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by Jessica | Dec 29, 2022

In the Woods Today. . .

Feb 17, 2011 | Nature, Wildfire | 7 Comments

Hubby just sent me this picture that he took while he was working in the woods this afternoon. Isn’t it beautiful!?!

What a difference from the last picture he sent!

Celebrating St. Valentine’s Day

Feb 16, 2011 | St. Valentine's Day | 7 Comments

~ St. Valentine Cupcakes ~

I raided my tub of sprinkles and pulled out all the ones that were pink, red or white. I had no idea I had so many!

We made cupcake toppers using a picture of St. Valentine and attaching them to some heart picks.

~ Valentine Dots ~

My children had so much fun making heart shaped Valentine Dots.

Snuggles had a hard time keeping his finger out of his mouth!

You can find the directions here. They turned out pretty good, but I didn’t like them as much as our Candy Cane Dots. Next time we are going to try Peanut Butter M&M’s! YUM!

~ More Treats ~

Chocolate-Walnut Heart Shaped Brownie

Popcorn Bags

Conversation Hearts

(I loved Lena’s idea for these!)

~ Activities ~

Worksheets to go along with our Saint Valentine picture book…

… in addition to coloring pages!

I made heart shaped bean bags for a “Sending Love” tossing game.

And of course, exchanging Valentines!

Snuggles smelling his “flower”

I loved when Snuggles picked up this “flower” Valentine and then smelled it while saying “Ooohhh! This flower smells YUMMY!” I just wanted to squeeze this sweet little lovable boy of ours!

You can see the proof of the “Strawberry Crush” soda around my children’s mouths.

I never did get around to making Snuggles a St. Valentine’s Day Mailbox, but he loved the little foam mailbox I picked up on clearance at Michaels.

Hope you all had a very happy St. Valentine’s Day!

St. Valentine’s Day Printables

Feb 14, 2011 | Printables, St. Valentine's Day | 7 Comments

I wasn’t having much luck finding St. Valentine (emphasis on Saint) printables that I was interested in using today, so I ended up making a couple of my own. Drawing from the picture book Saint Valentine by Robert Sabuda, and adapting some of the vocabulary and discussion questions to go along with it (found in Catholic Mosaic), I created a Word Search and Crossword Puzzle for my children to complete after we read the book.

I thought I would share my documents here in case any of you will be reading this book with your children and would like to use them as well:

Saint Valentine Crossword Puzzle

Saint Valentine Word Search

Also, here are also a few sources for some great St. Valentine Coloring Pages:

St. Valentine at Waltzing Matilda

~~St. Valentine at Good Shepherd Online~~

And don’t forget the beautiful picture of St. Valentine in Fenestrae Fidei!

Update: St. Valentine from Catholic Playground

Happy St. Valentine’s Day!!

St. Valentine’s Day Mailboxes

Feb 14, 2011 | Crafts, St. Valentine's Day | 9 Comments

St. Valentine’s Day is coming up tomorrow, and we are finally starting to get ready! With a birthday just one week before Valentine’s Day, I never seem to have the time to do all the things I would like to do, to get ready for this fun feast day.

Every year we have wanted to make “Valentine Mailboxes” and just never have had the opportunity. . . (My kids always end up using a shoe box or paper/gift bag for the cards they receive.) This year, inspired by the darling Pottery Barn Kids Valentine Chair Backer and a number of crafty versions on Etsy, we decided to make our own using some empty cereal boxes, scrapbook paper, images of St. Valentine and ribbon.

First I cut the box, measuring 7″ from the bottom to form the base for our mail box. I cut down the side of the box first – saving the front and back to make the top flap.

Next I put Mod Podge all over the front to attach the scrap book paper. I cut it slightly larger than the front and then trimmed where/when necessary. I then continued to attach the paper to all the sides and bottom of the box.

After that I took the remaining cereal box and made a flap. I used double sided tape to stick the two pieces together, as shown in the picture above, before covering both sides with scrapbook paper.

Next I ~~burned the heck out of my finger~~ hot glued a ribbon around the top of the box… Note the bowl of ice/water in the picture! 😉 Now you all know why I prefer to “craft” with food and melted chocolate!

We added a little more ribbon to the front flap, strategically covering up a little tear in the paper with our “bow” and adding a loop to the back for hanging the box.

We also cut out the birds and clouds from the leftover scraps of paper and glued them onto the back.

I thought it turned out darling!

After Twinkle Toes’ Princess Mailbox was finished, Rascal and I started on his. Quite appropriately, he opted for a real Saint Valentine Mailbox.

Rascal still is trying to decide on a quote to add to the right side of the box.

Next up was Chiquita’s mailbox.

She also really enjoyed picking out her scrapbook paper.

She was very happy that we were able to line up the butterfly to fit on the top flap…

… and she loved the cheery flowers for the back.

Captain also decided to use a picture of St. Valentine, along with some “camouflage” looking paper with fleur-de-lis, a symbol for Our Lady. He was very pleased with the results. Like Rascal, he too is trying to decide on a quote to add to the front.

