Welcome back and some Feast Day Celebrations

Well.... Hello long lost blog Readers,
No, I know you weren't lost, it was me 😉

The times they have been a-changing in our home. Nothing drastic (well some of it has been) but really its just the fact that life moves on, people grow, interests develop and our family life tends to reflect that. The end results have meant not much energy to invest here. Hopefully that will all be water under the bridge and we can become good friends again.

Maybe now that we are starting back to our 'scheduled' learning for the year I may be able to be more in this space and share what is happening in our lives.

The first week of a learning year is always an easy start with three feast days in a row.
St Brigid, Candlemas and St Blaise.

Naturally we celebrated in regular style for us with good food, good reading and activities as well as sharing St Brigid with a special guest.

We really do go all out for St Brigid- after all she is an Irish Saint and well we are of Irish ancestry. What else can we say!
Oh we did this year after reading more about her take St Brigid as our patron saint of our Homestead as she is patron saint of many farm activities 😊

This year we even churned some butter in the hand butter churner I received for Christmas. The kids loved taking turns at it and with that help it was done in no time.

 Next up is Candlemas and although not as big as St Brigid it certainly does get due attention.
 those amazing cupcakes in the first picture. They are actually meant to look like old fashioned candle holder with candle in it. You know the ones you carry up to bed with you. I think they are pretty darn cute.

 Each year we have our floating candles and doves  and have them lit while we do our reading and colouring.

This year on all three days we had a very, very involved little boy. He was quite pedantic about his colouring pages and towards the end of the week was a little testy about his ability. Not Mr Perfect - oh no!!

St Blaise was our final Feast day and the only edible activity we had were these licorice covered chocolate, which were supposed to represent the crossed candles of St Blaise.

Finally after these very 'light' filled liturgical days I think the children will be quite ready for some very 'boring regular' lessons on Monday.

Thank you for dropping by and visiting with us again.
We hope to be better company this year 💗


Blessings to you and your homes,
 

Candlemas and St Brigid Celebrations

As it happens most years for us the start of our formal learning after the Summer break happens around the time of the feast days of Candlemas and St Brigid.

This year proved to be no different for us except we had an interesting start with our Vellvin being lain up after a fall from a car and her injuries resulting from that.

This made our  start to the new year of formal learning  a little more complicated due to the trips to hospital and doctor appointments, x-rays etc as well as her care impeding our ability to follow any schedule at all to start with.

We seem to have come around though and although I haven't in the past year especially had much chance to actually share the feast days we have celebrated I am hoping to do so this year.

For we have continued to do this I just have not had time to document them.

 So we celebrated both Candlemas/The Presentation of Our Lord and St Brigid together, and not on either of those feast days but a day or two late.

Naturally we had to have a St Brigid Day display and we used our background and candle from pat years as well as our cows from various children.

 I knew we were going to have candles, of course we usually do, but this year I wanted to try them floating in water with the doves that symbolise the gifts that Mary and Joseph offered at the presentation of Jesus in the Temple around the bowl of lighted candles.
I really was happy with the result and the children loved them.

 Traditionally we do lots of colouring and word searches as I read aloud from our books and this year was no exception.
I did find a couple of new pages that I loved, but can't find the link to now sorry.

 Candlemas colouring are much harder to find but I was happy with these ones.

All the work is placed in the children's lesson books as a token of what we have learned for the days.
We consider Faith based learning a number one priority and so will 'ditch' the prepared daily plan in favour of Feast Day activities.

 I printed out this blessing for copy work. Although it is really hard to pick just one Irish blessing as they are all so wonderful.

 Naturally I could not find our copy of Brigid's Cloak this year but did read from St Brigid and the Cow's and Saint's Lives and Illuminations (St Brigid is a featured saint in this lovely book)

 After this we moved on to Candle making.
This year instead of making a whole heap of rolled candles for what ever purpose.
I proposed we each make one candle and use that as a special Birthday Candle to be lit in our Birthday Ring for each of us.

 Of course we read from the  New Catholic Picture Bible and then took turns rolling our candle and cutting out small decorations to put on the candles.
So we each have an individual and unique candle for our birthday celebrations.

 It is so lovely to see how the children really love to be part of the craft making for these days and we just love making candles.

 The small decorations we cut out with fondant cutters I had bought a little while ago. I think they were about $5 at K-mart :)

 For dinner we had a traditional soup/stew meal that we tend t eat regularly but always on St Brigid or St Patrick day.
It must be the Irish blood in us!!!!

 This feast day would not be complete without Irish Soda bread again a staple in our home and a recipe we love to use on a regular basis for our Irish Saints.

Last but not least we had a candle cake for sweets as the finale for  this double  Feast Day.
I am thankful for the help of our children always for these feast day celebrations.

Long gone are the days when I had only little children and I did all the preparations myself. These days I have lots of older helpers to prepare food and crafts if I need it, and really I think that is how it should be.

As they get older they can take a more active part in living our Liturgical Year and thus truly make celebrations of Feast Days a memory that now becomes a reality of living!

Blessings to you and your homes,
  

Candlemas Tea 2013

This year for Candlemas celebrations we finally had a Candlemas Tea similar to the Our Lady of Guadalupe Tea, we have each year. Both of these were originally inspired by the lovely Alice at Cottage Blessings and while we did not get around to making candles on this day we had a full and very thought provoking day.
We actually are still in the process of making these and I am very excited about making my first candle in a tea cup!
Did you notice the lovely  Doves at the top of the post. Rogan made these quickly for me as we could not access our Christmas ones in the storage area of this house to decorate our table with.
I think he did an excellent job, especially at the last minute, thank you dear son.

