St. Lawrence is a beloved saint in our house, 1 – because his name is our last name, 2 – we love his since of heroic humor 3 – his beautiful devotion of Our Lord. St. Lawrence was a young deacon who was martyred in the early days of the church. After being tortured, he was placed on a grill and cooked alive. When he could no longer feel most of his body, he said, ”Turn me over I’m done on this side.” He was turned, and then died. Before he died he offered his life for the conversion of Rome. His feast day is Aug 10. (new and traditional calendars) Read more about him HERE , HERE and HERE . For St. Lawrence (AKA: St. Laurence) Elizabeth and I made a grill from pipe cleaners. Elizabeth used two pipe cleaners and cut and twisted them together to make the grill. It was simple wrapping of the wire. Nothing fancy, although we did bend the ends back so they were less pointy. But, I don’t think St. Lawrence’s grill was so soft and fuzzy.  St. Lawrence, pray for us. May we all have your heroic love for Jesus and our fellow man.  God Bless you all. ~JenMarie and my Crafting buddy, Elizabeth

St. Dominic’s feast day is Aug 4th in the traditional calendar and Aug 8th in the new calendar. The ornament that Elizabeth and I made focuses on the Rosary. The spread of the Rosary is attributed to the preaching of St. Dominic. St. Dominic also founded the Dominican Order. For centuries, Dominicans continued to spread devotion to the rosary and teach about  the power of the rosary. Read more HERE  and HERE . The design of this ornament is very simple. Elizabeth used a light blue sharpie marker to make a simple rosary image on a light blue piece of felt. Then she cut it out and glued it onto a darker piece of blue. Then cut around it again to form a two tone look.  We decided to use blue colors in honor of Our Lady, but you can pick a different color if you like. The image below is a close-up of Elizabeth’s Rosary image. Very easy to create! St. Dominic, pray for us! ~JenMarie and Elizabeth, the Crafting Buddy

St. Philomena is a early church saint and is called "The Wonder Worker”. While we really don’t know much about her we do know that she was young and was martyred (after several tries). Most of what we know is learned though the MANY miracles that are attributed to her after her body was found in the ancient Catacombs. Her after-death story is an amazing one and I highly recommend you read about her. I have read the book and it was a wonderful book! My daughter, who took Philomena as her Confirmation name, read and loved it! A few on-line reads are  HERE and HERE  (see the bottom of the page). Her feast day is Aug. 11 in the historical calendar. Elizabeth and I decided to use a few of the symbols that were found on St. Philomena’s tomb. The symbols were an anchor, 3 arrows, a lance, a palm and a lily. We only used the anchor, an arrow, and a lily.  We cut an anchor from gray felt, an arrow from dark brown felt, a heart for the lily from white felt, and a yellow and green flower parts. We used off white for the background circle. The lily was created with the parts shown below. The upside-down heart was folded and glued around the yellow and green strips so they formed a lily (Hot glue works best.). These were all glued onto the off-white circle. We also outlined the anchor with a black sharpie marker. If you have never read about St. Philomena, I do recommend you take a few minutes to read about her. She is an amazing saint! St. Philomena, pray for us! ~JenMarie and Elizabeth

St. Ignatius of Loyola’s feast day is July 31 (in the new and traditional calendars). St. Ignatius was a solder, but while he was recovering from a cannonball wound he began to read about Jesus and the saints. He soon devoted his life to Jesus. He, along with St. Francis Xavier and a few others, founded the Jesuits.  Read more about him HERE and HERE .  Because IHS is often associated with St. Ignatius and the Jesuits, Elizabeth and I decided to make that the main point in our ornament. If you are wondering what IHS means, it’s the name “Jesus” in Greek. Jesus is written ιησους in original Greek and is transliterated as “ihsous” and pronounced iēsous.  This ornament was created with white and yellow felt. Red permanent marker was used to make the IHS and orange permanent marker was used to decorate the yellow rays.  St. Ignatius, pray for us! Have a blessed last day of July! ~JenMarie

