All Saints Guessing Jars: 12 more for 2024
Even though All Saints’ Day has come and gone, I wanted to post this year’s All Saints Guessing Jars so they can be found in the archives next year! These 12 new additions bring our collection to an incredible 130 saint-themed guessing jars!
I’ve also finally created matching guessing pages to accompany all 130 jars (plus a generic one), making it super easy to just print and use. This is always such a fun party game for All Hallows’ Eve and All Saints’ Day celebrations!
Supplies
- Wide Mouth Quart Jars
- White Lids (optional)
- Double Sided Tape
- Variety of Treats to Fill Jars
- Shower of Roses Free Printable Jar Labels
- Free Printable Guessing Pages
New Guessing Jars for 2024
St. Paul and the Snake of Malta Acts 28: 1-11
Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks and put them on the fire, when a viper came out because of the heat and fastened on his hand. When the natives saw the creature hanging from his hand, they said to one another, “No doubt this man is a murderer. Though he has escaped from the sea, justice has not allowed him to live.” He, however, shook off the creature into the fire and suffered no harm. They waited, expecting him to swell up or suddenly fall down dead; but when they had waited a long time and saw no misfortune come to him, they changed their minds and said that he was a god. – Acts 28: 3-6
St. Nicholas – Patron of Children
St. Macarius the Younger – Patron of Candy Makers
Any Candy – We used Peanut M&M’s
St. Romedius of Nonsburg
…who is said to have tamed and rode the bear who tore up his horse!
St. John the Evangelist – Patron of Authors
Daniel in the Lion’s Den
St. Catherine of Sienna
… whose family gave her the childhood nickname of Euphrosyne meaning “joy”!
St. Cecilia
… died with her hands crossed in prayer. The position of her fingers—three extended on her right hand, and one on the left—were her final silent profession of faith in the Holy Trinity, Three Persons in one God.
St. Dominic and the Dog with a Torch
Dog Bones (Scooby Doo Graham Crackers)
St. Teresa of Avila
… who prayed “From silly devotions and sour-faced saints, good Lord, deliver us!”
St. Ursula – Latin for ‘little she-bear’
St. Thecla
…who was thrown to the wild beasts and miraculously saved from death again!
You can download these printable labels here…
… and the corresponding printable guess pages* here.
*This printable includes guessing pages for ALL 130 options from over the years!
Here is the link to all of my FREE All Saints Party Printables!
All Saints Scavenger Hunt – Fifth Edition
Back in 2012, my husband and I created an All Saints Scavenger Hunt {Printable Party Game!} for our annual All Saints Party. The following year we created a second version featuring sixteen additional saints with new clues. In 2015, we came up with a third version of the game, with sixteen additional saints including some of the newly canonized saints at the time. In 2022, we decided to skip the huge parish party and go back to hosting a small party at home and came up with a fourth edition .
For this year’s party I decided to order the beautiful Saint Polaroids from January Jane and put together a new All Saints Scavenger Hunt to go along with them. I ended up ordering the first 3 Editions of the Heirloom Saint Polaroids plus a Custom Polaroid Saint Pack with 9 more that I hand picked. I’ll probably eventually go back and order more, but this is plenty for at least a couple years!
This year we used the 1st Edition plus St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, Bl. Miguel Pro, and two Holy Couples: Franz and Fanny Jägerstätter and Louis and Zelie.
All Saints Scavenger Hunt: Fifth Edition
“Holiness consists simply in doing God’s will, and being just what God wants us to be.” – Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
Original Game Instuctions:
To play the game, pictures of the 16 featured saints are handed out to some of the adults, along with the details if they aren’t familiar with the saint. You can see some pictures of the first version of the game being played here.
The children each receive the list of clues. Sometimes we pair the younger children with the older children to form teams of two. The children need to match each clue to the correct saint. Once the child thinks he knows who it is, he will ask the person representing (holding the picture of) the saint. If he is correct the “saint” signs the line next to the correct clue on his child’s clue sheet.
How We Played It This Year:
Now that nearly all the children at our annual parties are older I just hang the saint pictures on the wall. If they are struggling I will sometimes give a clue to the whole group. Afterwards we see who (or which team) got the most correct. This year I hung my daughter’s fairy lights (similar to these) from her college dorm room and clipped the saint images to them. It looked so pretty!
FREE PRINTABLES
Download All Saints Scavenger Hunt #5 Clue Sheet
(the printable file includes the answer sheet)
I also typed up a name tag/label for each saint with their full names to go along with the first names on the polaroids for our game. You can download that here if you’d like to use it too.
