{pretty, happy, funny, real}

by | Sep 20, 2012 | , , | 6 Comments

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life. ~


{pretty}

I think the Nature Notebook and Pencils that Twinkle Toes received (along with this Sketchbook) in her Schultüte this year are so pretty…  
… but my favorite part is all the fun names for the various colored pencils!   January Thaw, Westwind in February, Ruffled Feathers, April Snow, Screech Owl at Dusk, Smoky May Morning, Acorn Soup in November,  September Serenade…  Love them all!!!   

{happy}

Science experiments make my kids very happy! One thing we tried this past week, during this year’s study of Swimming Creatures, was blowing up a balloon inside a bottle, sealing the bottle, and then putting mom a lot of weight on the opposite end of the bottle to see how the balloon shrinks due to the air pressure.   Apparently this is what happens to our lungs when we go deep under water.  We recorded our observations in the each journal.

{funny}
It may not have worked too well with our Gyre/Ocean Current experiment, but Rose sure had fun with the little personal fan.  
For our second “Try This” we saw how only one hair dryer (the wind) blew the cheerios (debris) in the “ocean” one direction. Adding a second wind from the opposite direction caused the cheerios to go in a circle – forming a miniature gyre.

{real}

The personal fans didn’t work so good, so we pulled out a couple hair dryers (I happened to have an extra that was in a bag to donate, we dropped it off yesterday!) for the experiment above, but other than that I have been so thankful for the Zoology 2 Lab Kit!  It really makes all the difference between completing all of the fun activities and “just skipping that part.”

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Wordless Wednesday

by | Sep 20, 2012 | | 5 Comments

A Shower of Roses {Announcing the Giveaway Winner!}

by | Sep 19, 2012 | | 3 Comments

Wow!  Thank you all for entering our little 2000th post giveaway in honor of St. Therese!  And thank you also for all of your kind words and compliments on my family and blog!  It has been so fun to hear from so many of you… (I wish I could send you ALL a little gift!)  It took a little while but, with Twinkle Toes help, we cut and folded all of the 250+ entries for the drawing early this morning!   

Of course we had to have our own little “Rose” choose the winner, and she was more than happy to do so as soon as she woke up.

 
Congratulations to Emily at God’s Canvas!   
I’ll be emailing you for your mailing address and the St. Therese Gift Package will be on it’s way to you soon.  We will also be saying a few extra prayers for you and your beautiful family! 

Little Flowers Bingo: Flowers & Gems {and other Printables!}

by | Sep 19, 2012 | , , , , , , | 6 Comments

I thought it would be fun to play Bingo at Our Little Flowers Mother-Daughter Tea Party this year.  Instead of using the All Saints Bingo Cards I made last year for the All Saints Party we hosted, I made Bingo Cards using all the Flowers and Gems from the four Wreaths of Little Flowers.

* I started with the intent of making 30 printable cards, but stopped at 15 since that was all that I needed for our party.  If anyone is interested in more than 15, let me know and I will try and complete the set.  

The final two games we played during our Tea Party were a A-Z Quest of the Blessed Virgin Mary, from That Resource Site, and a Wreath IV Saints & Gifts Word Search, which I made real quick the night before the party.   Note to self:  Make sure to proof read the Word Search next time!  I had everyone looking for two “Catherine’s” and the generator I used decided I only needed to use it once!  Oops! I’ve removed the second from the word list in the download.   🙂

A-Z Quest of the Blessed Virgin Mary (no longer available)

Tea Party Games :: A Cupcake Jigsaw Puzzle Race!

by | Sep 15, 2012 | , , , , , | 1 Comment

You all know that my family loves puzzles, right?   So of course I had to find a way to tie them into Our Little Flowers Girl’s Club Mother-Daughter Tea Party this year!  😉  When a friend of mine mentioned some small “Cupcake” games & puzzles she had seen at Barnes & Noble they sounded perfect!

I ended up purchasing a 4 pack of 60 Piece Puzzles and two 100 piece puzzles, since I couldn’t decide whether to break the group into 3-4 teams or 2 teams, for a “Cupcake Puzzle Race.”  When I gave the girls the option, they all wanted to go with Mothers versus Daughters!  I gave them first pick of the two 100 piece puzzles and they choose the white cupcake with the pink flower on top.