Our main reading for this feast was from the New Catholic Picture Bible. I really love this Bible for our younger children and it even is a very good read as a brief summary for us others too. We bought two copies about 10 years ago and they are very much dog eared and sticky taped back together, ie, well read.

One of our main features of this feast day for us  is the making of a candle cake. Again we took the easy way and used a jam sponge roll and then put cream on the outside after slicing the top to give that  candle look.

Then we used some Cadbury chocolate stick biscuits for the wick and a dried apricot for the flame.
Seriously I cannot see us continuing to use these 'sugar full, wheat full' items for much longer as they really do  affect the children in a big way afterward

As part of the tea we also made little cupcake candle cakes. Once again little cupcakes bought from woolies with the Cadbury sticks broken in half and the apricots cut into smaller pieces.

I think these were the most interesting and favourite food items we had.

Our feast table all ready.......
Well almost I forgot to add the jug of water and cheese sticks until later!

Children all ready to eat.........

Yes I just love the candle cake and the little cupcakes.

Here are the food items on the table all laid out.

Individual items each one representing some part of the Presentation of Jesus and Candlemas.
From top left down and then larger image on right:
Marshmallow Hearts - pure hearts of Mary and Joseph
White Chocolate Hot Chocolate with cream - white representing purity of Mary
Chocolate Royals - representing Anna: the black(dark brown chocolate) representing her widowhood, the white inside representing her purity and the biscuit base representing the floor of the temple where she continually prayed
Pretzels - represent Holy Simeon's Arms crossed in prayer
Cheese sticks with swords - this is to fulfill the prophesy of Mary's heart being pieced as declared by Simeon
Candle Cupcakes -representing purity - representing light
Dove Shaped Vegemite Sandwich - indeed to represent the offering made
Candle cake - the light
Strawberries dipped in White chocolate - again pure hearts

And all this we ate for lunch and enjoyed.

Prayer for Candlemas:
Lord God, you are the source of everlasting light.
Your son, our beloved Lord Jesus was presented in the temple 40 days after his birth.
He was recognised by Simeon and Anna,
and welcomed as the promised Messiah.
May we like them, behold the glory of the Lord Jesus.
Grant that we may stand before you with hearts cleansed by your forgiving love.
May we serve you all our days
and make your name known as we worship you as our Lord.
So may we come by your grace to eternal life .
 Amen.

Blessings to you and your homes,
 

Candlemas in our Home 2011

Candle Cake with Doves for the presentation

Yesterday we celebrated Candlemas in our home and while I had not written our plans for the day like I did last year. We had a general idea of what we wanted to do.

We rolled  bees wax sheets. It was a little tricky for me to keep up with the cutting to size of the sheets.

Vellvin helped Myffwyn.

Moran was very pleased with her ability to do this and she had enjoyed it so much.

Moran and Autumn were a team as well.

Eden and Rogan were very enthusiastic.

Corbyn found it a little too slow passed for him so was a little more interested in breaking up the sheets.

The complete rolled collection.....78 in total.

Instead of dipping candles like we did last year. We wanted to do some puring into moulds. So as we were out of bought wicks we made the cotton string ones. I pre dipped these ones unlike the ones Rogan and I made for Arwen's birthday.

We were wanted to pour wax into our walnut shells that we have collected over the years.

After puring in the wax we put in a little wick and pressed just slightly to the bottom and they stayed there.

I was pretty impressed with Saxon as I needed a puring ladle but didn't want to use one of our cooking ones. So I found the plastic half of an egg and Saxon screwed  on a length of wood for a handle.
It worked perfectly!!!!

The next item to fill were shells. Eden loves collecting these large abalone shells and she was most keen to have a wax candle in her shell

Here are our shells and walnuts all filled with beautiful wax to become lovely candles.

Next we tried a few cookie cutter moulds for shapes we liked, of course hearts and stars are hot favourites.

The three stages of filling the cookie cutters. You really have to push down hard to prevent to much leakage.

Our finished collection of pouring candles. Autumn also wanted to try a toilet roll holder and some egg carton ones as well.

Our candle cakes, this was after a while, unlike the photo at the top, one of our candles fell sideways.

I also tried to make small candles that I was going to use as individual place settings, however they did not turn out as I wanted so I bundled them up and had them as bundles of candles instead.

So as we served them up we each had a slice of candle cake and an individual candle in the top of it.....very clever idea Saxon. I would never have thought of it.

Our other little waitress.

After dinner and desert we were treated to a wonderful display of artistic talent by Autumn.
she made a shadow box theater and then made the figures for the play.

As she moved the figures I read the story of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple: LUKE 2: 22-39

	22 When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord
	23 (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, "Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord" ),
	24 and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: "a pair of doves or two young pigeons."
	25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him.
	26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Christ.
	27 Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required,
	28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:
	29 "Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace.
	30 For my eyes have seen your salvation,
	31 which you have prepared in the sight of all people,
	32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel."
	33 The child's father and mother marveled at what was said about him.
	34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: "This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against,
	35 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too."
	36 There was also a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage,
	37 and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying.
	38 Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.
	39 When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth.

Prayer for Candlemas~

Lord God, you are the source of everlasting light.
Your son, our beloved Lord Jesus
was presented in the temple 40 days after his birth.
He was recognised by Simeon and Anna,
and welcomed as the promised Messiah.
May we like them, behold the glory of the Lord Jesus.
Grant that we may stand before you
with hearts cleansed by your forgiving love.
May we serve you all our days
and make your name known
as we worship you as our Lord.
So may we come by your grace
to eternal life .
Amen.

Blessings to you and your homes,