This year I ordered Saint Polaroids from January Jane for our fifth All Saints Scavenger Hunt! So excited. I also ended up ordering the beautiful new Humans of Heaven book and a mug for my mom! If you’d like to place an order you can save 10% with coupon code: LXZ-NTU27UL or by clicking this link.
Note: I ended up using January Jane’s 1ST EDITION Saint Polaroids and adding four more from a Custom Pack I put together. (For this game I added: St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, Bl. Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez. As well as two of the Married Couples Louis and Zelie Martin and Franz and Fanny Jägerstätter.) I also ordered the 2ND and 3RD EDITIONS and a few more in that Custom Pack to use in the future. (Those 5 more I ordered in the Custom Pack were the rest of the Holy Couples – Karl and Zita of Austria, Gianna and Pietro Molla, Chiara and Enrico – as well as a couple duplicates I wanted to use for gifts. I’ll need to order six more if I want to come up with two more games using the Saint Polaroids that include 16 saints each. We’ll see!)
Find more FREE PRINTABLES for your All Hallows’ Eve and All Saints’ Day Parties here!
Christmas Came Early
Look who I found at the airport late Wednesday (10/30) night!!! They were supposed to land within 15 min of each other, but Clare’s flight came in a little early at 10:15, and James was delayed and landed at 11:25.
Three weeks ago, on October 10th, I managed to talk James into squeezing in a quick visit from Arizona on his ‘weekend,’ and then Clare from California! The little girls had been asking about James everyday and missing him so much. I got to fly down and see him recently but none of the rest of the family had seen him since those four days last February (while I was in bed recovering from my first surgery) after he graduated from the academy to quickly pack and move down to the southern border.
Keeping this secret was so HARD—I ended up having to tell Catherine, but the rest of the family had no clue! Well maybe a couple clues but I think they mostly thought I was just losing my mind! 😉
The toughest part was getting John home. He was originally coming for dinner and to stay the night to see my parents, but after a long day at work he still had some studying for one of his online UMary MBA classes, so texted saying he was going to come out in the morning instead… I finally just texted his girlfriend (who is off at college finishing her senior year) and asked her to help me convince him to come spend the night after he finished studying. She pulled it off and he got here about five minutes before we pulled back in the driveway at midnight! (Thank you, Lanie!)
It was so exciting bringing them home, surprising John and waking Sean up to see who was out in the living room! ❤️
A few video clips can be found over in my Instagram post.
I could hardly wait for our five youngest to wake up and find everyone here for the first time since August 2023. (442 days to be exact.) Way too long! It might be awhile before we can make it happen again since our oldest son’s requests for time off at Thanksgiving and Christmas were both denied. I couldn’t sleep and told Sean in the middle of the night that it felt like Christmas!
I shared a few more short video clips from early Thursday (10/31) over on Instagram.
We squeezed so much into our few days all together!!! My parents had arrived Wednesday afternoon just in time to carve pumpkins with us, so after all the early morning surprises we got to spend time with them too, my Uncle Tom and Aunt Toni came for an afternoon visit, then we hosted our annual All Hallows’ Eve party Thursday evening!
Friday started with Mass for the feast of All Saints, brunch with my parents before they started the long drive back to Southern Oregon and early voting for our college girl and a few others (the rest of us voted on Election Day).
I had booked a photographer for Friday afternoon. That had really confused some of our kids since two of their siblings weren’t expected to be here! When I told John he asked, “Will James and Clare be around?”
I just answered “Wouldn’t that be nice?!” and he added “so no”… 😏
This was our very first professional family picture and we asked the photographer to also take individuals of everyone. We really wanted to do something like my mom did 20 years ago while you can still see the age span between the oldest and youngest, and before the older ones start getting married.
A quick photo on the front porch just before he arrived. ❤️
It was drizzling outside so hopefully the family picture turns out! Then we had a family movie night after dinner.
Saturday I got up early and started making Apple Puff Pancakes for everyone! This has been a fall family favorite forever and I had to squeeze it in while they were all home.
Then the kids played card games, FaceTimed with my youngest brother and their newest cousin and just enjoyed the remaining time we all had together before we had to take James back to the airport on Saturday afternoon. Clare flew back to Thomas Aquinas College very early Sunday morning. We were definitely grateful for the extra hour of sleep! There were lots of tears… It makes me so happy that they all love each other so much and having this time was such a gift. ❤️
O Good God, we thank Thee, that Thou hast given us children, made them heirs of heaven by holy baptism, and entrusted to us their training. Penetrate us with a sense of responsibility; assist us in the care of their health, but especially in the preservation of their innocence and purity of heart. Grant that we may teach them early to know and serve Thee, and to love Thee, with their whole heart. Grant that we ourselves may carefully avoid all that we must forbid them, and may assiduously practice all that we should inculcate to them. We commend them, O God, to Thy paternal care and to the guardianship of Thy holy angels. Bless, O heavenly Father, our little efforts! May our children’s advancement in years be to Thy honor, and may they persevere to the end! Amen.
