Pentecost in Our Home 2010

Well finally again I am getting to our feast day. As this was celebrated after our big Birthday Celebration we were a little behind the eight ball in getting everything done.
I have no idea how Mummy bloggers are able to post on the day of big events.
However I would like to share some of what we do on this Special Feast Day in our home.
We started off by making donuts but instead of adding jam to the middle and cooking we made the hole variety (although I believe the jam could symbolise the flame of the Holy Spirit inside of us).
These were the holes cut out and the children are always so keen to "fill the hole in the donut" like the Donut Man. Our older children grew up on these CD's (or tapes as they were then and our Video's have finally broken and we need to get some DVD's for the younger children)

This is one of our favourite songs from the Video's
So here we have our empty donuts waiting to rise.
Since Pentecost is also known as "Whitsunday," and one tradition is to serve white foods. We coated our donuts in white icing sugar rather than the traditional cinnamon and sugar.
The holes where white as well
One of the traditions we have is to have a draw each year: the idea is to draw a 'gift of the Holy Spirit' that we are given for the year .
We also have 'pretend fruit' in a bowl to represent the "Fruits of the Holy Spirit" and on each fruit is one of the fruits.They are turned face down and everyone picks a fruit as well for the year as an opportunity to work on this during the year.
Our Paper dove was made from The Children's year and placed on our All Year Round Wreath.
We also have dove shapes with little tissue paper balls on for the soft feathers and seven red streamers for the rays of the flames of the Holy Spirit.
We also made some edible Holy Spirit Flames.
They are very simple to do:
Simple cut out some round shapes from puff pastry and cook.
When they are cool mound up some whipped cream and place a raspberry lolly on top.
Why a raspberry lolly? Well in Tasmania in Autumn season it is impossible to get STRAWBERRIES, which actually look like flames.
So I have to improvise and I don't think they look to bad.
Another version was to put the cream on (or ice cream if you have it, which we didn't) and pour strawberry topping on top. Very Yummy.
Autumn, Vellvin and Saxon working on a Pentecost Crossword from our Plans
As we decorate the table for dinner I put the flames we made (first picture in this post) in the middle of the table along with our Apostles and Father Pine in red vestments
Our flames were made by painting an egg carton white and making a simple slit in the top with a Stanley knife and putting in a red paper flame. Of course red fleece would work very nicely too.
Father Pine and the"Holy Spirit" flames
Our Pentecost cake iced in white again with the dove piped on in icing (courtesy of Autumn) and the red raspberry lollies again for the 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit and 12 red raspberries for the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.
We have candles to blow out (representing the rushing wind of the Holy Spirit) for the Birthday of the Church .
Our younger ones love to do this.
Everything ready to eat at the table
The day was just too much for our littlest one but I am so glad we have this opportunity to celebrate our Church's liturgical year with our family.

Praying you all enjoyed your own birthday celebrations!!

Blessings,