Making an ornament for the feast of the Blessed Mother’s Assumption into Heaven (Aug 15) was an interesting task. So far we have not made people, just symbols, so we have taken a bit of a turn on this one. We kind-of made Jesus for the Transfiguration, but this one is more ”real”. Personally, I think it turned out to be very cute! I’ll try to explain what we did: Elizabeth cut out all the little parts (except the hair, which I did) We have a body (a triangle with the top cut off) and two rectangle arms, which are cut from medium blue felt. We also have a head and hands, cut from tan felt. Mary’s veil is light blue felt; one part is a half-oval for behind her head and the other is a ”U” shape for in fount of her hair. Her hair is dark brown and it’s a ”U” shape with a hair-like look. There is also 3 puffy-looking clouds and a yellow halo (not pictured). First, we glued the head to the body. Next, we glued the arms to the back of the body so they look like Mary has them raised to Heaven. We added the hands to the arms – gluing them to the back of the arms. Then we added the behind-the-head part of the veil. Next, we added the hair and then the ”U” shaped veil. Lay the ”U” shaped veil over top the hair and try to cover only the outer edge of her hair. We tucked the ends of the ”U” shaped veil behind Mary’s arms and attached them behind Mary’s dress. Now we glued the clouds together and glued Mary onto the clouds. We also added a yellow halo which had a been edged with an orange permanent marker. To make it even more special we added silver glitter glue to the cloud edges and gold glitter glue to her halo. Oh, Holy Mother, watch over your children here on Earth and keep us in your loving care. Guide us each day and grant us Grace so we may enter into Heaven with you. God bless you all. ~JenMarie and Elizabeth

Here is the first of this week’s ornaments. I wanted to put them all in one post again like I did the last few weeks, but my crafting helper, Elizabeth, left on a camping trip with her grandparents. So we haven’t totally finished the rest of this week’s ornaments. When she comes back we will finish making the ones we have already started. In the meantime, here is the one we finished for St. Jane Frances de Chantal.  St. Jane was an interesting woman, and I could tell you all about her, but instead I’m going to direct you to an ebook I created several years ago for my oldest girls when they were in the Little Flowers Girl’s Club. This is a short printable book I wrote to teach all the girls in the club about her. Click here to see the past post about the book St. Jane’s ornament has a set of crutches because she started a special order of Nuns  (The Visitation of Our Lady). The women in her order were sick, old, and/or crippled, and these nuns, although sick, old, and crippled, would care for those who were ill (mostly those who were sick from the plague).  This ornament was made using light brown, dark brown, and black felt.  We first cut out two long light brown triangles and then folded them in half to cut out the center parts of the crutches. We used dark brown to make the top of the crutches. We glued them onto the black felt (black because the nuns wore black) and we cut it into the shape of a heart. It’s now hanging on our liturgical tree.  Don’t forget to download the ebook CLICK HERE God bless. ~JenMarie (and her crafting buddy, who will be home soon!)

St. Maximilian Kolbe! As my husband likes to say, ”He’s the man!!” Of course he says that about a lot of guy saints. 🙂 If you don’t know about this wonderful saint who had a pure love of the Immaulata and gave his life for another man at a Nazi German death camp, then please read about him HERE  and HERE . His feast day is August 14. St. Maximilian’s ornament is a ”piece” of his prison shirt. Photo Credit  Elizabeth and I cut out black felt strips and glued them onto a white square. We added a red triangle with a ”P” drawn on it with a black sharpie marker. We also outlined the red triangle. We wrote St. Max’s prisoner number – 16670 –  on an off-white rectangle. We also outlined it with a brown permanent marker and then glued it all on to the black and white striped square. This ornament sure has sparked some conversations around our house! 😉 St. Maximilian Mary Koble, Pray for us! Till later, ~JenMarie and Elizabeth

St. Mary’s Messenger has published one of my posts in their most recent addition! My kids were excited to see their picture in the magazine! It was a new and fun experience for us! When my three year old first saw his picture and said, ”Hey, that guy is me!” Then, he grabbed the magazine and ran off to see if he could find anymore of himself! 🙂 St. Mary’s Messenger published my St. Peter’s Fishing Game.  Click here to see the post. And be sure to check out St. Mary’s Messenger ,  it’s a cute magazine for Catholic kids! Thanks to Katherine and Kris for offering this opportunity. Have a blessed day, everyone! ~JenMarie

