When the Saracens were attacking Assisi and were marching toward the convent, St. Clare who was very sick at the time, asked for help to carry a vessel containing the Blessed Sacrament to the entrance of the convent. There she prayed and held up the Blessed Sacrament. The Saracens fled in fear. St. Clare of Assisi\’s feast day is Aug 11 in the new calendar and Aug 12 in the traditional calendar.  She is a beautiful saint, Read more HERE and HERE . Since we already made a monstrance , Elizabeth and I decided to make this on a little different and more ”old fashioned” looking. We used light brown felt, yellow felt, white, and off white felt to make this ornament. See the parts in the picture below: We also used a yellow and orange permanent sharpie marker to add color to the rays coming from the host. We added a looped thread and hung it on our Liturgical Tree! St. Clare of Assisi, pray for us! ~Jennifer and Elizabeth (my Crafting Buddy)

Our Lady of Snows feast day is Aug 5 – AKA: St. Mary Major. You can also read about OL of Snows HERE and HERE .   Elizabeth and I decided to make a snowflake out of felt so we could use it every year. You will need white and light blue felt. If you have white felt with glitter now would be a great time to use it! To create this ornament we cut out a circle from the white felt.  We folded it and snipped out several larger and smaller holes as we worked our way around the whole circle. If you try to cut it like you would a paper snowflake it can be difficult because the felt is so thick. So we just cut small areas at a time. It’s not perfectly symmetrical, but it looks cute!  After the snowflake was cut, we added a light blue felt ”M” for Mary! 🙂 After all it is Mary’s snowflake!  It was a cute addition to our Liturgical tree! Our Lady of Snows, pray for us! ~JenMarie and 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

The feast of Our Lord’s Transfiguration is Aug. 6th. Read more about it HERE . We used yellow and white felt. First we cut out a Jesus shape from white felt. Then we cut a yellow oval which was just bigger than our white Jesus. We cut out long and narrow triangles from the yellow oval to make the rays. We used an orange permanent sharpie marker to add more interest on the yellow ray-oval. Then we glued Jesus on the rays and added a thread loop to hang it on our Liturgical tree.  Have a blessed day! ~Jennifer and crafting buddy, Elizabeth

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

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. 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

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