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Catholic Cultures wed site had a beautiful description of St. Rose that says: "Rose of Lima, a member of the Third Order of St. Dominic, was the ’first blossom of sanctity that South America gave to the world.' Hers was a life heroic in virtue and penance…” Visit their site to read more about her. You can also visit Catholic.org  to read more, too. St. Rose of Lima’s feast day is Aug. 23 (new) and Aug. 30 (trad.). Elizabeth and I were going to add roses to a wreath for St. Rose’s ornament, but decided that it was a bit difficult to make all those little roses. So we made the flowers more simple.  We cut out pink and purple flowers and arranged them on a green circle/wreath. We glued two strips of dark brown felt into a cross shape and then glued it onto the wreath. Next we added a few green leaves among the flowers.  To make it pop, we added a few drops of silver glitter glue and it turned out to be a sweet ornament to honor St. Rose of Lima. St. Rose, oh beautiful saint so kind and loving, intercede for us. Ask Our Lord to grant us all that we need to enter into heaven.  St. Rose of Lima, pray for us! ~JenMarie and Elizabeth Visit our Etsy store to buy our St. Rose of Lima felt statue .

For the Coronation of Mary (Aug. 22 -new calendar), Elizabeth wanted to make a sparkly crown with gems.  While I’m sure this isn’t even close to being as pretty as Mary’s real crown, it is very sparkly! To make this Elizabeth first made a crown shape from a gold pipe cleaner. We then glued it onto a scrap piece of yellow felt.  Then we cut out around the pipe cleaner so the yellow was only seen on the inside of the crown shape.  Now for the fun part!! Elizabeth added glitter glue to the yellow felt. Then she used sequins and star sequins to make the gems on the crown. She also added a little bit of red glitter glue to the bottom! She was very pleased with her sparkly crown! ♪ ♫ Hail Holy Queen enthroned above…. Have a blessed day! ~JenMarie and Elizabeth

For the birth of Our Lady (Sept. 8th), Elizabeth and I wanted to make a liturgical ornament that was filled with baby cuteness! So we made a pink baby and to confirm that this isn’t just any baby girl, we added an Immaculate Heart. This Immaculate Heart is a little different than the regular Immaculate Heart. We wanted this Immaculate Heart to look baby-like, so we made it pink! We also didn’t add the sword, since Mary wouldn’t have had any heart breaking experiences yet. To create this ornament you will need: Felt: pink, light blue, medium blue, yellow, and light brown/peach Permanent markers: orange, pink, green, and red markers. Glitter Glue: gold, silver, and a little red (optional)  Cut out the parts as pictured above. Make Mary first and size everything based off of her. You could glue Mary’s head on top of her blanket-body but it looks nicer if it’s seen through a hole in the pink blanket.  We used pink and red permanent marker to shade the pink blanket that Mary is ”wrapped” in. And we used orange marker on the edge of her halo. We also added gold glitter glue to make the halo sparkle. Glue it all together before you add the glitter or add the glitter to the halo and wait for the halo to dry before you glue everything together. (We used hot glue.) After Baby Mary and all the other parts are glued down, cut out a pink heart and flame. Use the pink permanent sharpie marker to make flowers. Just make 5 or 6 dots in a circle shape and add a yellow dot in the middle area. Then add a few green marker leaves around them. We used a red marker around the edge of the heart. Cut out a yellow flame for the top of the heart. We added gold and red glitter glue to the flame and silver glitter glue around the heart.   Personally, I love this ornament! I think it’s so cute! I hope you like it, too! Mother Mary, Happy Birthday!! God Bless, ~JenMarie and Elizabeth

The feast of Mary’s Holy Name is Sept. 12th.  There is great power behind Mary’s name! Read about this devotion HERE .  ”Men do not fear a powerful hostile army as the powers of hell fear the name and protection of Mary.” -Saint Bonaventure Elizabeth and I were trying to make this ornament look kind-of heavenly. So we have two sparkly clouds and a sparkly sun. Plus, we have sparkles all over Mary’s name which is written in the clouds.  We used white felt with sparkles, yellow felt, and light blue felt. We cut out two cloud shapes from the sparkly white felt, a half-circle from the yellow, and a rectangle which is big enough to fit the clouds and sun on.  We outlined the yellow with an orange permanent marker and we added gold glitter glue to it. We glued the two clouds together and used blue fabric paint to write Mary’s name on the clouds. Once that dried we covered it with clear-sparkle fabric paint. After that was dry we glued all the parts onto the blue rectangle. Next, we added silver glitter glue around the edge of the clouds. And we added gold glitter glue around the sun. We also created rays coming from the sun. Once it was all dry we cut out around the clouds and sun. These pictures don’t do this justice. It’s just full of sparkle! Most Holy Mary, Queen above, Pray for us! May every evil flea whenever we whisper the Holy Name of Mary! God Bless. ~JenMarie and Elizabeth

