Search Results

November is a time to remember that we should be thankful. While Thanksgiving is not a Catholic holiday, it’s nice to have a reminder that we should all be thankful to our good Lord for all the blessings He has given us! I made a fun sheet for my kids, which they just LOVED!! They had fun decorating it and thinking of things to add to the thankful list. My oldest even wrote God a thank you poem!! The title of the sheet is: “ A Thankful Heart is a Happy Heart! ”The kids can write what they are thankful for on the main page. They can decorate around the list if they like. Then, they colored and cut out the “happy” heart and stapled it to the main page. Create flaps that open to reveal the things the child is thankful for. Download these pages below... Download the page with colored leaves: Download the black and white leaf version: No leaves - Simple Heart Version: Hope you all enjoy this as much as my kids did! May you have a blessed day! ~JenMarie

Ya know, every year during Advent, life gets busier and busier. I have a growing number of students in my homeschool class and that just makes life a little more crazy. I’m trying to keep the focus on Jesus and giving to the needy, but I still feel like the season is almost over and I was barely was able to take the time to meditate on the true meaning of the season!  Personally, my mediation and prayer time is always filled with interruptions and a two year old who jumps on my back or slams his affectionate body into my stomach, while screaming, ”Hug!!”, in a long drug-out word! Sweet, but very distracting. So sitting and praying is often not the peaceful time in my day. Prayer in the bathroom is as peaceful as it gets – assuming I can sneak away without being seen!  Otherwise, I hear banging on the door while my wild and crazy fan club screams on the other side! So prayer time is rather difficult most days. I found that prayer time can be more meaningful if I’m working on something. For starters, my kids bother me less when they see me actively doing something. Why it’s that way I have no idea! But I like to use it to my advantage! And secondly, I find it easier to focus on prayer and mediation when I’m working with my hands. Creating, coloring, painting, drawing, and other things like that. Growing up I was told by my teachers that you should be focusing on prayer and not be doing other things while praying, but as an adult, I find that even my kids pray better in motion. My kids, mainly my oldest son, wants to walk while praying the Rosary! So maybe it’s a genetic thing in my family or maybe it’s just because God made us all different, but it works for me! Well, that may have been a bit of a personal tangent, but I was thinking about it as I made the craft that I’m about to share. While making this art project sample for my kids, I began to realize why I enjoy creating things and I was having a splendid time meditating on the birth of Jesus! I created this to show it to my kids so they can make their own as a school art project.  I love when I can combine a little Religious Ed., Bible Ed and/or catechism with art class! 🙂 You will need: colored/construction paper black, white, light blue, brown, green, yellow, and if possible: dark blue, red Amazon has all these colors in one pack and it’s a really good price! ($1.39 for 50! – Ya, I like cheap!) crayons scissors glue (If possible both white glue and a glue stick ) 3 popsicle sticks or other sticks to make a trim for stable(You can buy the popsicle sticks at the dollar store 100/per pack but if you need a lot Amazon has 1,000 for $5) First I broke a popsicle stick in half and glued the two whole sticks and the two parts onto the brown paper. Create a stable shape. Then let that dry a little and cut the stable out, as pictured above. Glue that stable onto the black paper: Now using your blue, green, and brown paper cut a half oval shapes to make the bodies of Mary, Joseph and a Shepherd. You can also cut our half oval shapes to make a veil/head covering, too. Baby Jesus is a small oval shape. Use white paper to make circles to use as the heads. I used a peach crayon to make the white paper a skin color. I also used brown to make St. Joseph’s head covering to be a darker brown. Cut some yellow paper into strips to make the hay. You may also cut out staffs for St. Joseph and the shepherd. I also cut out yellow paper halos (not pictured)  for the Holy Family and colored them with orange and red. (The other parts pictured above are for a tree… I’ll talk about that later.) You may like to wait till you have the ground and hills glued down before you glue on the hay and people. The image above shows the parts and the way I formed a star. It’s two long diamond shapes and 4 long triangle shapes. The were layered to make a star. I glued them above the stable in the black sky. Next I made a few hills to fit around the stable. I used a black and/or brown crayon to lightly color the bottom of each hill. I added yellow to the top and a small edge of white to the very top of each. This helped to give the hills some dimension.  Once I had the ground/hill glued down in front of the stable, I glued down Mary, Joseph, the hay, and baby Jesus. After I glued down all my hills with the glue stick,  I flip the picture over and cut off the extra edges of the hills.  The shepherd and the sheep were added next. The image above shows how I created the sheep with white and black paper.  Once I created the sheep and the shepherd I glued them onto the picture. Next, I added the trees. I made several green triangles and a brown trunk for each.  I layered the green triangles starting from the bottom (at the trunk) and working to the top.  The last and final touch is the other stars in the sky! Using a white crayon I made small dots all over the black sky. There you have it! The art work above was created by my daughter, Elizabeth, and my son, Joshua.  A great team project! They worked together very well and it looks so sweet! Easy version for younger kids: If you are looking for something super simple you can make one like my younger kids made. It’s just the stable and the Holy Family! If you liked this you may also like this post : Have a blessed O Antiphon! Christmas is coming fast! ~JenMarie

