Valentine's Day Crafts ~

Homemade Valentines 2012 ~

This year we made simple Valentine Bookmarks to share with our homeschool group after First Friday Mass.  The House Cat made the bookmarks and Buck and Honeybee taped heart shaped suckers to the back.

The House Cat made these little bookmarks to share.

In years past we enjoyed making these heart crafts ~

Beatitude Hearts

Love Is

Have a blessed day!

Love Is...

Love Is...

Spending time with friends...

Helping one another along the way...

Dying to self...

Guiding small hands...

Living for God!

Love Never Fails (based on 1 Corinthians)

Every day is the perfect day to Love as God LOVES.

Saints Cyril and Methodius

Pray For Us!

Saint Scholastica ~ Pray For Us!

People often ask me if Buck and Honeybee are twins.  They are close in age, 18 months, close in size, but most of all are pretty much inseparable during the day.  Another beauty of homeschooling!

Snuggle Bug read them The Holy Twins this afternoon as I rested.  We seem to be passing a cold around :(  It's such a wonderful book!

After supper we watched Mass and made these doves shared by Stacy over at Catholic Moms Helper. 

Under Brigid's cloak

Saint Brigid is one of the most beloved saints of Ireland.  She was born around the year 450 AD not too long before Saint Patrick died.  Her feast day is celebrated today on February first.  The Catholic Mosaic booklist suggests

reading this wonderful book today.  I printed this coloring sheet created by  Charlotte over at Waltzing Matilda. 
After reading the story,  Honeybee colored St. Brigid's cloak royal blue and added gold stars. 

I also added a little narration from her.

Snuggle Bug printed a pretty notebook page for a little dictation practice.

I noticed I never did post this from last year ~ Buck and Honeybee made these little cloaks for Honeybee's babies using a couple blue napkins I had and gold star stickers.

"Brigid's cloak played a part of several miracles later in her life, and became a sign of protection to the people of Ireland as well.  A common blessing among friends was the hope that they would be fa bhrat Bhrighde "under Brigid's cloak."   To this very day, the cathedral in Bruges, Belgium, keeps in reverence a large blue cloak which is said to be Saint Brigid's very own. " taken from Brigid's Cloak.

Beatitude Hearts for Valentine's Day

A friend of mine had these hanging on her wall many years ago. The image has stuck with me. I picked up these paper heart doilies the other day when I was at the store. The House Cat helped me write the Beatitudes on them this morning 

. 

It was my honey's idea to hang them in the shape of a cross.  "Since the cross is the sign of love," he said.

And St. Valentine was a martyr.

"Today is a great day to pray for our future spouse," said The House Cat.  "And purity before marriage." 

From the mouths of babes!

Celebrating ~Our Lady of Lourdes ~

Today we celebrate Our Lady's first apparition to St. Bernadette at Lourdes France. We began our day watching Bernadette Princess of Lourdes. I just love these videos! We have several of them but not all yet :)

We celebrate a name day today so it's an extra special day here.

I was reading CHC's A Year With God this morning and was inpsired to try again with the family rosary in the evening. At least a decade. The living area needed a good straightening so I took the time to make sure we had rosaries and candles. I also copied the rosary books (From A Year With God) for the kids to make. I hope to work on those over the next few days.

I had the girls add Our Lady of Lourdes to their Book of Centuries.

We'll have a special French meal (American style) tonight.

Pure Potato Soup, Ham Steak, and French Rolls :)

(By the way the potato soup is only 2 pts a cup - if your counting :)

Pure Potato Soup in honor of Our Lady

Ingredients:

1 small onion

Bag of shredded potatoes

Packet of White Gravy Mix.

Broth  1 - 26oz box plus about a half of an addition can.

Saute the onion in a little of the broth from the box.  Once the onion is translucent, add remaining stock from the box and the bag of shredded potatoes.  In a separate bowl, whisk together the packet of white gravy mix with about half of the can of broth.  Once this is mixed well, add to the soup.  Bring up to temp. then reduce and simmer about 30 to 45 min. or until your potatoes are soft.

The white gravy mix makes the soup a little on the peppery side (which I really liked)!  The specks of pepper in the soup can remind us of our sins and how we are to pray to Our Lady asking her to help us to be good.

And here's a beautiful prayer from Catholic Culture to pray before tonights meal.

Catholic Culture : Liturgical Year : Table Blessing for the Feasts of the Mother of God (Prayer): "Blessing II

We praise and magnify you, O Lord, the most high, for in the fullness of time you chose the humble virgin of Nazareth as the mother of your only begotten Son. By the intercession of her prayers we beg your blessing upon our daily food and drink. May they sustain us in our journey until you bring us to the eternal joy of heaven, where Jesus is king forever and ever. Amen"

I'd better get to cooking... I'll try to pop back in and add a picture of the meal. Tonight is the Confraternity of Christian Mothers monthly meeting. The House Cat and Snuggle Bug are coming with me. How blessed I am!

Pretzels and Pancakes

Happy Fat Tuesday everybody. I hope you are all as excited as we are about the change of the liturgical season. Tomorrow we will leave the "growing time" (Ordinary time) for a while and begin to prepare for the most important celebration of the year. We have all been talking of ways to draw ourselves closer to Jesus this Lent. We decided to have at least two things we give to God this lent. The first we will share with each other and try to help each other stay on track. The second will be a personal denial that is only shared with Jesus.

We made homemade pretzels today.

We will have these with a simple vegetable soup tomorrow for lunch.

Tonight we will have a BIG pancake supper. In some places Fat Tuesday is called Pancake Tuesday. Buck's excited about this. He LOVES pancakes :) Then tonight we will talk more about replacing worldly activities with Godly ones this Lent. Before bed we'll collect all of the DVDs and videos that have no spiritual meaning and put those away. We'll fill the basket with all of our good spiritual videos. Then I'll drape a purple cloth over the TV which will remind us of our Lord's retreat into the desert and the beginning of Lent. It will stay there all of Ash Wednesday.

On Wednesday we will make our crown of thorns and begin on our Jesus Tree.

We'll go to Mass with dad in the evening and receive the cross of ashes on our foreheads. This is done as a sign of repentance for our sins. The ashes are made from burning last years palm branches. The priest reminds us that we are dust and to dust we shall return. We must strive to perfect our souls to live forever in heaven with our Lord.

The House Cat's turn...

This is the cover of The House Cats lapbook she's been working on for February 2nd.

St. Scholastica

Today we remember a holy nun who was the twin sister of St. Benedict. We started our morning prayers reading this wonderful book. It was a birthday gift to The House Cat many years ago from a dear friend. Thanks again if you're reading this. You know who you are :)

I couldn't find a coloring sheet of St. Scholastica so I went with this one of a nun.

For supper we'll have Chicken Linguine with Red Sauce and a side dish of spinach.

The kids spoke of acting out a skit of this today. We'll see if they put on a show for us after supper.

St. Scholastica - Pray For Us!!!