The Feasts of Halloween, All Saints and All Souls

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,