Last week my sister gave us a *NEW* book – Bambinelli Sunday: A Christmas Blessing !! My kids don’t often see *NEW* books!! Being a frugal mom who acquires all our family books from thrift stores, yard sales, or our local library, brand new books are a rare sight! So my kids were very impressed at the shiny new cover of this wonderfully illustrated book! Bambinelli Sunday is about a little boy who makes his own little Jesus out of clay. He and his Grandfather take it St. Peter’s square where it would be blessed by the Pope on this special day! Well, my kids were excited to read this cute book!! And that excitement spilled over into creativity! My kids and I decided to make a few Bambinellis of our own! Our little Jesus figures are not as fancy as the ones on the book, but they are easy enough for most kids to create! If your children are older or extra creative they may like to make their little Jesus fancier. We made our little Jesus figurines from salt dough, because my air-dry clay had dried out from the last time we used it. Air-dry clay will keep much longer and make a nicer figurine. The air-dry clay is also nicer if you have mice in the house like we had when I was a kid! 🙂 But the salt dough is easy to make and always on hand. Plus, it’s cheaper. So, fell free to choose the art-media that works best for you!  To make your own Little Jesus, you will need: Air Dry Clay or salt dough Salt dough Recipe:  1 cup white flour1/4 cup salt1/3 cup water Mix flour and salt well. Gradually add water, stirring with a large spoon. Finish mixing with hands. Knead until soft and pliable tooth pick cooling rack acrylic paint brown yellow light blue peach or tan paint brushes First create the base of the manger. Make an oval shaped ”bowl”.  Then make the hay. Make a flat pancake like circle and cut it into a ”sun” . I used a toothpick to cut the points into the edges.  Lay the hay into the manger, still keeping the bowl-like shape. Next make baby Jesus. Form an oval shaped ball that is smaller than your manger and hay. Be sure the ball is slightly flattened on the top and bottom. Use a tooth pick to make a circle for a face and the eyes and mouth. When using the toothpick to make the face, poke into the dough/clay don’t scrap it. If you scrap the clay/dough it will create a rough edge. Poking it will make it smoother. Place baby Jesus into the manger, on top of the hay. Place your baby Jesus onto a cooling rack for a few days to dry (both salt dough and air-dry clay take a few days to dry.). If you are using salt dough and you are in a hurry you can bake the figures in the oven at 300 degrees F till they are mostly dry (about an hour depending on the size of your figure). I don’t recommend this unless you keep a close eye on them as they bake. Sometimes the figures can start to puff, and that can ruin the look of your figure. Once they are dry you can paint them with acrylic craft paint .  I recommend you start from the bottom and work your way up. First paint the manger – brown Then the hay – yellow Jesus blanket – light blue then paint his face in peach or tan If you get too much paint in the eyes or mouth of your baby Jesus use a toothpick to open the holes up again.  Then, let it dry. If you like you may want to cover it with a sealer like Mod-podge or an other craft sealer. My kids had a grand time making all their figures!! Here are a few finished baby Jesus figurines! You may also like to read the book, Baminelli Sunday !! Personal  thought on this book : This book is super cute and we enjoyed it, but I do wish the little boy in the book was shown apologizing for a few things he did that may have hurt others. But the book gave me a opportunity to talk to my kids about the proper way to handle things when they make a mistake. ~*~ I thought it might be nice to have our parish priest bless our Bambinellis! It might give the kids a thrill!! But if you decide to get yours blessed, remember to bury them if they break. Don’t throw blessed items in the trash! Burying old, broken blessed items is a great family event. I save our broken, blessed items in a special cabinet and when I have a larger amount (every few years), we all take them outside to bury them. It teaches kids to respect sacred items, even when they are broken.  Hope you all had a blessed Bambinelli Sunday!! ~JenMarie

