An Advent devotion that you really can have ready by Sunday

I recently got bombarded by requests for access to the Fine Art Jesse Tree ornament files (apparently, a server update had switched sharing off for all of them), so I thought I'd take the opportunity to reshare them, especially for those of you who might be looking for a good last-minute option. The back-to-back file can just be printed double-sided on sturdy paper and cut out, or, if you have a little more time and energy, you can laminate them, or print them out single-sided and glue to colored cardstock.

Ideas on how to use the ornaments in your family prayer time can be found at the original post.

All of the files can be found below:

• Back-to-back ornaments (for double-sided printing)
• Ornament fronts (art pieces) only
• Ornament backs only
• List of readings

Have a blessed Advent!

Church Lady Attire for Every Occasion

Loaves and Fishes Sunday is coming, do you have the perfect accessory for your ensemble yet?

Source: MaorZabarHats on Etsy.

Gearing up

for tomorrow's double header: the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart and the Vigil of the Nativity of St John the Baptist.

Some years ago my husband decided that we should adorn our image of the Sacred Heart with fresh flowers in honor of the feast day and ordered several stems in floral tubes from the local florist. It was on the pricey side the first go round because he didn't know one could purchase the tubes at craft stores. But I have reused the tubes every year since which has brought the cost down to about $1 per bloom. The flowers last about a week.

Our parish includes an oratory dedicated to St John the Baptist, the proto-parish of the area. In past years, there has been a special Mass and church supper held there, but due to expected heat, the event has been delayed until the fall. In the evening, we will host some friends for a dinner of pizza on the grill and toast marshmallows over the St John's Bonfire (in a fire pit). It's not too late to grow a culture of faith and start the tradition in your neighborhood!

Madeleines for St Mary Magdalene's day

 

A batch of madeleines, studded with summer blueberries, in honor of today's saint, Mary Magdalene (whose memorial was elevated to a feast by Pope Francis this year.)

Smores for St John the Baptist

Last year, I was grieving a miscarriage when the feast of John the Baptist rolled around. To distract ourselves from the reality at hand, my family decided to hold an impromptu neighborhood gathering. I sent my husband to the grocery store for s'mores ingredients and whipped up a pitcher of lemonade for general consumption and cocktails for the adults. While we weren't able to have a St John's bonfire, we made do with the flames of the grill while making the s'mores. The serendipitous evening requiring minimal effort has now become an annual event- now with bonfire!

Neighborhood waffle night for the Annunciation

Last year's Annunciation Day evening was snowy and blustery, but inside the mood was cheerful. Waffles were the star of our breakfast for dinner neighborhood party, rounded out with sausage and potatoes, quiche, and fruit salad. Why waffles, you ask? Because Our Lady didn't waffle in giving her fiat.

And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end." (Lk 1, 30-33)

St Agnes Day cake

Don't wait until Easter to break out your lamb pan! This white cake was so simple my husband (whose cooking expertise starts and ends with pancakes) whipped it up after work. The lamb shape pays tribute to the lambs blessed by the Pope whose wool will become bishop's palliums.

Today is the birthday of a virgin; let us imitate her purity. It is the birthday of a martyr; let us offer ourselves in sacrifice. It is the birthday of Saint Agnes, who is said to have suffered martyrdom at the age of twelve. There was little or no room in that small body for a wound. Yet she shows no fear of the blood-stained hands of her executioners. She offers her whole body to be put to the sword by fierce soldiers. She is too young to know of death, yet is ready to face it. Dragged against her will to the altars, she stretches out her hands to the Lord int he midst of the flames, making the triumphant sign of Christ the victor on the altars of sacrilege. She puts her neck and hands in iron chains, but no chain can hold fast her tiny limbs. In the midst of tears, she sheds no tears herself. She stood still, she prayed, she offered her neck. You could see fear in the eyes of the executioner, as if he were the one condemned. His right hand trembled, his face grew pale as he saw the girl’s peril, while she had no fear for herself. One victim, but a twin martyrdom, to modesty and religion; Agnes preserved her virginity and gained a martyr’s crown. (On Virgins, Saint Ambrose)

St Nicholas Day preparations

This afternoon, we got things ready for St Nicholas Day.

The stockings were hung from the chimney with care, in hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.