St. Monica and St. Augustine were mother and son, so we kept them together. St. Monica, the patron saint of mothers, prayed many, many years for the conversion of her wayward son. Finally, he converted and sang the praises of God to all those he met! At the age of 41 he became bishop of Hippo.   Read more HERE and HERE . St. Monica’s feast day is Aug. 27 (new) & May 4 (traditional)  St. Augustine’s feast day is Aug. 28 (new & trad.) I have to tell you we had a bit of a time deciding how to do this one. Of course we made a few jokes and said we should make a hippo wearing a bishop’s miter, since Augustine was the bishop of Hippo, but in the end I think this was a MUCH better idea! St. Monica and St. Augustine are often pictured with a book, so we decided to make a book and add another symbol for each one of them. Because St. Monica is sometimes pictured with flowers we added a flower for her. St. Augustine is often show with a flaming heart which is pierced with an arrow so we added that for him.  The book is made from maroon and white felt. We added the ”print” with a black permanent sharpie marker. It’s just simple dots lined up in rows. We also outlined the pages with a brown sharpie marker.  The flower was made by creating two purple flowers (one larger and one smaller) and a small pink circle. I used a purple marker to outline the flower parts. Augustine’s heart is red and outlined with a purple marker – yes, purple. The flame is yellow and was outlined with an orange marker. The arrow is dark brown and was slid through a small slit in the heart. All the parts were hot glued together. St. Monica and St. Augustine, Pray for us! ~JenMarie and Elizabeth Visit our Etsy shop to purchase our St. Monica felt statue

I never heard of  St. Rocco (aka: St. Roch) till a few years ago when my sister-in-law (May she rest in peace.) asked me to fix and repaint an old broken statue she found at a yard sale. She and I had no idea who the saint was, but after a bit of digging on the world-wide-web we discovered it was St. Rocco.   I had to make an ornament for him, because I can’t think of St. Rocco without thinking of my dearly departed sister-in-law. I hope and pray she finally got to meet St. Rocco in person! 🙂  St. Rocco, was known for his love of others and the way he helped those who where sick during the plague. He eventually became ill himself and secluded himself outside of town so he wouldn’t be a burden on anyone. Legend says that a dog delivered bread to him each day till he was well again.  Read more about him HERE and HERE . His feast day is Aug. 16 – the anniversary of his death in prison. St. Roch’s ornament depicts a dog and a loaf of bread. This was very easy to make and just too cute! The dog is just three ovals: one larger light brown oval and two smaller dark brown ovals. The light brown oval has two smaller black dots for eyes and one larger black dot for the nose. These dots were made with a permanent sharpie marker. The bread is an oval that was a little more flat on one of the long sides. We used a brown sharpie marker to add an edge all the way around and a few slashes in the top. These were glued onto a light blue background. What a cute puppy! 🙂St. Rocco, pray for us! Have a blessed weekend, everyone! ~JenMarie

St. Patrick’s Day is only a week away!! This feast day is often filled with non-Catholic images like leprechauns and pots of gold. I wanted to create a few cards that could help share the TRUE meaning of this special day – SAINT PATRICK’S feast day! These cards would be perfect to send to friends, classmates, relatives, and grandparents! You may like to send them anonymously to the elderly, shut-ins, or your secret prayer partner, too! I’m offering two different PDF files: One has 6 different pre-colored cards The other has two black and white cards, which can be colored. Download These St. Patrick Cards Here: These cards can be used as flat mini cards or larger folded cards. Just download the files and print out the pages of your choice – as many as you need. It’s best to print them on photo paper or stock paper. (If you are printing the black and white cards to color be sure to use non-shiny paper.) Then cut out the cards. There are 6 mini cards on a page or two folded cards on a page. Write your special message on the back of the mini cards or on the inside of the folded cards .You could also use these as decorations in your home or classroom. Glue them on green paper, shamrock cutouts, and more! They could also be handed out and used as bookmarks. Have a blessed day! ~JenMarie