When I think of Christmas some of the things I think of are starry skies and sparkly lights. Often times that’s what you see in nice nativity scenes and pictures. Without the stars and the lights, Christmas might seem a little less magical. Yah, I know they are not the point of Christmas, but they do seem to help make the season feel more special. My 9 year old daughter, Elizabeth, helped me to create this starry sky in a bottle to add to our Christmas décor. It’s just perfect for sitting behind a small nativity!   Elizabeth did most of the painting in this project. She not only had fun doing it, she did a great job! You need: Bottle (We used a large wine bottle) Set of battery powered lights   -10 to 20 sized set (I bought ours at Walmart for $2) Mod Podge Blue food coloring drops Disposable bowl Paint brush wood skewers (optional) twine /ribbon (optional) (Walmart has well priced twine) Wax paper (optional) Pour about a half cup of Mod Podge into a disposable bowl. Add about 10 drops of food coloring. If you are using a large bottle, you may need to make 2 or 3 times that much. Using your paint brush mix the color into the Mod Podge until it’s one even color. You want the color to look like a medium blue. It will dry darker.  Stand your clean bottle onto the wax paper. Paint the bottle with the blue Mod Podge. It looks best when brushing from top to bottom. Be sure the bottle is totally covered, except the bottom. If the blue Mod Podge runs onto the wax paper it should be easy to peal off the wax paper when it’s dry, but you may wish to wipe away large amounts.  Let the bottle dry. Then, you may want to give the bottle another layer of blue Mod Podge to make it a darker blue.  If you want to store your blue Mod Podge till later place it into a zip-loc bag and store in a safe spot.  After you have painted the bottle with several layers of blue Mod Podge, it’s time to add the lights. I added two wooden skewers (criss-crossed) into the bottle so the lights didn’t just fall to the bottom of the bottle. Then I added the lights.   Once the last light was in the bottle’s neck I ran the light’s line down the outside of the bottles neck and tied it down with some twine. I made a bow with the twine on the front. The light’s line was run down the back so you can’t see it. The battery box was hidden behind the bottle and sitting on the table.  Now it's sitting on my window sill with a small Nativity.   It’s such a glowing and beautiful sight! Note: Sunlight will bleach the food coloring if it sits in the sun for a few months. Wishing you all a blessed Feast of the Epiphany! ~JenMarie

