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S is for Spring Cleaning!

Mar 23, 2010 | , | 9 Comments

We completed the letter “S” on our Alphabet Path last week, and I do plan to post some pictures soon.  This week we are taking another break and focusing on Spring Cleaning followed by a Spring Break next week for Holy Week!  I’m sure glad I got such a good jump start last year before the baby was born, allowing for all these “breaks.”  🙂


I am still working on filling those 40 Bags… I have six left, since I’m trying not to count anything that couldn’t be donated (aka: trash).  I’m hoping that as we Spring Clean this week we’ll be able to fill them up and be finished.

Yesterday we started our Spring Cleaning in the Master Bedroom.  I figured it was the one room that had the best possibility of staying clean, so I thought it would be a good place to start.   

We all worked together and it didn’t take too long at all.  It is now the cleanest it has been since last year! 


I had lots of (much needed!) help and we were able to get quite a few things checked off our list:
  • Remove Cobwebs 
  • Dust light fixtures 
  • Dust Ceiling Fan 
  • Organize Bookshelf and Dust 
  • Organize Night Stands 
  • Put away any stray items 
  • Clean Under Bed 
  • Vacuum Under Nightstands & Bed 
  • Wash Mattress Pad, Sheets and Dust Ruffle 
  • Clean Windows (Inside) 
  • Clean Mirror 
  • Dust Statue & Crucifix 
  • Dust Clock & Phone 
  • Dust & Polish Furniture 
  • Clean Fingerprints off Door, Walls & Switch plates
  • Vacuum Room 


Still to do:
  • Replace light-bulbs in two of the ceiling can lights
  • Touch up paint scuffs in a couple spots
  • Clean Windows (Outside) 
  • Look for Window Coverings
  • Find Decorative Pot for the Ficus Tree (a birthday gift from my mom) 
  • Purchase new sheets (To replace the flannel, for Spring/Summer) 
  • Fix Rocking Chair (This was another gift from my mom, last year.  It was given to her by my Grandma (Dad’s Mom) when she was pregnant with me!  I need to try and figure out how to stop it from squeaking so badly… Any suggestions?)
Today we are moving on to the children’s bedrooms.  I’ve spent so much time in them this past year that I’m hoping we can get all three done today…  I guess we will see!

Celebrating the Easter Season :: The Garden of the Good Shepherd

Mar 22, 2010 | , , | 28 Comments

A couple years ago, inspired by Charlotte, we started using Tomie dePaola’s The Garden of the Good Shepherd Sticker Calendar to count the fifty days of Easter.  In addition to placing the sticker on the Garden of the Good Shepherd Poster, and reading a coordinating bible verse and meditation, we would (almost always) do a fun craft, activity, or prepare a snack based on the symbol each day.

If any of you are interested in doing the same, I put together a page with links to all of my various Garden of the Good Shepherd posts which include lots of suggestions for each week.  You can also find even more ideas over at Charlotte’s blog.

Anyhow, as I mentioned earlier, my children really love this new Easter tradition of ours, and always look forward to the daily activities.  However, to be honest with you, I just don’t have the energy to pull off 50 DAYS of “something extra” right now.  It was hard enough to stay motivated the past couple years (I would always lose momentum towards the end), not to mention that the Alphabet Path has been keeping us extra busy this year.  That said, we have decided to do things a little bit differently this Easter season…

Here’s the plan.  We will still read the bible verse and place the sticker on the calendar each day, but instead of having an extra daily activity, at the end of each week (on either Friday or Saturday) we will combine them all (focusing on fun and yummy foods) into a

Good Shepherd’s Garden Party!

Weekly Themes:

1)  The Good Shepherd’s Pasture

Personally, I think this will be a really fun change for us this year, and simplify the planning process for me! 😉

Charlotte and I have been talking on the phone, and emailing back and forth, since we will be collaborating on this project!   Yay!! Charlotte has the BEST ideas when it comes to party planning!  Ooohhhh!!! It’s going to be so much fun!

We would LOVE for some of you to join us, so we are already working on putting together the weekly menus, recipes, shopping lists, and readings, and we plan to post them at least a couple weeks before each party takes place.   (The plans for the first week, The Good Shepherd’s Pasture, will be posted later this week!)

