Litany of the Saints for YOUR Family

We love our saint friends and pray to our patron saints regularly.  After we pray our Morning Offering right before breakfast, we ask each of our patrons to intercede for us throughout that day.  We also read about feast days of other saints and LOVE our peg doll collection.  And we especially love our patron saint peg dolls, which sit on our dining room table circled around our Easter Candle to serve as that reminder that they are in Heaven rooting for us all throughout the day.

 I found out about a sweet mom (Gina), who belongs to a Catholic blogging support group that I also am part of, who is going to be creating custom Family Litanies and selling them on her Etsy shop, Other Side of the Fence.  She is busy mother of 6 kids - who spends her days chasing messes, fighting Siths, baking apple cake, navigating tween years, and mortifying her children by singing along to Justin Timberlake's new jam. When she's not cooking or teaching math facts, she's grossing myself out buying cow hearts for homeschool science lessons. I love how she has found a special way to keep sane and that is through creating, whether sewing or photography or digital design.  And we all get to benefit from her inspiration and work!!   She shared with me, "Since we're often calling upon the saints to carry our prayers to Christ (because who doesn't need some extra help in prayer?), I was inspired to create a family litany of saints."   And what a blessing she is and these custom Litanies can be to so many families!!!  

Gina was kind enough to offer a few of us bloggers a chance to receive and review these Litanies before they became available on her Etsy site.  Of course, I jumped on the chance because of our devotion already to our patrons.

Not only are her Family Litanies beautifully made, but it can become both a new devotion for your family and serve as that visual reminder of these Heavenly Helpers who are constantly interceding for us.

You can buy either a print that she creates, prints and will mail it directly to you.  (This is what she did for me)  -OR- you can buy the downloadable copy and she will create it and email it to you to print on your own.  I asked her for some tips on both ways, so you can present them and hang them in your own house.   Here are the tips she shared with me:

"The prints will be designed to fit an 8x10 frame. I recommend any frame that you like best! A large black frame with a mat will be beautiful on a wall, or a frame 8x10 sized is perfect on a table top or a wall.

If printing on your own, always choose a high-quality cardstock for the best results. Many people have great success printing at home, or taking a file to a local office supply store to have the print finished with their copy services."

Gina was sweet enough to ask if I wanted any certain colors or accents, so know this option is also available!!  So, get your list together of your family's Patron Saints (name saints, Confirmation saints, or just your favorite saints as a family), and head on over and order your own Family Litany of Saints.   She is making these available on her site starting today and will only have a limited number available because of the time it takes to make them and keeping the balance as a busy momma.   So don't hold off, head on over soon!   She is also offering **free shipping** for the first ten orders!  This will not only make a nice addition for your own family, but think of the blessing it could be to gift this to your family/friends!!!

To keep in touch with Gina and all the lovely things she shared about her family, faith, and homeschooling, head on over to her blog, Someday Saints

A Saint Song

We love to live our faith liturgically and celebrate all the feasts in the church year.  Especially the saint feast days!!  Having saint peg dolls in house helps bring them to life even more.  Our sweet 3 year old, Rose, gets sung to every night and we ask for the intercession of 6-10 saints - whichever saint pegs she has chosen.  Last week was St. Zita's feast and she is one of Rose's favorite saints.  She has totally fallen in love with her!!  I know St. Zita is one of her special intercessors now too.  Here is sweet Rose singing to St. Zita, asking for her prayers...

7 Quick Takes - our peg doll collection

I have been painting peg dolls since I first saw them on one of my favorite blogs.  It was the perfect time to start creating our own collection because Ariel and Melody were doing the Alphabet Path as well and having a saint to go with every letter was ideal.  Ideal is the word here...  I only got through painting half the alphabet.  It was a great start though and I was such a newbie.  Who knew painting one doll at a time was actually harder than painting multiples?  I've learned now, by being in many peg doll swaps that painting multiple pegs and trading with a group of people doing the same thing is *the* way to go when adding to your peg doll collection!!

Today's quick take is a peek into our peg doll collection - either created by me, collected through swaps, or bought off of Etsy.  Enjoy!

#1 - our first Saint pegs - half of the alphabet - lol!  This is where it all started!  See how plain they were.  My sweet humble peg dolls.  Goes to show that "practice makes perfect".  Well, not even perfect, but much much better.  But still, oh so special, since these guys are where our collection all began.  (St. George was MIA during the "photo shoot")

#2 - Saint peg dolls (some I painted, some I bought, some I swapped)

#3 - super heroes - the big boys and I painted and gifted Max with a set of his own super hero pegs a couple years ago.  And, the next year, St. Nick brought some fancier painted ones (found on Etsy) for Pookey.

#4 - Star Wars pegs - I painted a whole bunch of the Admiral Ackbar pegs and traded in a character peg doll swap.  See close ups of all these guys here.

#5 - Marian pegs - I think out of all the swaps I've done, this is my favorite!!  We love Mama Mary!!  I painted over 20 Our Lady of Mount Carmels and then traded and received so many beautiful Mary peg dolls.  Click on over here to see our whole set and close ups of all our little Mary's.

#6 - Rose received these Disney Princess/Prince/Pair pegs for her birthday this year.  Aren't they adorable?!!! Well, she is too!  I painted Mulan/Shang and traded for the rest through a character peg doll swap on Facebook.

#7 - here are four sets of Nativity pegs that I recently received from a swap - one for us to keep and three to give away as Christmas gifts this year!!

Phew!  I think it's time to take a peg doll painting break, eh?!!

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Jump on over to view and/or take part in some more Quick Takes!!  

(click the image below)

All Saints Day

++St. John, pray for us!++

++St. Matthew, pray for us!++

++St. Anne, pray for us!++

++St. Elizabeth, pray for us!++

++St. Mark, pray for us!++

++St. Luke, pray for us!++

++St. Therese, pray for us!++

++Fulton Sheen, pray for us!++

July Saint Peg Doll Swap

Yesterday afternoon I finished swapping and packing up 20 sets of saint peg dolls with 20 dolls in each set for some local moms (and a few out-of-towners), all for the children of the families to love, play with and treasure their Saint Friends forever.  Kids play with Barbies and Super Heroes, so why not play with their Saint Friends??

Here's a peek at the 20 Saint Friends that were painted and swapped....

(St. Brigid, St. Charles, St. Therese, St. Kateri)

 (St. Clare of Assisi, St. Cecilia, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, St. Alexander)

 (St. Doroty, St. Zita, St. Augustine, St. Gemma Galgani)

 (St. Philomena, St. Peter, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Helena)

(St. Joseph, St. Anne, St. Nicholas, St. Faustina)

Now this is the first swap that I hosted and didn't participate in.  I took a break from the actual painting since there were new people that joined the group and wanted to participate in the swap, plus we have a nice sized collection from all my past painted dolls and two swaps from earlier this year.

++Lord, may our children learn to love and follow the example of their Saint Friends, who followed in Your footsteps, and we pray for their intercession always!!++