*Only a couple of the puzzles are currently available on Barnes & Noble online, and Amazon doesn’t seem to have these particular cupcake puzzles either,  but they do have a few other options. I especially love these little Nature Puzzles.  

I put the moms at our train coffee table and set a card table up for the girls.   With a “Ready, Set, Go!” we started the race!  It was very close, but us moms did end up winning!

It was SO. MUCH. FUN!!  I’ll definitely be keeping “Puzzle Races” in mind for future parties! 

Tea Party Games :: She Loves It… She Loves It Not!

by | Sep 14, 2012 | , , | 1 Comment

When I was brainstorming ideas for this year’s Mother-Daughter Tea Party, I thought it would be fun to revisit one of the games from our very first Little Flowers Tea Party now that the girls are all older!  This ended up being the first game we played after everyone had arrived, while the servers filled the trays for our first course.

Directions:

All you need is a daisy, or any other flower with lots of petals.  The first player plucks off a petal as she shares something that her mother or daughter loves.  The next player shares something her mother or daughter loves — not!  The flower continues around the circle with mothers talking about their daughters, and daughters talking about their mothers, until the flower runs out of petals.

Apparently I love taking pictures, flowers, my girls, and children… And I do not love messy bedrooms, “us fighting”, and dirty floors.  Sounds about right!  😉

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

by | Sep 14, 2012 | , , | 8 Comments

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life. ~

Yesterday morning my husband was sent on an out-of-state fire assignment!  He will be working as a Radio Operator this time, which should keep him out of hazardous working conditions.  It will be a tough couple weeks (if they keep him for the full 14 days) for both of us, but we are so very grateful for the extra work and overtime!   I’m just praying life doesn’t get even half as crazy as it did the last time he was out of town!  😉


{pretty}

Patiently waiting for our guests to arrive for this year’s Mother-Daughter Tea Party…

{happy}

At our last Little Flowers meeting the girls all made Spiritual Bouquet cards to give to their mothers during our tea party.   While I was setting the table I happened to notice Chiquita’s (age 7) card and her little list of prayers she had been offering, without any reminders on my part to complete the assignment.   It made me so happy to see that my she (actually both my girls!) had been praying for me!  Both cards are such a treasure!

{funny}
My kids always have so much fun looking through the old blog posts and saying “Ooohh!! Remember when…”  I’m always amazed at how good they are at navigating the archives.
{real}

I really don’t like it when my kitchen counters are covered with stuff!  I usually avoid (for the most part) taking any pictures of these messes, which happen especially when I am trying to do too many things at once.  Last Friday night was definitely one of those times… Groceries and mail still needed to be put away, flowers needed to be arranged, various items all over the place to set the table, remnants of my cake decorating, and half decorated pretzel rods, and more…  Thankfully it didn’t take too long to clean up and looked beautiful in the morning!

P.S.  My husband took the laptop with him again… That just leaves our super slow desktop, which the kids all use for some of their school work each day.  Just letting you all know that my computer time will be even more limited over the next couple weeks and I’ll only be able to check my email on occasion. 
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Our Little Flowers Girls’ Club Mother-Daughter Tea Party

by | Sep 12, 2012 | , , , , | 14 Comments

This past Saturday I hosted our annual Little Flowers Girls’ Club Mother-Daughter Tea Party following our completion of Wreath IV.  I’ll admit that, after an extra busy back-to-school week, I was pretty overwhelmed after Mass Friday morning just thinking about everything that still needed to be done, but it all came together beautifully!

One of my dear friends invited my boys over for the afternoon, so that my husband and I could pick up flowers and all the other last minute things I needed from town.  She also loaned me some gloves and a pretty hat to wear, along with her tub of extra hats and gloves for anyone else that wasn’t able to find some for the party.   Another friend went home and polished her beautiful silver tea set for us to borrow, since I wasn’t able to find one at any of the local thrift stores or even the department stores!

Thankfully I had also saved all the decorations from last year’s Tea Themed Birthday Party, and I even was able to use that pretty pink Birthday Banner since we scheduled our tea for September 8th, the feast of the Nativity of Mary!