St. Peter Claver is known as the ”Apostle of the Negroes”.  St. Peter dedicated himself to the service of the Negro slaves for over thirty-three years. He was devoted to saving the souls of the African slaves and to abolishing the Negro slave trade.  Read more HERE . His feast day is Sept. 9th,  the day after Our Lady’s Birthday . The ornament for St. Peter Claver is two hands and a cross. The lighter colored hand is giving the cross to the darker colored hand. This is a symbol of St. Peter giving the Catholic faith to the African people who were forced into slavery.  The ornament is made with white, peach/tan, medium brown and dark brown felt. Cut out two hands: one medium brown and one preach/tan. Then cut out two strips from the dark brown felt to form the cross. Glue them onto the white felt square. We used red, orange, and yellow permanent markers to add some color to the white felt. This is now hanging on our liturgical tree. St. Peter Claver, pray for us. May we understand each other and help each other grow closer to God even when we look and/or live differently. God Bless. ~JenMarie and Elizabeth

Here is a simple craft to color and create for the Solemnity of the Annunciation (March 25)! Download this Annunciation Craft Here: Just print the free PDF file (found above) onto stock paper or heavy paper. Color it and add a prayer list inside the blocks. (Using Crayons? Add the prayer list first and color over top with light colors. If you are making this with small children you may need to write the list on the back.) The list can be anyone you want to ask Mary to help and protect. Then cut along the outside edge of the shape. Fold along the lines marked with the arrows and stand it up. Now place it on a table or altar. Have a blessed Solemnity of the Annunciation! ~Jen-Marie

Some days I feel like my kids are second-class homeschoolers. Almost every other homeschooling family I know is paying to put their kids in some kind of music class.  Weather it’s piano, guitar, viola, or flute, they are paying for these super expensive music lessons. Sadly, our family is unable to pay for music lessons for all 9 of our kids. So I signed-up our kids for our parish’s children’s choir. Unfortunately, since our kids were the only ones to join, the choir soon disbanded. I was in the choir as a teen and I’ve been told I’m a good singer, so my husband and I asked our parish priest for a few extra music books like those we had at the church. We started singing Mass songs each evening with the kids. My oldest became quite good at singing a capella  and I’ve been very pleased with her growing talent – especially since she learned from an amateur vocal teacher (me). Singing church music is a great way to teach kids a few basics, but I was looking for another way to teach music that would help them to understand music history, vocabulary, as well as, learn a little about how important music is. Many of the early composers played their music in Catholic Churches and they built the foundation of the music which the Catholic Church uses today. I thought it would be interesting to learn about the lives of these composers. The has a number of books about these early church composers, as well as many other famous composers. I tried one of these book sets out last year. For our first year we choose Bach . The main book is a story book which tells all about Sebastian Bach . The story is cute and draws you into Bach’s world. It tells about his childhood, his family, and his career. I also bought the companion CD which has samples of his music. These samples are meant to be played during many different parts of the book. The CD not only includes the MP3 music samples, it also includes printable coloring pages and sheet music (not that my kids can use the sheet music!). The study guide was also a great help. It gave a short synopsis of the reader, discussion questions, a timeline, plus, some other interesting facts. I used this set it for all my elementary level (grades 2 – 7) kids.  It was an easy read for the older kids and too hard for the youngest, but understandable as a whole. When I first introduced this book and CD to my kids they were very unhappy with the idea. They seemed to think that it was going to be “boring elevator music”, but by the end of the book they were sad it was over. I’ve seen a change in their attitude about music. It opened their ears to hearing the heart and soul of the sounds that these composers put together. It’s even more uplifting when one of the kids gets excited and points to the name of a familiar composer in the Mass music book at church! 🙂 Here are a few notebooking pages which I created to accompany this book and the music: Music Appreciation: Listening to Music This is a free worksheet which allows kids to write down the background information (e.g.: the composer, type, year composed) of a piece of music which they are listening to. Their is also space for the children to write down their thoughts about the music. It can be used along with the or along with ANY music appreciation program. Note: If we couldn’t find a exact date that the piece was written we just wrote the years of the composers life spanned. Music Vocabulary Worksheets My kids used this sheet to write down any music related words they didn’t understand. Usually, they were unfamiliar words which were in the story about the composer. Once we finished reading the chapter or paragraph we looked them up and wrote down the definition. The kids drew a picture of the idea/item if they could. Download the Music Appreciation and Vocabulary Sheets Here: This year I plan to have my kids read about Joseph Haydn and Beethoven.  There are many different composers to choose from: Sebastian Bach …….  ( Reader ) ( CD ) ( Study Guide ) Motzart ……………….  ( Reader ) ( CD ) ( Study Guide ) Joseph Haydn ………  ( Reader ) ( CD ) ( Study Guide ) Beethoven ……………  ( Reader ) ( CD ) ( Study Guide ) Franz Schubert ……… ( Reader ) ( CD ) ( Study Guide ) Johannes Brahms …  ( Reader ) ( CD ) ( Study Guide ) Check out all the other music books by Opal Wheeler : HERE No, these books are not the same as learning to play an instrument, but they are great books to teach music history. And I plan to use them until the day we can actually afford to pay for guitar or piano lessons. Then, on that day, we can stop searching YouTube for free lessons! 🙂  Hey, YouTube is a great resource for free lessons. Just don’t expect to get professional results! How do you teach music to your kids? Till Later, God Bless, ~JenMarie