I’m now offering a pack of 8 reproducible pages for you to use when you teach about the 50 States. If you use these for teaching about all of the 50 states you should end-up with a whole binder full of information!  Each set of pages can be printed off 50 or more times so you have one set for each state. (Print out as many as you need for one class or family.)  The cool and unusual part about these pages is that they are done with a Catholic twist. Download Below: Download these USA Notebooking Pages Here: Here is a page-by-page description of the set, so you can better understand what these pages are about: The Cover The cover page includes a map of the United States and each state’s name is written on the map. This can be used as a reference page while the kids learn the location and spelling of the states. General Information About the State – Page 1 The first page of this set is meant to be used for each and every state. You will need to print a new page for each state you learn. The page asks for general information about the state: The capital, the population, the crops grown in the state, the state bird and tree, etc. This information is common information which can be found in may state books including these: **************** Click on the images to read more about these books. This printable page includes short prayers for the state. It also has Catholic images which accompany the topic of learning. Map It! – Page 2 This next page is also meant to be used for each state. The child should add the abbreviation or name of all the states which they have learned up to that particular school day. They can use the cover page to help them if you like. It also has an empty flag so they can draw or add an image of the state’s flag. The extra area on the bottom of the page is for the child to draw a general outline of the state. Feel free to have them add other geographical information to the image they draw. Famous People and Historical Events – Page 3 The “Famous People and Historical Events” pages are used to help the child remember what people or events are relevant to each state.  These can be filled out throughout the school year or whenever you discover or learn about a famous person who lived in this state, or when you learn about a historical event that occurred in the state. This page may not be large enough for some states because you will find an abundance of information, or it may be barely filled for other states, but feel free to copy as many as you need. Places Made by God – Page 4 This page focuses on the places made by God. These areas would include the Grand Canyon, the Redwood Forest, a desert, a natural bridge, a waterfall, a cave, a lake, a volcano, a mountain peak, or any other natural beauty made by God! The child can draw a picture of the area or find a photo of the area and paste it in the image box on the page. Then they can write a short description of the natural beauty. Famous Catholic Churches and Shrines – Page 5 This page is one for you to fill in as you work through the school year. There are not a lot of famous churches and shrines in the USA, but you might be surprised at how many there are! I went to my Facebook followers for help to find some Catholic shrines and churches and they all gave wonderful suggestions. (Thank you for the help!) Several ladies recommended a great website called “ Catholic Places ” which has at least one famous church or shrine per state! You definitely need to see that website! It’s a goldmine for Catholic tourists or if you want to take a pilgrimage! Famous Places Made by Man – Page 6   Page 6 is just like page 4, except it’s meant to focus on manmade items and areas rather than ones by God. The child can find a manmade sight and draw a picture or find an image to add to the box. Then they can write a short paragraph about it. If I could go anywhere I’d go… – Page 7 This page is the final wrap-up page. This is meant to starch the mind of the child so he/she can dream of where they would love to visit. Then they can write about where they would go and why they would go there. It also has a few other prompts to give them a chance to image! Extra Writing – Page 8  This page is just an extra page to use when your child wants to add extra care and attention to one of the topics you are learning about. For example, if they want to write more about the Grand Canyon then this is an extra page to write more information. They can also draw more pictures or add more photos.  How to use these pages in your school day: Work to your child’s speed and understanding, but I recommend (for an average 4th -6th grade child) that you do one page a day and finish a state a week. For example, you could do page one (general information) on Monday and page two (Map It) on Tuesday. Then fill out some information on page 3 (Famous People and Events) on Wednesday. On Thursday you could work on pages 4 and 5 (God’s Awesome Sights and Famous Shrines and Churches).  On Friday you could complete Page 6 (Man Made Sights). NOTE: If you are looking for something quicker and easier, just do the first two pages for each state. I used this set for my 5th graders, but my 2nd grader only used the first two pages and skipped the other pages. My kids and I completed these pages using these two books HERE and HERE . We did get a little help from the internet on the famous shrines and we needed help discovering some “Sights made by God” or “Sights Made by Man”. If you are interested in using this printable set with your kids, I have it available above! God bless you all and have a joy-fulled day! ~JenMarie

Looking for a good Catholic coloring page for St. Patrick’s day? Here is a list of some St. Patrick’s Day coloring pages! Download this Clover Coloring Page Here: Download this St. Patrick Coloring Page Here: Download this Cute St. Patrick Coloring Page Here: Have a blessed day! ~JenMarie