I think gingerbread houses are fun, so I bought a pre-made kit that included the house parts and the icing. I thought it would be fun for the kids to help make a gingerbread house! But then I read this post at Mrs.Domestic Bliss about creating a Gingerbread Nativity and I thought that was the best idea! So we made a gingerbread stable and added a small plastic nativity!  It was our Christmas table display and it looked so cute –that is until we ate it! 🙂(No, we didn’t eat the plastic Nativity figures – although, my 2 year old would have!) The kit made this easy! All we had to do was cut out half an oval into one of the peeked ends of the house. Yes, this was a delicate job which I did while the kids watched with wide eyes. My 4 youngest daughters took turns saying, ”Carefully, mom, carefully!”, as they watched me saw into the gingerbread with a knife. Then I assembled the house as instructed in the box. We did add the Nativity pieces and hay to the inside of the stable before we added the roof.  Our hay was actually yellow coconut. You can create the yellow coconut by placing a few handfuls of coconut into a seal-able bag along with a few drops of yellow food coloring. Then shake it until all the coconut is yellow.  The little Nativity which I used was one that my grandmother gave me when I was young. I saw one on Amazon that looked like it might work for this… here . But any small set would work. Or you could used printed and laminated pictures of the Nativity figures and stand them with glops of icing. I bought the gingerbread kit at AC Moore (with a coupon). It looks similar to this one on Amazon (but AC Moore was MUCH cheaper).   Here is another one, too. We loved this and we hope to make one again next Christmas!! Although I think we might get a little more creative with the design! Christmas blessings to you all! Please, pray for me! ~JenMarie

I hope you all had a blessed Christmas Day! Our family had a lovely day with lots of sweets! I\’m sure a few of my upcoming posts may seem a little out dated for those of you who don\’t celebrate Christmas past the 25th of December, but here at our house we celebrate all 12 days of Christmas. We create a huge amount of our Christmas crafts and treats, from Christmas-eve until the Epiphany (Jan. 6). So, if these seem out dated because you are packing away the tree, feel free to just bookmark or pin these posts for next year! On Christmas Eve, my kids and I made a few homemade ornaments from glitter foam and old Christmas cards (from last year).  It was very easy and fun for the kids and we loved the sparkly glitter foam, which made very little mess. The kids gave a few away to relatives on Christmas and hung the rest on our Christmas tree.  To make these ornaments we glued a few religious pictures on glitter foam using regular white glue.  You may need to hold the picture down for a minute if it wants to curl. Then we used silver glitter glue to trim the edges of the pictures. After that we added a few glitter star shapes to the edges. The stars we used were similar to these . After the glitter glue dried we poking a hook through the foam and hung them on our tree!  They turned out so nice and sparkly, and they were very easy to make! So, keep those old cards and make a few ornaments next year! Please, pray for me I’m always in need of prayers. ~JenMarie

Youth groups?! No, I don’t run a youth group, but if you look around my house you would think I run a daycare! So why do I care about ideas for youth groups? Well, a few years ago my oldest two daughters were looking forward to joining our parish youth group, but our parish youth ministry fell apart the same year that my oldest was old enough to join! Bummer – what horrible luck. I was asked if I was interested in helping to keep the group running, since I had the only kids in the parish that were willing to show up to the meetings, but I decided against it. You see, we attend Mass at a ”dying parish”. In other words, most of our parishioners are retirement age. There are very few kids in the parish and there are even less teens. It’s hard to keep a youth group running in a parish with such few youth. Plus, at the time when I was asked to help, I was very pregnant with our 9th baby, and I felt like a beached whale. I already had a full plate. But that doesn't mean I never plan to try my hand at running or helping with a youth group. I hope that in the future when my youngest few kids are old enough to be easily managed I’d like to start our parish youth group again or maybe join in with the youth group that is available in a neighboring parish, which is 45 minutes from our home. So I’d like to start posting some ideas that I feel may be helpful ideas for youth ministry. That way if I ever have an opportunity to help with a teen group I can look back through some of these ideas as a reminder of past thoughts. And I don’t think you’ll mind gaining a few ideas for your youth ministry, school, or homeschooling group, too.  I stumbled onto a video on YouTube while I was trying to look up a song my kids liked on our local Christian Radio Station. When I saw this I immediately thought ”WOW, that is sooo cool!!” (Is it still okay to use the word ’cool’?) ”This would make an awesome youth group project!” After I saw this one, I found LOTS more on YouTube from other groups! They are really amazing you should check them out! There are a number of videos on YouTube which show other groups’ performances! They are all amazing! So how did they do it? The kids all wear black, from head to toe, BUT they wear white gloves. Then they stand in front of a black background in a dark room. An ultraviolet fluorescent light (A.K.A. black light) is strategically placed in front of them facing up. Some groups recommended placing a second light above facing down. These lights need to be positioned so you only see the white gloves reflecting the light.    Now the kids need to come-up with hand signs to put together during a song. And practice, practice, practice! I asked a former electrical purchaser (now Electrical Project Manger) ,whom I’m married to, where to buy these UV lights and he said they can be found at any electrical shop or on-line. This is a great way for teens to preform and raise funds for pilgrimages or trips. Is your youth group looking for a fun new way to raise money to take a trip to the next World Youth Day? Or maybe it could be a nice way to get the kids to preform for local retirement homes as a service project. So get your group all decked-out in black garb and take the white gloves for a spin! This looks like it could be as much fun to create as it is to watch!! Have a blessed day! ~JenMarie