As always, I assigned each of the Little Flowers a menu item to bring for our Three-Course Tea.  In between each course I planned games for all the Mothers & Daughters to play, while we gave the servers (a couple of the girls’ older sisters) time to refill the tiered platters.  I’ll post about all of this year’s party games later…  In the meantime here are some pictures from the Tea!

~ Drinks ~

Red Rose Tea served with Cream and Sugar

Lemon & Strawberry Infused Ice Water
~ The First Course ~

Grapes ~ Strawberries ~ Scones
Served with Whipped Cream and Lemon Curd

~ The Second Course ~
Three Cheese Mini Quiche ~ Spinach Mini Quiche
Deviled Eggs
Cucumber Sandwiches with Cream Cheese  &Strawberries 
Cucumber Sandwiches with Goat Cheese & Bacon
Chicken Salad Sandwiches

~ The Third Course ~
Fruit Tarts
Strawberries & Cream Puff Pastries
Gluten Free Brownies

~ Tea Time Candies ~ 

Pillow Mints &
Wreath IV Gemstones 
(aka Jolly Ranchers – and my creative husband gets the credit for this idea!)


~ Party Favors ~

“Tea Bags” filled with Marian Stickers, Rose Covered Pencils, Candies, and a Rose Shaped Candle

Pretzel Rods dipped in White Chocolate and Pink Sprinkles

As much as I am ready for a break, I think I am really going to miss leading Little Flowers this coming year!   My girls will be moving on to the Little Women Hospitality Program, though we do plan to continue having an annual Mother-Daughter Tea Party!  I need to try and enjoy the break, since it won’t be long before our little Rose is ready to learn more about the various Virtues and work her way through the four Wreaths of Little Flowers!

St. Therese the Little Flower, Pray for us! 

Celebrating Our Lady’s Birthday {and a 2000th Post Giveaway!}

by | Sep 11, 2012 | , , | 257 Comments

Before I move on to sharing some pictures from Our Little Flowers Mother-Daughter Tea Party, I thought I’d post a few pictures from our family celebration in honor of the Blessed Mother’s birthday this past Saturday.

Originally I had intended to serve the birthday cake during our tea, but we ended up with so many delicious foods and desserts that everyone just couldn’t eat one more thing and I decided to save it for my kids.  The boys and our little Rose were especially excited to not be left out of all the fun!

After dinner we added a few candles to the cake and sang Happy Birthday to Mary!

Speaking of celebrating, I also just noticed that this is my 2000th post!  Isn’t that crazy?  I remember getting excited when I made it to 100!  I started this little blog just over 5 years ago, right before Snuggles was born.  At that time I had no idea how much this little space would bless our family with friendships, prayers, support, and (most unexpectedly) even financially (thank you to all of you that purchase through my affiliate links).  Blogging has helped keep me sane and is actual proof that I really do get things done around here, despite what it feels like most of the time! 😉   God sure does provide for all of our needs!

Taking a look at the Shower of Roses stats I am so amazed that there are 1230 of you currently following though feeds and the blog is quickly approaching 1,000,000 unique visits with over 2,000,000 page views since 2007!

With the feast of St. Therese coming up at the beginning of next month, I thought this would be the perfect time to host another giveaway!  I’ve put together a St. Therese Gift Package  (*basket not included) for one of my visitors.  The package will include:

To be entered, just leave a comment on this post by September 18th!
(Be sure to include your email address if it isn’t already linked on your profile.)

Update:  For those of you that are not seeing your comments, all you need to do is click the “Load More…” link at the end of the first page of comments.   I, too, had a hard time figuring out where they were disappearing to, but apparently Blogger has a limit on how many comments will show on the first page.  This was the first time you all have ever even come close to exceeding that limit!

Thank you to all of my visitors for your comments and for making blogging such a joy!  
A Shower of Roses {Announcing the Giveaway Winner!}

A Shower of Roses {Announcing the Giveaway Winner!}

by | Sep 19, 2012 | | 3 Comments

Wow!  Thank you all for entering our little 2000th post giveaway in honor of St. Therese!  And thank you also for all of your kind words and compliments on my family and blog!  It has been so fun to hear from so many of you... (I wish I could send...

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-24, Twinkle Toes-22, Chiquita-21, Snuggles-18, Rose-16, Bud-14, 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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