THE Most Perfect Gift To Give Your Children

++Thank you, God, for our nine 

beautiful young ones!!++

Wordless Wednesday: Homeschool Sewing Fun

Homemade Prayer Calendars in 4 easy steps

Going on over 15 years now with this homemade Christmas/New Years gift-giving tradition for our families and close friends.  

It is truly the gift that keeps giving.  Wrapping the completed prayer calendar always seems like the easy part.  It looks so simple.  Just a plain old calendar with pre-printed dates and holidays, just waiting to be filled in with the receiver's events and activities for the upcoming year.  But turn the pages, and you'll notice something quite different....  a virtue and/or prayer intention and verses to go with it.  And our pledge to pray for the receiver daily throughout the year and focus on that monthly intention.

So, how do you make one of these?  Truly quite simple, until you get to steps #3 and #4.  They are the hardest parts.  

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#1 - pick out and buy calendars.  I get a combination of bigger dayspring calendars and faith-based calendars.  For the faith-based calendars, I chose these Year of Mercy calendars and also Michele Quiqley's beautiful liturgical wall calendars. 

 #2 - pick out the virtues and prayer intentions to go with it.  You can even use this book to get you started.  It's already based on a virtue per month and has a different quote for each day.  This year, I used most of these virtues, but changed out a few.   I print them on sticker sheets, so all you have to do it cut and peel to place them on the calendar.  I used to use normal paper and glue sticks.  Oy!!  So glad I moved to the sticker sheets a few years ago.   Here are my choices for this year....

January – JOY

“A Christian is never bored or sad.  Rather, the one who loves Christ is full of JOY and radiates    JOY.”     ~Pope Francis

February – FAITH

“If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel   you believe, but yourself.”            ~St. Augustine

March – SACRIFICE

“The world admired only spectacular sacrifice; it does not realize the value of SACRIFICE that is hidden and silent.”                ~St. Josemaria Escriva

April – OBEDIENCE

“It is not hard to OBEY when we love the one whom we obey”  ~St. Ignatius

May – GRACE

“For GRACE is not given because we have done good works, but in order that we may be able to do them.”        ~St. Augustine

June – PRAYER

“PRAYER is the place of refuge for every worry, a foundation for cheerfulness, a source of constant happiness, a protection against sadness.”   ~St. John Crysostom

July – HUMILITY

“Pride leads to disgrace, but with HUMILITY comes wisdom.”      ~Proverbs 11: 2

August -  CHARITY

“To love our neighbor in CHARITY is to love God in man.”              ~St. Francis de Sales

September – DILIGENCE

“How easily we could win heaven day by day just by doing what we have to do – but doing it for God!”    ~St. John Vianney

October – PATIENCE

 “Let nothing trouble you, let nothing make you afraid.  All things pass away.  God never changes.   PATIENCE obtains everything.  God alone is enough.”          ~St. Teresa of Avila

November – GRATITUDE

“The secret to happiness is to live moment by moment and to THANK God for what He is sending us every day in His goodness.”         ~St. Gianna Beretta Molla

December – PEACE    

“Do not be afraid to take a chance on PEACE, to teach PEACE, to live PEACE…  PEACE will be the last word of history.”               ~Pope Saint John Paul II

#3 - the assembly!!  Now I will not lie to you, this is super time-consuming.  You have to cut out all the verses and virtue/intentions.  Then you have to put these on the calendar for the appropriate month.  For me, it's times 13 this year!  But, you can kinda put them together "assembly line" style and do one month at a time.  I even put my kiddos to work!  They especially love the holiday sticker part!

#4 - PRAY!!  Yes, that's right, it's not called a "prayer calendar" for nothing.  You are pledging to pray for the receiver daily throughout the upcoming year.  We offer up these prayers during our family prayers at night.     DO.  NOT.  FORGET.  THIS.  STEP.  

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And, if that's not enough, here's two options....

Option 1:  Pretty them up with holiday stickers.  We buy and use a variety of stickers and place them on the actual square for the holiday.  The kids especially love this part!!  

Option 2:  You can add in birthdays and Baptismal Anniversaries.  We do this for all our family members and Godparents of our children.  

So, there ya go!!  Simple, yet meaningful, with a whole lotta love and hard work and your prayers to top it off!  Makes a lovely Christmas or New Years gift for anyone on your list!!  