My sister Julianna made the button for us (pictured above), and we also plan to post a Mister Linky at Catholic Cuisine each Monday (beginning on April 12th) so that everyone who participates can link up and share the pictures from their previous week’s Good Shepherd’s Garden Party!

You do need to order your sticker calendar soon, since Easter Sunday is less than two weeks away!    I noticed that, since I posted the link in my Picture Books for Easter post, it has sold out at Amazon…  However,  if you haven’t ordered a copy yet, it is still available from Liturgy Training Publications.

As another alternative, Charlotte is planning on illustrating a set of the 50 symbols herself, which you’ll all be able to download and print for your children to color and create their own Garden of the Good Shepherd Poster! Isn’t she awesome!?!

So, is anyone interested?  We’d love to hear if any of you think you might like to join us this year!!

Picture Books for Easter

Mar 21, 2010 | , , | 13 Comments

With Easter just two weeks away, I spent some time this weekend pulling out and organizing all of our Easter Picture Books, and ordering a few new ones for the children’s Easter Baskets this year.

I have most of them listed in my sidebar right now, but since I’ve received a number of emails asking which ones we’ve enjoyed the most, I thought it would list them here as well:

~ The Garden of the Good Shepherd ~ 


Our absolute favorite book for Easter is not actually a “book” but rather a Sticker Calendar!  We have used  The Garden of the Good Shepherd to count down the 50 days of Easter for the past two years now, and will be using it again this coming Easter Season.  The guide that comes with the sticker calendar suggests bible verses to look up and read, which coordinate with the sticker/symbol for each day.

~ Benjamin’s Box and Resurrection Eggs ~ 

Another one of my childrens favorites is Benjamin’s Box: The Story of the Resurrection Eggs.  We also have a set of Resurrection Eggs to go along with the story.  These Resurrection Eggs are now very expensive at Amazon, but it would be very easy to make your own!

Note: The book Benjamin’s Box only includes 10 symbols and our set of Ressurrection Eggs has 12.  We include those extra eggs by opening Egg #9: Soldiers Spear and Egg #10: Linen Wrapping  with the reading for “The Cloth” and Egg #11: Stone at the Tomb and Egg #12: Empty Tomb with the last reading for “The Stone.”


Update:  If you’d like to use the Resurrection Eggs, and you’d rather not make your own, you can find an updated package of our Resurrection Eggs for only $12.99 here.

Another Update:  I’ve just found out that I would no longer recommend this book, due to revisions in the newest editions.  I’ll post more later, but for now you can read more in the comment section of this post.

~ The Jesus Garden ~

I think The Jesus Garden: An Easter Legend is my favorite Easter Book!  The images are beautiful and I love the story.  It SO makes me want to plant Morning Glories, Bleeding Hearts, and Dogwood Trees!  If only the deer didn’t eat everything we plant… Hillside Education has a great Study Guide to go with this book.

~ The Easter Story ~

We LOVE Petook by Caryll Houselander and illustrated by Tomie dePaola.  Unfortunately it is out of print, and rather expensive for used copies, so we borrow it from the library each year.

We also love the books by Brian Wildsmith including Jesus (which the boys recently re-read in History) and The Easter Story which is told through the eyes of the little donkey who carried Christ into Jerusalem.    Both are excellent books filled with beautiful illustrations!

Oh!  There is a also a study guide in Catholic Mosaic for Petook and one at Hillside for The Easter Story.

Another one of our favorites is The Easter Story by Gennady Spirin, it stands out particularly for the gorgeous illustrations, just like her book We Three Kings.

We also have The Easter Story by Fr. Lovasik, The Story of Easter by Aileen Fisher, and The Very First Easter by Paul Maier.

~ Decorating Easter Eggs ~

Easter Eggs for Anya: A Ukrainian Celebration of New Life in Christ  and Rechenka’s Eggs are definitely favorites, particularly of my girls who received them in their Easter baskets last year.   Both are about making traditional Ukrainian pysanky and end with sweet surprises.  When my girls are a little older (perhaps next year?) I want to purchase a Ukrainian Egg Decorating Kit and learn how to make these beautiful eggs!

The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes is an old favorite that comes off the shelf year round, but especially at Easter time.  Such a cute story!

Another favorite is The Egg Tree, but this too has always been borrowed from the library.

