Feast Of Our Lady of Lourdes 2015

Oh my, it seems there are so many feast days to celebrate at the moment -it really is hard to keep up.
Although now we have entered the Lenten season we certainly will not have the same  opportunities for more lively celebrations till Easter.

As I really want to record it here for us I will just say we have celebrated in the same way we have before, typically Food, colouring pages and reading of the books.

Our favourites for this year were  the giant rosary made from cookies and royals and the Grotto that we love making every year.

We did make this cake  Tres Leches (Milk Cake) which was supposed to be fantastic and it was symbolically white, but  really it did not come anywhere near our Pound Cake recipe that we love.

So to end off for this post I just want to say that I really love making these Feast Days with our children and pray that they learn from these events and that the memories will be special in years to come.

Blessings to you and your homes,
 

Our Lady of Lourdes Celebrations 2013

For today's feast day we kept it relatively simple!!!!
"Today marks the first apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1858 to fourteen-year-old Marie Bernade (St. Bernadette) Soubirous. Between February 11 and July 16, 1858, the Blessed Virgin appeared eighteen times, and showed herself to St. Bernadette in the hollow of the rock at Lourdes. On March 25 she said to the little shepherdess who was only fourteen years of age: "I am the Immaculate Conception." Since then Lourdes has become a place of pilgrimage and many cures and conversions have taken place. The message of Lourdes is a call to personal conversion, prayer, and charity." from Catholic Culture

While reading Our Lady of Lourdes aloud to the children they coloured in our colouring pages and did the word searches we made.

These were the word searches for both younger and older children

This one for the older children was very challenging and took over an hour to complete. They listened to some lovely classical music to keep up their spirits after I had moved on to other things.

This was one of the colouring pages we did and we loved using the colouring picture (from Charlotte)  to make this lovely paper grotto, the idea coming  from  here

This was a new colouring page for us this year and I found this one late in the day that I will record here for next year

To make the grotto inspired by Catholic Cuisine, first I found St Bernadette and Our Lady of Lourdes form my collection of Painted Saints then we used..........

these and just stacked them on top of each other. Really it was a time saving effort as the idea suggested required more preparations, but it still produced the results we wanted.
Well for a little while anyway because.........

It was obviously hotter here than I thought today for when I looked in on 'Our Lady' later in the day it had collapsed on her. Chocolate really does not do well in the heat.
We had the grotto for sweets along with

these vanilla cupcakes with white icing and blue flowers for Mary and pink for love.

As we had a simple dinner of Bacon and Potato bake it was as I said a simple day.

We certainly were blessed later in the day!
A day we prayed quite intently  to Our Lady for a most dear intention.
In fact i played this hymn over and over for quite a while this afternoon
and very late in the day we got word that we had been the chosen family to move to the new rental property we had looked at and loved on Friday.
Thanks be to God!!!!

May Our Lady surround you and bless you this feast day also.

OUR LADY OF LOURDES PRAY FOR US!!

Blessings to you and your homes,
  

Huge Week coming up Celebration Wise

Well I am looking at the coming week and trying not to panic at the thought and realising it is going to be a huge week of crafts, activities, food and preparations.

Not only are there the spiritual preparations for Lent with the days of Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday preparations but also we have Valentines Day coming after Ash Wednesday.

Of course we start of the week withe the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.
So I have pulled out my favourite planning books, pulled down my big folder for February with all my printed out ideas ( pre blogging days) and am looking on line for ideas.

I do want to do all the traditions we normally do but am looking at a few ideas that are new and inspiring.

So we will look at our own pages to see what we have done before that we can use this year and a reminder to help me as well for planning :)

OUR LADY OF LOURDES~
Planning Page
Our celebrations in 2011

MADI GRAS~
Making Perfumed Eggs
Making Felt Madi Gras Masks and simpler version

SHROVE TUESDAY~
Celebrations from 2012 - lots of ideas in all three
Celebrations from 2011
Celebrations from 2010


ASH WEDNESDAY~
Burning the Ashes
Salt Dough Crown of Thorns
One Year's challenge

ST VALENTINE'S DAY~
Knitting and Stories
St Valentine Information and sentiments
Making a Valentine Walnut Shell Surprise
Making a Valentine Ribbon Banner
Making a Valentine Tree and a Giant Heart Pockets (for gift giving)
Celebrations in our home 2012
Celebrating in 2011

And of course we will be making and doing things out of books I got out!!!!
Have a great few days and I look forward to sharing what we ACTUALLY get done in our family celebrations.


Blessings to you and your homes,
 

Hand Painted Birthday Saints

St Philomena- for Eden

At the moment I am in the middle of painting my figures for the Wooden Folk Exchange. 
This reminded me I had never done a complete post on the birthday saints I have made through out the year for our family.

I have mentioned before how much I love this craft and really that is good because have no real artistic ability at all.
I usually print out the image of the saint, or it could be any other person and use this as a guide to the colours and objects I want to feature. Sometimes this is hard and they do not turn out exactly how I want them to.

I am really enjoying painting my figures for the exchange and writing the story for them as well.
I have other plans for painting, that I am most keen to start as well,  and  I really do recommend this craft for even the most craft challenged or art challenged like me. It is quite addictive!!

So here are our saints so far since April 2010

Our Lady of Lourdes

St Leo the Great - Corbyn

Our Lady of Altagracia

St Rose of Cascia- this is for me for my Patron Saint of the year.

St Joseph Yuen- for Rogan

St Dymphna- for Moran

St Stephen- for Stephen

St Ermangilde- for Myffwyn

St Brigid of Ireland- for Autumn

Padre Pio- for Kynan

St John Vianney- for Saxon

Mother Teresa- for Vellvin

St Gerard Majella- for Braedon

St Elizabeth of Hungary- for Arwen this year.

For those of you who have never seen the ones I made for our Alphabet Path here they are as well.
Here is our complete listing of the Alphabet of Saints to use along with our Alphabet Path studies,
I used An Alphabet of Catholic Saints as a guide along with Jessica's and Blair's already painted Saints.
A is for St Agnes
B is for St Bernadette
C is for St Cecilia
D is for St Dominic
E is for St Elizabeth Ann Seton
F is for St Francis
G is for St George
H is for St Helen
I is for St Ignatius
J is for St Joseph
K is for St Kateri Tekawitha
L is for St Lucia
M is for St Martin de Porres
N is for St Nicholas
O is for St Odilia
P is for St Patrick
Q is for Queen of Heaven (Mary)
R is for St Rose
S is for St Sharbel
T is for St Therese
U is for St Ursula
Vis for St Vincent de Paul
W is for St Wenceslas
X is for St Francis Xavier
Y is for St Joseph Yuen
Z is for St Zita

The whole Alphabet of Saints
Back views of Saints
More back views of some Saints
Some side views of the Saints
Opposite side view

Blessings to you and your homes,