In the Catholic Church,  November is dedicated to the Holy Souls. So I thought I’d share a few simple and meaningful activities you can do with your kids. Before I talk about what we can do for the souls in purgatory, I want to talk about who these souls are and why it’s important for us to help them. Purgatory is filled with the souls of people who have died with God’s Grace on them but they are not yet holy (aka: sanctified) enough to enter into Heaven. They are in a middle spot between heaven and hell. In Purgatory these souls are meant to be purified so they can enter into eternal life in heaven. Our prayers and good works are the key that they need to enter heaven. There are countless ways to help the souls through prayer and sacrifice. I’m going to share just a few that you can do with your kids so they can see how they can help, too: 1. Take a trip to the cemetery to pray: Take a trip to your parish cemetery to pray a Rosary. This is a great visual reminder of who we are praying for. It helps to make an imprint in a child’s head and it makes the reality of who they are praying for more real.  This trip can be made at anytime, but we like to go on the feast of All Souls (Nov. 2). Feel free to go several times during the month of November – remember the entire month is dedicated to the Holy Souls. (Not that you can’t pray for them after November – they ALWAYS need prayer.) Don’t let bad or cold weather bother you. If you plan to go an a specific day and it ends-up being cold or rainy, go anyway. You can pray in your vehicle while you are parked at the cemetery. Its better to go and stay in the car than not go at all. Also, going on an extra cool and windy day is an extra special sacrifice! 🙂 2. Take time each day to say an extra prayer: Make a list of your family and friends who have died and be sure to add” all the other souls in purgatory” or ”for the least prayed for souls” to your list. Then each night, say an extra prayer for them. I highly recommend that you pray the St. Gertrude prayer. Our Lord told St. Gertrude that this prayer would release 1000 souls from purgatory each time it is said. The prayer was extended to include living sinners as well. Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the masses said throughout the world today, for all the holy souls in purgatory, for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the universal church, those in my own home and within my family. Amen. 3. Light a candle in November for the Holy Souls: Take a few minutes after Mass to light a candle for the Holy Souls. You can do this each weekend during November. You can also decorate around a special candle at home or school for the souls. Add some pictures of your deceased relatives and friends around it. If you don’t have pictures, just make a list to set beside your candle. 4. Offer it up! Don’t forget to offer up your bad days, your difficult events, or your painful or uncomfortable times. These may be sad times, but you can use these sad times for good. The souls in purgatory need our help. If you offer these bad things as a prayerful sacrifice to Jesus, He can turn them into good. So remember to ”offer it up.” each time you have something bad to deal with. You can also go to Mass and offer that as a sacrifice for these souls. The Mass is the most perfect prayer and a wonderful way to help the souls in purgatory! So make a special trip to Mass for these souls. 5. Give it up! Another way to sacrifice is to give up something you love. For example, don’t take a desert and offer that up as a sacrifice for the souls in purgatory. Or give up your seat for someone. Let your brother or sister have your turn to pick a movie. These are just a few ways you can give something up to help the souls in purgatory. Remember: **Do to others as you would what want them to do for you.** I’m sure that if you were in purgatory you would want the help of those who could help you, so please try to help these poor souls who need your help so desperately! God bless you all with joy and peace. ~JenMarie

I already posted about this craft in our Good Friday post, but I wanted to share the finished crosses my kids made. They worked hard on these and they had a great time! You will need: Download Instructions - below black paper toothpick (we cut/broke ours in half or smaller) scissors glue Download Instructions Here: To start this craft I recommend drawing a cross onto the paper for the kids to fill in, it makes it easier for them. Have the kids fill in a section of the drawn cross with glue and then cover the glue with toothpicks. Then move onto another section of the cross. Do this until the cross is covered.  Allow the crosses to dry and then cut them out leaving a small black edge around the outside.  Here are a few close-up pictures of a few crosses. This craft was easy and they turned out to be a very nice cross to hang in the kids’ bedrooms! This project was inspired by  Home Grown Learner post. God bless! ~JenMarie