~ For the Littlest Ones ~

All my children have loved the Catholic Babies First Easter. Our Oldest received it in his Easter Basket when he was a baby, and it has been carried around for nearly 10 years.   I think they all loved that it had a little handle attached.   I thought about purchasing another copy to put in Rose’s Easter Basket, but it looks like it is now out of print… I hate it when that happens!

I do have a new favorite Board Book though!  The Saving Name of God the Son is excellent!  Snuggles received it for Christmas from his grandparents and I can’t recommend it enough!  It starts with the Annunciation and continues through the life of Christ including the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection.   Even though it is a board book, I often find my older children looking through the beautiful images on each page, which are all Renaissance paintings by Fra Angelico.

The First Easter Bunny is a sweet little book that was written by a Catholic Priest.  It is a story about a bunny who follows Jesus through the events that take place during Holy Week and is the first living creature to see the Risen Jesus.  My older children are quick to point out that this is “just a story and we don’t really know if a bunny was the first animal to see Jesus,” but my little ones really love listening to the story.  🙂
~ Little Saints Pre-School Easter Books ~

I purchased these (Happy Easter Day!, Easter and The Best Thing About Easter) a number of years ago to go with our Little Saints Preschool Program.  They are cute enough, but if I could go back I would have saved my money for any of the books listed above! 😉

~ Library Books ~

In addition to Petook, I also just requested The Easter Egg by Jan Brett and The Golden Egg Book by Margaret Wise Brown from our local library again this year.

~ For This Years Easter Baskets ~ 

We always like to include a new book in our children’s Easter Baskets, and so far I’ve ordered these three for this year:  Easter by Fiona French, The Bird’s Gift: A Ukrainian Easter Story, and A Tale for Easter by Tasha Tudor.

I’m still on the lookout for a few more,
so I’d love to hear about any other favorites you all might have!  

In Honor of St. Joseph

Mar 20, 2010 | , , | 14 Comments

Today was the Solemnity feast of our beloved Saint Joseph, patron of the Universal Church, fathers, and families, to name just a few!  To celebrate, the children and I created our first real (we’ve made the Cut-and-Color Altar a couple times now) St. Joseph Altar!  The boys worked on shifting the furniture around to make room and finding/setting up the tables, while the girls shaped symbols out of bread dough.  I made spaghetti for dinner, which we topped with sawdust (breadcrumbs), and two of my sisters stopped by to join us as well!

It was so much fun and a great way to learn a little more about our heritage.  (Though they are mostly Irish (with a little Spanish), our children do have a dash of Italian left in them from my Great Grandfather!)

Be sure to head over to The Virtual St. Joseph Altar’s Blog Fest to see how other families honored St. Joseph this year.

Our St. Joseph Altar

The three tiers represent the Trinity, as well as the three members of the Holy Family.
Symbolic Breads • Fresh Fruit

St. Joseph’s Cream Puffs
Fish (Goldfish and Goldfish S’mores)
Sawdust (Bread Crumbs)

Cookies • Pastries
Red Wine • Sparkling Grape Juice
Strawberry Triffle

Viva San Giuseppe!

An All Saints Fair

Mar 19, 2010 | , , | 5 Comments

As I mentioned earlier, yesterday we attended an All Saints Fair that was put on by our Homeschool Group.  Each family was to set up a display on a Saint of their choice and we choose St. Joseph since I didn’t have any extra time to plan and prepare, and we already had a lap book full of information his feast day is also this week.  😉

Here are a few pictures of our little display:


We stood the St. Joseph Lap Book in the center of the table.  We then put together another 3-D Color & Cut St. Joseph Altar for display, and handed out supplies for each family to make their own at home.  We also had a few of the foods you might find on a St. Joseph Altar:  Breads, Cookies, Pastries, Cream Puffs, Fruit, Sparkling Grape Juice Wine, Fruit, and Gold Fish Fish.   

Here is a close up of our 3-D altar for this year. Once again Rascal did all the coloring. 
(FYI: Cereal, Cake Mix, and Jello-Pudding Boxes work great!)
I also had coloring pages for the children to color:
St. Joseph the Worker illustrated by Charlotte
St. Joseph from Catholic Artworks Faith Keepers Combo CD
and this beautiful St. Joseph from St. John the Baptist
Here are pictures of some of all the other amazing Saint Displays:
St. Patrick

St. Veronica

St. Maximilian Kolbe

St. Benedict and St. Scholastica
St. Faustina

St. Lucy

St. Margaret Pole

St. Francis of Assisi



St. Joseph

I hope you all have a very Blessed and Happy Feast of St. Joseph! 