I’m excited to share our Presentation décor! It’s simple and frugal! It cost me only four dollars. I love a good deal!  😉 The two doves, candles, and wreath were bought from the Dollar Tree. The greens were extras that I had from other projects. I printed them onto stock paper and taped an opened paper clip to the back of each. The paper clip serves as a stand.  They only needed one paper clip; Anna needed two. I also glued Jesus into Simeon’s arms.  Download the Presentation craft here: Our kids have been admiring it! And I’m pleased to have given the kids a faith-centered memory at such a cheap cost! 😉 Hope you are having a blessed day! ~JenMarie

I made a few sheets to help my kids during our Rosary. (I’m always trying new things to keep them interested) These are sheets to use as you pray. Print them out and laminate them (or use plastic sheet covers).  Then the kids can use them to follow along as they pray. They can use a dry erase marker to fill in the rosary beads on the sheet as they pray each prayer. Download the Rosary Sheets Here: Dry-erase should wipe off the laminated sheets and the sheet covers -if you have problems with stubborn dry-erase marker that doesn’t want to come off, try to wipe it off with rubbing alcohol and a tissue. Hope this helps your quest for a more meaningful Rosary! God Bless, ~JenMarie

Hi all!  Here are a few arts and crafts for the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. (Feb. 11) See if you find any that you might want to do with your kids! Click here to see how to make this Chocolate Grotto, which I posted last year. It’s made from no-bake cookies!! Yum! Click here  to see how to make this felt doll of Our Lady. (I posted this last year, too.)  Here is a neat foil grotto craft from Ad Iesum per Mariam Smart Martha  has step-by-step instructions for this art project. Kristine at The Fire Within posted about this Our Lady of Lourdes Shrine  Xhonane at Familia Catholica posted about this beautiful craft. The Rolling Acres Farm has a great coloring page! Go check it out! Hope you found something you like! Blessings! ~JenMarie

These hearts are great for many things! We used them to decorate our “St Valentine’s Day Tree”.  Plus, they were fun for sticking all over the house or classroom to help brighten it up during dark winter days. They would also be great for homemade Valentines and St. Valentine’s day crafts! They would make great labels for gifts too! They could be cute cupcake toppers, as well!! Download the Hearts here: Click Here God bless! ~Jen-Marie

Here are a few pages of printable valentines. I made these  last year , but this year I made a new version of these. I was able to update them to look more like I wanted them to look last year. I\’m adding links to both here so you can choose which ones you like the best! How to use them: Simply print the Valentines onto stock paper.  Color them if you printed the black and white cards  Fold the ends over the picture.  Add a sticker or tape to keep it closed.  Write who the card is to and from on the back. Download the Valentines here: There are three versions of this Valentine:  Heart-Cross version in color (ready to use), the  Heart-Cross Version in black and white, and t he *NEW* Crucifix version. Here is a view of the pages: Feel free to download these free files above! God Bless. ~Jen-Marie