This is a re-post from 2012. We had a few technical problems last year and this coloring page hasn’t been working. Because this beautiful artwork was created by my daughter, Rachel, I asked her to help me fix this so we could re-post it for you all. Download this Divine Mercy Coloring Page Here: Rachel is progressing into a wonderful young artist! But that’s coming from a proud mamma! 😉 Hope you all like it! God Bless. ~JenMarie – AKA: Rachel’s Mom! 😉

The feast day of the Exaltation of the Cross reminds us that Jesus was victories over evil! The cross is a sign of Jesus’ victory! That doesn’t mean we automatically will get to heaven; it means that Jesus has unlocked heaven’s door. It’s up to us to open the door. The only way we can do that is by showing God that we love Him. We need to give God our mind, soul, heart, and body. We need to do our every deed and action for Him! Each time we look at a cross or a crucifix we should remember that we need to give our lives to God because He gave His life for us so we would have the ability to enter heaven. This ornament depicts a cross towering over the world! It was created with tan, dark brown, and light blue felt. We used a green and blue permanent sharpie marker to draw the world on the light blue circle. We added silver glitter glue to the cross and around the cross and earth. We also added gold glitter glue around the tan felt area.  We added a threaded loop of gold thread and hung it on our liturgical tree! We will be posting Our Lady of Sorrows tomorrow! Hope you have a blessed day! ~JenMarie and Elizabeth

The days get away from me and I can never seem to find a free minute to post here on the blog, but today I’m posting a quick and simple project that my 5-year-old loved! We have been learning about animals – God’s amazing creatures – so Caleb created this cute little world of animals craft! And it was a great craft to make on St. Francis of Assisi’s feast day! 😉 ABC Learning Letters: G and W “G” is for God! “W”  is for World! To make this you will need: Stock paper or light cardboard or paper plate crayons – green, blue and dark brown small animal stickers scissors How to create it: Draw a circle on your paper/cardboard. If your animal stickers are larger make your circle larger and small animal stickers = small circle. Have the child draw a cross in the middle of the circle and color it brown. Then they can make outlines of land areas with a green crayon. They can then fill in the land with green and the water with blue. Now they can cut the circle out. Have them add the land animal stickers to the green area and water animals to the blue area. That’s it! So fun and easy! My little guy loved it! Hope you and your kids love it too! ~JenMarie

My oldest son, Jacob created an adorable bouquet of flowers for me! These flowers are made from plastic Easter eggs. The eggs give this colorful bunch of flowers a cute pop! ———————————— Supplies used: colored construction paper stiff cardboard – cereal box cardboard will work plastic Easter eggs (bottom half only) green pipe cleaners – AKA: chenille stems glue stick hot glue (adult supervision is required for younger children) pencil scissors ————————————— How to make them: Use a pencil and half-eggs to create a symmetrical flower shape on the colored construction paper. With a glue stick, glue the colored paper flower onto the stiff cardboard. Glue another sheet of the same color to the back of the cardboard – sandwiching the cardboard between the colored paper. Cut out the flower shape. Hot glue the egg-bottom to the center of the flower. Add hot glue only to the inside edge of the egg. Twist 3 or 4 green pipe cleaners (chenille) together to make a strong stem. Hot glue one end of the pipe cleaner stem to the back-center of the flower. That’s it! Now make a few more to create a bouquet! Front of egg flower craft. Back of egg flower craft project. This activity is a great way to recycle old plastic Easter eggs! The kids can make these crafts for Mother’s Day or for Our Lady! Enjoy!