Diaper wreath tutorial

My sister had her first girl last week after three boys, so as you can imagine, that house will be exploding in pink!  My sisters and I have gifted each other with a diaper wreath during our hospital stay after having the last few babies, and I've made my sister-in-law one with her last few babies as well.  They are such a fun, easy gift and it makes a lovely decoration to hang up at home for awhile too!  Melody was my little crafter and completed all but the last steps of creating it this time.  Here are the steps to create a diaper wreath:

Step 1.  Wrap wreath/ring in a color of your choice.  We use a styrofoam ring, and they are easy to find at your local craft store.  You can secure the ribbon by stapling it or using push pins, and you only need to do this to the ends.   

Step 2. Cut many strips of curling ribbon.

Step 3.  Attach diapers to wreath and tie on with curling ribbon.  Keep going all the way around until the whole wreath is covered.  

Step 4.  Attach baby items with curling ribbon and attach a larger loop to hang the wreath from.  We included these items this time:  baby sleeper, onsies, diaper cream, baby toy, and infant's tylenol. 

 Viola!!  

Isn't it such a beautiful gift to give a new baby?!!  

Twelve Days of Christmas basket and ideas

Yesterday was Christmas Day and the first day of Christmas!  So, chronologically, that makes today the second day of Christmas!!  Keep on celebrating!

For the past several years, we have celebrated each of the twelve days by singing the song, doing the motions (you cannot forget to do those!!), and reading what each day symbolizes in our faith.  We had a grand celebration and dinner at the end of the twelve days, with food items to go with each day's theme.  It was always so much fun to see what they remembered at the end of the Twelve Days, not only the fun gift but also the spiritual gift symbolized.

When we drew names for my family's Christmas to swap gifts, I asked my sister if they would like a Twelve Days of Christmas themed basket.  When she said "yes", I was so excited to share this beautiful tradition of ours and to put it together.  As I was buying gifts for their basket, I thought some of the items would be great for our own family.  So when my sister-in-law asked for ideas our family, I told her a Twelve Days basket would be great for us too.  It's so nice when it works out so beautifully that way - many of the same gifts we bought and gave away, we received for our own family!   :)

Here is a look at what we put in the Twelve Days of Christmas themed basket and how we packaged it...

Items for each of the twelve days 

(we wrapped each of these in brown paper and labeled them with their day number and the date it could be opened)

(a partridge in a PEAR tree) 

 (two turtle DOVES)

 (chicken noodle soup for the three French HENS)

 (bugles look like megaphones to represent the CALLING birds and four evangelists proclaiming the Good News)

 (five RING pops --- yeah, these are skeleton ring pops....   we forgot to get these out and give them away at Halloween time, but remembered them for when we needed RING pops at Christmas time- lol!)

(silly putty EGGS for the six geese-a-laying)

(a fun game with a SWIMMING Nemo on it to help us remember the seven swans-a-SWIMMING)

(goat's MILK soap and MILK MAIDS caramels)

(a pirourette is a ballet DANCE move) 

(These chips look like little crowns and the LORDS-a-leaping are kings and all kings wear crowns.  We put a note on this item to save and eat it with day 11's item.)

(salsa is a PIPING hot dip) 

(bongos = DRUMS)

Ornaments

Jesse Tree Treasures on Etsy created and sells a beautiful set of ornaments to hang on your tree on each of the days.  

Books

You have to include some beautiful picture books, right?  

Puzzle

Here is a beautiful puzzle and you have twelve days to complete it as a family!

Lapbook

We made this lapbook many years ago and it has been THE staple to help us remember the symbolization of each day, so we made up another one for the gift basket.  

Throw it all in a laundry basket (I am way too practical - who can have enough laundry baskets??) and top it off with a soft velvety blanket (you can never have too many blankets!), and VIOLA, there you have a fun and faith-filled Twelve Days of Christmas basket!!

Want a printable for the kids to color and keep track of each day as you celebrate it??  Seton Magazine shared one this morning - how convenient!!  Isn't it beautiful!  

Have a blessed Twelve Days of Christmas and keep on celebrating!!

Mother's Day handprint craft

I love Pinterest!!  It has given me so many ideas the last few months.  I stole this super cute idea and decided to make it into a Mother's Day present for my mom and mother-in-law.  It can be done in a few easy steps....

1)  trace and cut out handprints of all the kids/cousins (in different colors)
2) find and print out pictures of each of those kiddos (we just printed them quickly using our colored printer)
3)  cut out a large circular piece of poster board and arrange and glue the handprints around the outside, for the petals
4)  glue the pictures in the center in a collage format
5)  use green construction paper to cut out a stem and leaves and glue to the flower
6)  you can even write on the stem or back of the card - "Happy Mother's Day - 2012" or make it a birthday gift and write "Happy Birthday!!" 

I made up 3 of these lovely flowers:  one of my mom, one for my mother-in-law, and one for my grandma. 


Here's how ours turned out....

Super easy.  Super cute.  Super special!!