Now if we could just finish up the actual cards, and make one or two more mailboxes for Snuggles and Rose… we will be almost ready for tomorrow!

Celebrating. . .

Feb 11, 2011 | Kids in the Kitchen, Marian, Our Lady of Lourdes | 5 Comments

. . . the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes and thanking God for his many blessings!

(Especially this one, this one, and this one! Congratulations to all of you!!!)

We had so much fun making this year’s Grotto for Our Lady of Lourdes, this time using Cocoa Pebbles. . . Yum!!!

“…a Lady dressed in white with a blue waist-belt

and a yellow rose on each foot.”

O Lady of Bernadette, with the stars of heaven in your hair and the roses of earth at your feet, look with compassion upon us today as you did so long ago on Bernadette in the Grotto of Lourdes.

Our Lady of Lourdes, Pray for Us!

Guess Who? Patron Saints Edition!

Feb 11, 2011 | Board Games, Printables, Saints | 21 Comments

My children all love playing the Guess Who? Board Game. So, last night, after running across a new blog named Arma Dei: Equipping Catholic Families and seeing Monica’s post on converting her family’s Guess Who game, I knew I had to do the same for our family! (Thank you Monica for the inspiration and for sharing your idea!!)

I have an older version of Guess Who, and not this version that was used in the link above, so I had to create my own templates. It wasn’t that hard to do, plus I was then able to customize it with our own Patron Saints.

I guess I could have used colored scrapbooking cardstock that is white on one side, but I wanted to stick with supplies I already had at home… So, I printed my template onto white paper and then glued it onto red and blue cardstock before cutting along the lines to create the individual cards to insert into the slots on our game.

It didn’t take long to slip all the pictures into their slots.

I then printed out a larger version of each picture and glued it onto yellow card stock to create the deck of cards to use for choosing your saint. I cut them into 2 1/4″ by 1 1/2″ rectangles and then it was finished.

Just as soon as my children saw their “new” game they wanted to play!

“Are you a man. . . Are you a woman. . . Are you an angel?”

“Are you an apostle. . . Are you a nun. . . Are you a priest?”

“Are you holding Baby Jesus. . . Are you a martyr. . . Are you missionary?”

“Is a member of the Holy Family in the picture?”

The options for questions are endless!

P.S. Tomorrow is the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. I have a box of Cocoa Pebbles in the cupboard so we can build a Grotto for Our Lady and some blue Jello to make “Springs at the Grotto” for dessert! You can find my compilation posts of all sorts of Ideas for Celebrating the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes in the archives.

Chore Time

Feb 10, 2011 | Baby "Rose", Home Videos | 7 Comments

I just heard the little vacuum turn on and was so excited that Chiquita actually took the Initiative and was starting her chores. . . I was mistaken!

It looks like we have a new little, not quite 14 months old, helper for chore time!

A Lego Themed Birthday Party

Feb 9, 2011 | Birthday Parties, Happy Birthday | 27 Comments

This year Rascal choose a “Lego-Theme” for his 9th Birthday. I am not sure if he or I enjoyed it more… It was so much fun! It was just our family since we only have birthday parties with friends every 3-4 years, but we all had a great time and Rascal just loved his party.

In addition to the Lego Mini-Figures we made, I also created a “Happy Birthday” banner using a Lego font. I printed out the letters (here is my document) and then outlined them with yellow marker before cutting them out and gluing them onto 6×6 squares of red cardstock, which I then mounted onto a piece of 6.5×6.5″ white cardstock. I punched a small hole into each corner and ran some red yarn through each card. It’s the first time that I have made a “Happy Birthday Banner” and I loved how it turned out. 🙂

I also printed out each of the children’s names (and Daddy & Momma, since they insisted!) to make little treat bags. Originally I wasn’t planning on making these, but after seeing these cute bags on a whole bunch of different blogs I decided I had to try them out! I happened to have a package of multicolored bags from Michael’s already in my craft closet, as well as matching ribbon, and I used my Cricut to quickly cut out 6 – 2″ circles for each bag from matching cardstock. (A 2″circle punch would work great too.)

Captain really wanted to help, so he glued each circle to a piece of foam before gluing them to the bags so they would stick out a little bit. They turned out so cute!

While Captain was making the bags, I printed out the Lego logo (here’s my document) to make “napkin rings” and made another document with a variety of lego faces to cut out and attach to the straws. My children all loved choosing which face they would have on their straw!

Sticking with a red, yellow, blue and green theme, I set the table with a blue table cloth, red cups, green square plates, white napkins, and yellow silverware.

.: Marshmallow Lego Pops :.

I had a whole bunch of food ideas that I wanted to make, but since we spent most of the day at the bowling alley, we only had time to make chocolate covered marshmallow lego pops. These actually tasted surprisingly good!

.: Games :.

While I started dinner, I gave each of the four older kids a Lego Race Car kit to put together for a race. This was the first time that the girls had ever put together lego with their brothers and they enjoyed it just as much as the boys!

Snuggles and Rose had fun playing with blocks too!