~ from Mother Love
Saint-O-Lanterns
Every fall we have a little family tradition of carving Saint-O-Lanterns to light up our front porch for our annual All Hallows’ Eve party with symbols of saints and our beautiful Catholic faith! I love seeing everyone’s creativity year after year.
This year we honored St. Andrew, the Patron of Scotland and Golfers, with a golf-themed pumpkin. A dove for Rose’s recent Confirmation, and a Celtic cross paid tribute to the inspiring Irish St. Brigid. One of the boys also carved Lazarus emerging from the tomb and our youngest decided on a sweet little lamb for St. Germaine.
Confirmation Dove
St. Scholastica, pray for us!
Celtic Cross
St. Brigid of Ireland, pray for us!
St. Andrew, Patron of Golfers
St. Andrew, Patron of Golfers and Scotland, pray for us!
St. Germaine’s Lamb
St. Germaine, pray for us!
Lazarus Emerges from the Tomb
Sts. Mary, Martha and Lazarus, pray for us!
Here is the post with pictures of the kids carving this year’s Saint-O-Lanterns.
Carving Our 2024 Saint-O-Lanterns
Here are the pictures from our annual Saint-O-Lantern carving last Wednesday! My parents had just arrived from Southern Oregon for a quick visit, making it extra special!
I have a little catching up to do on the blog, before I get started posting all things Advent and all the fun annual Christmas giveaways! If I don’t share these now, I know they’ll never make it onto the blog—and my younger kids will be asking once again why I didn’t document it like I did for the older ones. 😉
Enjoy the pictures and stay tuned for the giveaways I have coming up soon!
You can see this year’s Saint-O-Lanterns all lit up here,
or scroll through all our past Saint-O-Lanterns in the archives.
Chicken Pumpkin Carving Experiment
This year, we decided to try a little chicken pumpkin carving experiment after seeing it online, giving one of our small pumpkins to the chickens to see how they’d do! Our 17 year old cut a little starter face and let them have at it, and soon enough, they were pecking away, creating a hilarious masterpiece.
They got a healthy snack, and we got a funny “hen-crafted” addition to our annual Saint-O-Lanterns. You can find a few short video clips over on Instagram. Has anyone else tried this?
Next year, we’ll have to try it with a larger pumpkin so the mouth and eyes don’t end up connecting again!
All Saints Guessing Jars {12 More for 2023}
The favorite game at every party we host for All Hallows’ Eve/All Saints’ Day is always the All Saints Guessing Jars. The past few years, with going back to hosting a smaller party at home, I have tried to have enough jars (some with new saints and some with repeats from past years) so that every “saint” in attendance can win one. I always think there will be no way to link more treats to saints, but yet I keep managing to come up with new ones each year! We had 12 new additions to the ever growing collection last year and I’m working on another 12 right now for this year.
New All Saints Guessing Jars for 2023
St. Anastasia …the Forgotten Christmas Saint
Christmas Candy – I used Christmas themed Hershey Kisses
St. Benedict & Scholastica – The Holy Twins
Twix Candy Bars
St. Barbara – Patron of Mathematicians
“Counting” M&M’s
St. Eligius – Patron of Veterinarians
Animal Crackers
St. John Bosco and the Big Gray Dog “Grigio”
Dog Bones (Scooby Doo Graham Crackers)
St. Fabian
Known for the miraculous nature of his election, in which a dove is said to have descended on his head to mark him as the Holy Spirit’s unexpected choice to become the next pope.
Dove Chocolates
St. Honoré – Patron of Bakers
Cookies – We used TJ’s Crispy Cruncy Chocolate Chip Cookies
St. John the Baptist
Any honey candy works! We used Dark Chocolate Covered Honey Grahams from TJ’s.
St. Hubert – Patron of Dogs/Hunting Hounds
Dog Bones (Scooby Doo Graham Crackers)
Our Lady Star of the Sea
Sea Life Shapes – We used TJ’s Scandinavian Swimmers
St. Hildegard von Bingen – Patron of Writers
Alphabet Cookies
St. Veridiana
…who shared her cell and meager food rations with two snakes.
Trolli Sour Brite Crawlers
You can download these printable labels here…
… and the corresponding printable guess pages here.