S is for Saints, Shamrocks and Six Smiling Sweeties!

Mar 18, 2010 | | 10 Comments

Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day ~ March 17, 2010

~ Breakfast ~
My children insist on Lucky Charms for breakfast every year…
~ Reading Favorite Picture Books ~ 

We started reading books about St. Patrick on Monday so we would have time to get to them all! 
Patrick: Saint of Ireland by Joyce Denham
Saint Patrick by Ann Tompert
St. Patrick’s Day by Gail Gibbons
Saint Patrick by Fr. Lovasik
We’ve also been enjoying the CD’s that came with this book all week, including on the way to and from town for our St. Patrick’s Day party.
~ Coloring Pages ~ 

~ Afternoon Saints Party with our Homeschool Group ~ 

We had a Potluck lunch with quite a few of the families in our Homeschool Group.  Each family brought a display for a Saint of their choice as well as coordinating crafts and/or coloring pages.   Our family choose St. Joseph.  I will try to post some pictures of the displays a little later.  My children had so much fun seeing all their friends!


~ Dinner ~ 

I had plans to make our Irish Beef and Guinness Stew and Irish Soda Bread, but I didn’t have the energy after spending all afternoon in town.  We’ll have it either tonight or on Saturday.  Instead I made some quick and easy Shamrock Toasties Pizzas.  (Snuggles is the only one who won’t eat the peppers.) 

Inspired by Charlotte, we made a last minute Irish Flag with cucumbers, mozzarella and baby carrots.  (Using the only things I could find in my fridge that were green, white and orange.)



~ A Few More Pictures ~

We searched for Shamrocks outside…

… and, just before my camera battery died, I got a quick picture of all six! 

On Saint Patrick’s Day

Mar 17, 2010 | | 4 Comments

It has been rather busy around here this week, and we are now getting ready to go to our Homeschool Group’s St. Patrick’s Day party this afternoon, but I wanted to take a moment to say hello and wish you all a very
HApPy St. PaTRicK’s DaY!

May the good saints protect you,
And bless you today.
And may troubles ignore you,
Each step of the way.

~ An Irish Blessing

Thanking Heaven for our Little Girl…

Mar 15, 2010 | , , | 14 Comments

…who is three months old today!

O God, how can I thank Thee for the gift of this beautiful child?  How perfect are her tiny hands and feet!  How marvelous is her perfectly formed body! And how much more wonderful is the immortal soul which Thou hast created to inhabit this body, to brighten this world, and to praise Thee for all eternity in the next!  What rich potential lies behind that infant face, so peaceful in repose, so expressive in distress, so unaware as yet of the marvels of Thy goodness!
Deign to make me worthy of this precious gift, this unutterable privilege, this wonderful responsibility which Thou hast seen fit to bestow upon me.  With Thy holy Mother as my model, may I raise this child in truth and goodness, in virtue and in love.  May I make my home a haven of peace and sanctity, safe from the corruption of the world – a home inspiring all who enter it to live nobler lives and assisting all who dwell here to keep their minds fixed on Thee.  Thank you for the graces given to this dear child through the Sacrament of Baptism.  May she (and all my children) grow in the Faith, live a virtuous life, receive the Sacraments frequently and die in Thy grace.  

Dear Jesus, how can I realize that Thou didst come as a babe no bigger than the one I hold in my arms, who cannot even hold up her head or eat without assistance?  What humility Thou hast taught us!  What sacrifice!  What love!  In all the trials that lie before me as a mother, help me to imitate Thy selflessness and love, offering all my sufferings gladly to Thee, Who hast shown me how to suffer for love.  May I trust in Thee through all difficulties, knowing that Thou hast foreseen them all and hast permitted them for my greater sanctification.  May every joy and every trial be for me a step toward greater holiness, greater trust and greater love, for love is the vocation Thou hast given to me.  Amen.  

~ adapted from the “Prayer after Childbirth” in Your Labor of Love

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.


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.

My Other Blog: Catholic Cuisine

Please Visit My Sponsors…

This Week's Popular Posts

Shower of Roses Affiliate Links

All About Spelling
All About Reading
All About Reading Giveaways
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Our Advent & Christmas Books

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