I have admired those DIY fill-it-up clear plastic Christmas balls for a few years. But me being me, I like to add a bit of Catholic focus on all our Christmas crafts. So when we made these ball, we added a double sided picture of the Nativity or other religious picture to the inside! Figuring out a way to add the image took a bit of testing and thinking, but I did figure out a way to do it.  We glued two images of the same size onto a popsicle stick. They were glued onto it back-to-back. When the glue is dry, gently fold the image and push it into the ball. After that, we unfolded the picture. Voila! Beautiful Christmas ornament fit for the season! We had a lot of fun filling these balls and adding the religious pictures! The possibilities are endless!! About the plastic balls: For those who don’t know about the clear plastic Christmas ball, they are very simple Christmas balls that are made with clear plastic. The top of the ball comes off and the ball can be filled with anything that your heart desires – well, it does need to fit into the small hole in the top! We bought our ornaments at the Dollar Tree – 2 for a dollar – like those pictured here. Ours are about 2.5 inches wide with a half inch opening at the top.   These ornaments come in many shapes and sizes. I have also seen them at Wal-Mart, AC Moore, and Hobby Lobby. When buying your plastic balls make sure the opening is larger than a popsicle sticks widest side, otherwise the balls are not going to work. About the images we used: Many of the images we used were Nativity stickers. They worked very well. Some of the images were small pictures which we cut from old cards or mission mail. What did we put inside the ornaments? Here is a list of items we added to the inside: raffia (for hay) – cut-up in small 1 inch pieces (or smaller) small sprigs of fake evergreen branches sequins in many shapes:– round– stars– snowflakes-hearts fake snow dust glitter in many colors: gold, silver, blue, red, etc. sand small stones any other small item we found and liked How did we make them? After getting the plastic balls and finding images that fit the size of our balls, we dug through our craft boxes and pulled out anything that we thought might work or fit into the balls. (see list above). Find a cup or lid that will hold your ball in place so it won\’t roll around as you fill it. Now begin to add your hay, snow, greens or any other crafty items you think look nice.  If you are adding tiny items like fake snow or glitter then you may want to use a funnel. If you don’t have a funnel, then roll-up a piece of paper to form a funnel and staple it together. Now add your tiny items. Add only enough snow/hay/greens to cover the area below the picture. Now take a popsicle stick and place it down into the ball – straight up and down – make sure it is touching the bottom of the ball. Make a mark on the stick at the point where the popsicle stick extends out of the ball’s opening. Now remove the stick and cut just below that mark with a knife or cutters. Cut out your images – make sure they are the same size. Cover the back of one image with glue, then place the popsicle stick in the middle of the image. Be sure to leave enough room above the image so the stick can extend into the ball\’s neck. Now add glue to the second image and place it back-to-back on the first image – sandwiching the stick in between the two images.  Many of our images were stickers, which we stuck back-to-back on the popsicle stick. NOTE: We still added glue when using the stickers, because stickers will not stay stuck together if they are stored in a hot or humid area – such as an attic or a basement. Because we store our Christmas decorations in an attic, I wanted to be sure that these stay stuck together, so we could enjoy them for years to come. Your image on the popsicle stick should look similar to the one pictured above. It should have an image on both sides. Now gently and loosely fold the image so it can be slid into the ball. Once you have the image totally in the ball, try to fold the image open by flipping it around and gently pulling it back up the neck of the ball opposite the fold so it will stay open. You can also use another popsicle stick to flatten out the fold. When the image is opened, nestle the bottom end of the stick into your sand, hay, greens, etc. Now, put the top back on the bottle and hang it up! Finished ornaments to inspire! Here are a few of the ornaments which we created. This might help inspire you if you want to create these! The more we created them the more ideas we came up with! So not all our ornaments are pictured here. I\’m sure you can find some adorable items to add in your Christmas balls with Baby Jesus! In the ornament above, the image sits among little fake evergreen clippings, fake snow, tinsel clippings, glitter and a tiny fake candy cane. This sweet ornament is filled with fake snow and loads of multi colored glitter and sequins. This ball was in honor of the F east of the Holy Innocents . The image depicts the Flight into Egypt. The ball holds sand, small stones, a little silver glitter and small silver stars. This ornament is filled with small strips of raffia – hay for the stable. It also has a little bit of silver and blue glitter, as well as, large blue star sequins. The above ornament is simple yet beautiful! It’s filled with fake snow and blue glitter. This ornament was very difficult to get a picture of. It is only filled with fine textured glitter: silver and gold as well as a little bit of blue. It really is very pretty in real life, but the picture does not do it justice! This is another snow filled ball. It does have larger sequins which are not visible in the picture as well as silver glitter. This adorable ball is filled with more fake snow, blue glitter and gold star sequins that are not very visible in the image. What would you add to your Christmas ball ornaments!? If you have another idea, tell me about it in the comments below! I’d love to hear your thoughts! ~JenMarie