full' treat. Sunburst mixed berries for those lucky to be around after 9pm at night.
One family's example of celebrating this feast
Traditions around the world

Prayer for the Day!
Almighty God,
You gave a humble Virgin the privilege of being mother of your Son, and crowned her with the glory of heaven.
 May the prayers of the Virgin Mary bring us to the salvation of Christ and raise us up to eternal life.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.
 Amen.

 Blessings to you and your homes,
 

With all our moving plans at the moment, this year for the Feast of The Assumption I am keeping it very simple. These are a few ideas we have for tomorrow well today now.

Perhaps I will be changing this as we go along with more fun activities:

Plans for the day will involve Mass at 9:30am

Read these books~

Just Like Mary
Mary my Mother
Mary The Mother of Jesus
Mary Mother of Jesus

Colouring  Page....I love this one
Simple colouring page
Another one and another and another

Food we will eat~
Breakfast Smoothies-
Lunch~ Buckwheat pancakes with cream and strawberry hearts
Snack~ Chocolate gluten free/ or grain free muffins with cream and strawberry hearts again
Dinner ~ Herb and Cheese Stuffed Chicken with fluffy mashed potato, cauliflower, pumpkin clouds
Sweets~ Blueberry Yogurt Parfaits
Drinks~ Heavenly Punch and Fluffy Cloud Hot Chocolate

Blessings to you and your homes,

 

Well it has been a week since the Feast Of Our Lady of Mount Carmelhowever I still want to share;the very little activity we did, as it really is so very simple to achieve.

In fact our children had me convinced that it was last Tuesday rather than the Monday anyway and as we had an unexpected activity that had to be done on Monday we really were not prepared at all, sigh!

So straight to the matter. I really did not want to do any of the complicated ideas we have done in the past, Our
About The Brown Scapular and some recipes to celebrate 
Crafts and cake we did in 2009
as if just was too hard for me this year and so I was trying to work out how we could at least make a cake to celebrate with.


I really couldn't think of anything that I could do quickly and then our  very clever girl Autumn, came up with the idea you can see above.


It is quite simple:
Take two very large blocks of chocolate then place on top  a printed out image from the computer. Then for the straps  of the scapular join them with two  very fat straps of licorice to complete.

Did I mention that is all there is to it?
By the Way don't leave that chocolate out for too long as I am sure it will be eaten very, very fast!


Blessings to you and your homes,
 

I wanted to do a simple craft for our little ones this year for the Feast Days of The Sacred Heart of Jesus and The Immaculate Heart of Mary.
I wasn't sure what I would do except it had to be hands on and quick and simple to do.

This is what I came up with~
Now you don't need to use that beautiful hand dyed wool felt for this craft, you can use the synthetic stuff from Spotlight of a cheap craft store.

I simple free hand drew two red heart shapes and the bits and pieces for each of the two hearts.
Of course you can make these as large of small as you like, and like I said, you don't need to measure just free hand cut as you go.

For the Sacred Heart of Jesus:
A large red heart
I cut a  cross from brown felt.
Orange fire shape
From a different colour brown I cut little 'stick like' rectangles that could be put together to make the crown of thorns
A few drops of blood from the red felt again

For the Immaculate Heart of Mary:
A Large Red heart
Orange fire shape
The sword was the most difficult (not really it is very simple). I cut the blade part from grey felt and then the handle part form brown, over lapping the grey bald part a little. Then I did a very small running stitch to join them with brown thread.
Pink roses- first I cut a circle and then just cut little parts out to make the rose,  flower shape
Tiny little green leap shapes.
Of course I like to give our little ones colouring pages for a feast day and this year we used these ones:
We really liked this colouring page as well as This colouring page. Also this was another I found on line too.
We didn't do this activity page but it is  a really good page for older kids
I also made word search for the children from this site using key words from both the devotions.

I also wanted to be able to talk about the symbolic meaning of the images  and what each part of the image means.
This was actually a bit harder for me as I have never actually thought about it in such detail (naughty me).
This was what I was able to find out: in relation to these particular images
Sacred Heart of Jesus:

Hearts represent love and life. Jesus’ heart beats with the fire of love (at the top of the heart) which was demonstrated at the cross. The fire also represents the purifying fire of God by which he purifies men. It exudes the transformative power of divine love.The crown of thorns brought suffering which was endured for the love of man to redeem him — to bear man’s pain in his own heart. The cut in the heart is that made by the lance that was thrust through his heart when he was on the cross.

The blood dripping represents the new life secured through his death (life came through dead). The result is the heart of man (below surrounded by flowers) is given new life. The flowers represent a garden of delights, new life, freshness. The Garden of Eden which brought about death by sin is now replaced by the Garden of Heaven which brings new life because of holiness.

Adam and Eve experienced death at the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden; The New Adam (Jesus) brings about life at the Tree of Death (the cross) in another garden. This cross is at the top of the heart. Heaven is represented by the clouds and the blazing sun or heavenly light from God behind the hearts.

Immaculate Heart of Mary:

This one is similar to the Sacred Heart. The roses surrounding Mary’s heart represent her sinlessness and purity, sweetness and new life. The seven swords piercing the top of the heart represents the “Seven Sorrows of Mary,” (“Mater Dolorosa”). The first of her sorrows was the Prophecy

of Simeon that a sword would pierce her soul because of her son’s death Luke 2:35), 2) their flight into Egypt, 3) the loss of Jesus in the Temple; 4) the fourth sorrow is Mary watching Jesus carry the cross, 5) the crucifixion imagining a mother watching her son die this way; 6)  receiving his limp, cold body after the crucifixion, 7) the body of her son buried in the tomb.

When Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the temple as a baby the prophet Simeon said that the life and death of Jesus would be like a sword that would pierce her soul (Luke 2:35). The lower heart, the one of Mary surrounded by roses, shows a cut in it which is symbolic of her sorrows.  But her sorrows have brought us new life and pure hearts represented by the garden of roses below.
Corbyn was so funny to watch as he placed all of the flowers of  Mary's heart. I think he really wanted to give her some love, as flowers really symbolise love in our home.
Myffy working on her interpretation.

I actually think this is good for the children as it gets them to think of how the image is put together.
The children's finished work for the day
When it is all finished for the day it can be neatly placed in a plastic sleeve and filed in a ring binder ready for nest years feast day, or when ever you want to get it out again.
For our actual feast day celebrations we simple set up our display (a previous years craft here as well) and will leave it till the end of the month, as we did for last year

Blessings to you and your homes,