Sts. Anne and Joachim are remembered and honored on July 26th in the new Catholic calendar (Traditionally – July 26th for Anne and Aug. 16th for Joachim). While we don’t know much about these two saints, we do know that they were blessed to the the parents of an amazing woman – Mary the Mother of God. How special was this couple that God allowed them to conceive a baby with no original sin!? Wow! What a blessing! St. Anne and St. Joachim, were the first teachers of Our Blessed Mother, so my daughter, Elizabeth, and I decided to use a book for one of the symbols. Because Anne would have also taught Mary how to keep house, cook, and make clothes, we use a spool of thread as another symbol. We used maroon, light blue, light brown and white felt to make this ornament.  The book was make with a larger maroon rectangle shape which was folded in half. We added  three smaller, white, rectangle shapes inside the folded maroon rectangle to form the pages. It was all hot glued at the ”binding”.  The spool was a light brown spool shape and a few small strips of light blue to make the ”thread”. The spool was glued onto the book. The above picture has a better view of the spool of thread.  Sts. Anne and Joachim, pray for us. God bless you all. ~JenMarie & crafting buddy, Elizabeth 🙂

St. James the Greater, who was one of the sons of Zebedee, is celebrated in high honor on July 25th (in the new and old calendars). He is, of course, one of Jesus’ apostles and is attributed to being Jesus’ first apostle. He is the brother to John (the ”disciple whom Jesus loved”) and is know as ”the greater” – not because he was smarter or better but because he was larger then the other James (James the lesser). He had a full life and brought many souls to Jesus. Read more about him here and here . For his ornament, we used the  ”Cross of St. James” image. This symbol is a mix between a cross and a sword. The cross is for Jesus, and a sword represents the instrument used to behead James at his martyrdom. To create this, I first drew the ”St. James Cross” on red sheet of felt. Then I cut it out and flipped it over. Elizabeth glued it onto a off-white oval with the drawn side down – because it was kind-of messy looking. Using a brown permanent marker, we lightly outlined the plan side of the cross to add a little bit of interest. Then, we added a threaded loop of silver thread. Because July 25 is the feast day for two well known saints, Elizabeth and I created two ornaments for the day. St. James, pray for us. ~JenMarie

We celebrate the feast of St. Bridget of Sweden on July 23. (Her traditional feast day is on Oct. 8th.) She married around the age of 14 and had 8 children. (Including St. Catherine of Sweden). St. Bridget was a visionary and after her husband died she worked hard trying to restore the Church. She is the founder of the Brigettine nuns, and the patron saint of Sweden, Europe, and widows.  The symbols on the ornament which we created for her includes a ”pilgrim’s” staff,  because she took MANY pilgrimages. The staff is accompanied by a book – another common symbol of her’s.  Read more about her HERE and HERE . We used gray, dark brown, maroon, and white felt to create this ornament. We glued the staff onto a white oval for stability (we used hot glue). The book was created using a gray rectangle (the cover) and thee small white rectangles (the pages). It was all glued (hot glue) together at the book’s ”binding”; so it will partly open. Then the book was glued onto the oval with the staff. A silver threaded loop was added so it could be hung on our Liturgical tree.   Note:  St. Bridget of Sweden is also known as St. Brigit, St. Birgitta, or Birgitta of Vadstena. She is commonly confused with St. Bridget of Ireland, whose feast day is Feb 1. St. Bridget of Sweden, pray for us! May you all have a blessed day! ~JenMarie

St. Peter Julian Eymard’s feast day is Aug. 2 in the new calendar. He began his love of Jesus at a young age and became a priest at the age of 23. He had a devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and tried to spread that love to all those around him. He is the founder of the Servants of the Blessed Sacrament. Read more about him HERE , HERE , and HERE . Because of his love of the Blessed Sacrament, Elizabeth and I made a monstrance for this ornament. We used yellow and white felt, as well as, gold pipe cleaners and a brown sharpie marker. This is a double-sided ornament, so all the felt parts are doubled.  We cut the gold pipe cleaner into short 1 inch strips – they are the rays of the monstrance. We used the yellow felt to make the stand part of the monstrance. We made the host from white felt and we the cross was added with a sharpie brown marker.  We glued the small strips of gold pipe cleaner to the back of one of the yellow felt shapes. Then layered the second yellow shape on top. We glued on the hosts – one on both side. I recommend using hot glue to make this ornament.  You may like to visit Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament on St. Peter Julian Eymard’s feast day. St. Peter Julian Eymard, pray for us. ~JenMarie

The feast of St. Martha is July 29th (new and traditional calendars). She was a friend of Jesus and the sister to Mary Magdalene and Lazarus. Because of the story in Luke 10:38-42, Elizabeth and I decided to go with a house keeping theme. So we created a broom.  We used dark brown and yellow felt to create this ornament. We also used a brown permanent marker to add ”bristles” to the broom. This ornament is double-sided so it looks the same on both sides. Although we don’t have it pictured, we did make two broom handles and glued them back to back. This made the ornament more stable.   St. Martha, pray for us! God Bless. ~JenMarie