The next game was Lego Creationary. It is a Lego game where the kids take turns trying to get the other players to guess what they are building out of Lego’s. For prizes I had made a few “Lego Candy Bars.” I had planned to attach paper circles to the Hershey Bars, like we did with the bags, but when I found a half bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups leftover from Christmas I decided to use them instead.

The last game we played was a guessing game. I filled a jar full of Candy Blox and had everyone write their name on a slip of paper and guess how many LEGO were in the jar. The answer was 97 and Twinkle Toes was by far the closest with her guess of 99.

.: Birthday Cake :.

The next time I even consider making a “Building Blocks Cake” topped with “24 Marshmallow Halves” (I stopped at 20) frosted with buttercream icing, somebody please stop me! This had to have been one of the hardest, most annoying, cakes I have decorated. 🙂 I ended up with frosting everywhere and it was impossible for me to make it look smooth. Betty Crocker must be incredibly fast at frosting cakes, if this was only suppose to take “35 Min” of Prep time. (???) I gave up after finishing the 3rd of the 4 blocks and went to bed.

Rascal loved the cake though, despite my lack of talent, and that made it worth all the frustration!

.: Birthday Gifts :.

I wrapped all of Rascal’s gifts in red and yellow paper. He was also given a couple other gifts from a friend and his Godparents earlier in the day and I thought it was so perfect that they were wrapped in blue and green! 😉

Thank you all for your suggestions on LEGO! I ended up not being able to find the City Corner set that I originally considered, and ended up choosing the LEGO® Kingdoms Prison Tower Rescue and the LEGO® Kingdoms Prison Carriage Rescue (which I knew he would love), in addition to the LEGO Creator Log Cabin (which is so neat!).

I’m thinking that in the future I probably need to simplify birthdays a little bit. I was laying in bed the other night doing the math and figured that if each of my children had a “themed” birthday each year until they were 12, that would be a total of 72 BIRTHDAY PARTIES! And that is only if God doesn’t bless us with any more children. . . Yikes! I think I will save the banner and other extra’s from this party to do again when Snuggles is older. . . He’ll just have to decorate his own cake! 😉

Our Family of Lego Mini-Figures

Feb 8, 2011 | Birthday Parties, Kids Artwork | 1 Comment

I was so tired last night, that I never did make it back to the computer to post the answers to our Lego Mini-Figures Guessing Game!

Charlotte was the first one to guess correctly, followed by JenniferM (unofficially), Mary S and Jodi. It was so fun to see all of your guesses and we will be sending your family a little “party favor/prize” in the mail, Charlotte. 🙂

It ended up being a little harder than I thought it would be for you all. I thought the hair lengths and colors would give it away at the very start. Even my sister wasn’t able to guess it correctly! 😉 I suppose the girls hair lengths do go back and forth all the time… Currently Twinkle Toes has the shorter hair (though it is starting to get longer) and Chiquita has “layers” since she gave herself a haircut last month. The only way to tell the boys apart was that Captain has much darker hair than Rascal, especially in the summer.

Everyone had such a fun time creating the Mini-Figures. Charlotte’s printables are just perfect and we really enjoyed accessorizing them with paper crafts, stickers and clip art. This would be such a fun craft to do anytime, not just for a birthday party!

Anyhow, I’ll be back either this evening or tomorrow with some more pictures from the birthday party, but first we have a lot of school work and laundry to get done. I hope you all have a great day!

Lego Mini-Figures Guessing Game

Feb 8, 2011 | Giveaway | 16 Comments

We just got home from an afternoon of fun at the bowling alley, for a sweet girl’s 12th Birthday! Hubby will be home soon and so we are making a couple snacks and getting ready to play a few games for Rascal’s birthday. While we are busy celebrating, Rascal wanted me to post a little guessing game for you all! 🙂

As I mentioned earlier, we turned ourselves into Lego Mini-Figures to use as decorations this weekend, and just loved the results. So, can you guess who’s who?

We might just have to send a little prize to the first correct (or closest) answer!

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Our Family

Sean & Jessica, Captain-25, Ranger-23, Twinkle Toes-22, Chiquita-20, Snuggles-18, Rose-15, Bud-13, Grace-8 and Joy-6 (blog nicknames)

A Little About Me

Hi! I'm Jessica, a Roman Catholic wife and home educating mother to our nine children. I was home educated myself, along with my eleven younger siblings. I have a special devotion to St. Therese, through whom I have been given much help and many blessings--the beautiful "Shower of Roses" that she has sent my way! Here I will record a few of the blessings I treasure. Please remember that what you see here is just a little glimpse at our lives, so please say a prayer for us, as we continue to strive for holiness.

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Prayer of Mothers

Father in heaven, grant me the grace to appreciate the dignity which you have conferred on me. Let me realize that not even the Angels have been blessed with such a privilege—to share in your creative miracle and bring new Saints to heaven. Make me a good mother to all my children after the example of Mary, the Mother of your Son. Through the intercession of Jesus and Mary I ask your continued blessings on my family. Let us all be dedicated to your service on earth and attain the eternal happiness of your kingdom in heaven. Amen.