We also included a bunch of jars from past years as well! Using Dots Pretzels instead of regular pretzel sticks for St. Bernadette was another new addition/variation.
If I can finish this year’s jars today, I will try and share them too, otherwise it might end up being next year! 😉
Here is the link to all of my FREE All Saints Party Printables!
All Saints Scavenger Hunt {Fourth Edition}
Back in 2012, my husband and I created an All Saints Scavenger Hunt {Printable Party Game!} for our annual All Saints Party. The following year we created a second version featuring sixteen additional saints with new clues.
In 2015, we came up with another new version of the game, with sixteen additional saints including some of the newly canonized saints at the time. (We actually matched the saints to our All Saints Guessing Jars, which you can find here, so that the children could learn a little more about each of the saints featured.)
In 2022, we decided to skip the huge parish party and go back to hosting a more intimate and cozy party at home and bring back this game. My husband and I created a new edition and I thought it would be fun to share it here on the blog for anyone looking for party inspiration! We’re already working on another one for this year’s party, so stay tuned!
ALL SAINTS SCAVENGER HUNT: FOURTH EDITION
To play the game, pictures of the 17 featured saints are handed out to some of the adults, along with the details if they aren’t familiar with the saint. You can see some pictures of the first version of the game being played here.
The children each receive the list of clues. Sometimes we pair the younger children with the older children to form teams of two. The children need to match each clue to the correct saint. Once the child thinks he knows who it is, he will ask the person representing (holding the picture of) the saint. If he is correct the “saint” signs the line next to the correct clue on his child’s clue sheet.
Now that nearly all the children at our annual parties are older I actually just tape them up on the wall in various places. If they are struggling I will sometimes give a clue to the whole group. Afterwards we see who (or which team) got the most correct.
FREE PRINTABLES
Download All Saints Scavenger Hunt #4 Clue Sheet
(the printable file includes the answer sheet)
*Looks like I missed including St. Francis. You can download that card here.
Note: The printable saint card pictures are different than what we used for the party since we were scrambling at the last minute. We actually printed out product pages from these beautiful holy cards for the party since we ran out of time. I would love to order actual prints or Holy Cards to use in the picture!
This year I ordered Polaroids from January Jane for our fifth All Saints Scavenger Hunt! So excited. More coming soon! In the meantime you can save 10% over at January Jane with coupon code: LXZ-NTU27UL or by clicking this link.
Find more FREE PRINTABLES for your All Hallows’ Eve and All Saints’ Day Parties here!
The Northern Lights: An Art Project with the Kids
Our 7-year-old is still talking about seeing the Northern Lights last week and keeps saying she wants to see them again. So, inspired by that beautiful night, we decided to do a little art project together and talked some of her siblings into joining us as well! We grabbed some black construction paper and our pastels, and spent the afternoon recreating all the gorgeous colors we saw up in the night sky—blues, greens, purples, and pinks.
Supplies
- Black Construction Paper
- Legal Size Copy Paper
- Scissors
- Tape
- Cotton Balls or Rounds
- Alphacolor Soft Pastels
- White Tempera Paint and Brush (optional)
Create a Mountain Stencil
Use legal-sized printer paper for this since it’s longer than regular paper and fits the construction paper better. If you only have regular-sized paper, just cut and tape an extra piece to make it fit.n I ended up taping down the mountain stencil for my little girls to keep it from moving while they colored. The older kids just held it in place.
Color the Mountain
Shade over the mountain stencil and extend the chalk up onto the black construction paper. Use different colors – blue, green, pink, purple, etc – to recreate all the Northern Lights!
She was so excited, blending and smudging and getting the pastels all over her little fingers!
Blend the Colors
While holding the stencil in place, use a cotton ball to blend the pastels from the mountain onto the paper. Overlap the colors a bit for a smooth, glowing effect. Switch cotton balls for different colors to avoid mixing them too much.
Reveal the Glow
Once you’ve finished blending, gently lift the stencil to reveal the glowing mountain and your beautiful Aurora Borealis.
Add Stars or Snowflakes and the Moon
To finish, dab small dots of white acrylic paint onto the sky using a small paintbrush to create stars or snowflakes, and the moon too if you’d like!
Tip: It can get messy! I should have put something over our table but it cleaned up easily with a towel.
It was such a fun way to relive the memory and bring a little more nature-inspired creativity into our homeschool. If your kids are mesmerized by the sky like mine, this is a simple, not-too-messy, project to try!
(Mom helped with the trees)
Northern Lights
We could only see the Northern Lights at home with the help of cameras, so after dinner, we took a drive out to Farragut State Park. It was so worth it!
We followed it up with some picture books and a fun craft this week!
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