(Since I have never been home on Christmas Day since my marriage, we use our stockings instead of shoes.)

It's amazing what you can find with a $5 limit per person. Candy canes for all, a thrift store sweater for Mom, an intriguing bottle from the clearance table for Dad, and Christmas tree ornaments for the kids (that they will take with them for their own tree when they leave home).

A Thanksgiving guest brought a package of spekulatius, a traditional cookie for St Nicholas Day, saving me from baking my own. Some years I have made gingerbread instead. We'll have these with tea before Vespers at the Abbey tomorrow afternoon.

"St Nicholas" and I also put together some care packages for neighbors, which we will deliver before Mass tomorrow. 

Make it: Mini Saint-of-the-Day Shrine

I'm slowly becoming resigned to the fact that I'm probably never going to be the mom who has the perfect dessert for every big feast day. (Plenty of people are, including some of my co-bloggers, and more power to them.) I still wanted this to be the year that I upped my liturgical game, though. So, having been inspired by this Facebook photo of unknown origin, I set out to create a shrine for our home altar that could be a home for our saint of the day.

Materials:

• dollhouse room box (I'm having trouble finding anything similar online, but these are from the dollhouse furniture section at Michael's)
• gold acrylic paint
• fancy scrapbook paper
• miniature egg-and-dart trim (found in the craft wood section of Michael's)
• small crucifix, about 1½" or less (ours are from broken rosaries)
• medium-sized wooden bead, or gold polymer clay (to hold the crucifix)

Tools:

• paintbrush
• small hand saw, sandpaper, and wood glue (for trim. The wood is soft, so I imagine a utility or craft knife could be made to work in a pinch)
• spray glue or rubber cement

Michael's sells the dollhouse boxes in two sizes. On the left is the small size with, from left-to-right, a saint block from AlmondRod Toys, a standard craft store peg doll*, and a larger peg doll (3 5/8"). The same dolls are shown in the larger-sized box on the right.

Cut the trim to just a hair longer than the width of the box (to allow for sanding), and sand the ends smooth. Attach with wood glue so that the top of the trim is even with the top of the shelf, and let dry.

Paint the box and trim with the gold paint, leaving the back surface white. This took more coats than I'd expected (5-6), but the paint dries quickly, so you really only need to give it five minutes or so between coats.

Cut the scrapbooking paper to fit (centering the motif, if necessary). The boxes weren't quite square, so we cut them just a tad big, and shaved off little bits until they fit. Glue to the back with rubber cement or spray glue.

We used wooden beads with holes large enough to accommodate the crucifix, painting them gold to match the shrine. (Something like this might also work, but I haven't tried it myself.) If you can't find something similar, you can mold a base out of polymer clay, using the crucifix to make the hole in it before baking.** Whichever you use, use a tiny bit of hot glue to secure the crucifix if necessary, then use hot glue or wood glue to place it on the top shelf of the shrine.

The glue is dry, you are ready to display your saint of the day! If you don't have figurines, I've found that the larger-size box is just right for propping up a standard holy card.

Other ideas:

• A paper banner, reading "Saint of the Day," or "Ora pro nobis," instead of the trim.
• Tiny silk flowers in a vase made from a large fancy bead or a wooden candle cup.
• Tiny votive candles (just for decoration, of course!)

*Sorry, I don't have the dimensions. Maybe when Margaret Mary is back from Philly, she can help me out.
**I was really hoping these would work, but sadly, they're just a tiny bit too big!)

PSA: Save those onion skins!

So, in my post on making stock from vegetable scraps, I said that the only part of the onion I don't save are the very dried, papery layers of skin. Well, it turns out that, this time of year, there's a good reason to save those, too.

It's a Greek tradition to dye Easter eggs blood-red, to represent the Blood of Christ, and believe it or not, this color can be acheived with just the skins of a dozen or so yellow onions and a bit of vinegar. Sounds like a good excuse for French Onion Soup to me.

Get the details here.

Lenten Sacrifices Booklet

(I seem to have forgotten this last year, as the last file I have says "2013". Nevertheless, here is it's triumphant return.)

Now that I have small children, I need to have a little flexibility in my lenten sacrifices. Some days, a certain resolution just is not happening and trying to make it so will only result in the less-meritorious sort of suffering. Still, it's good to have some accountability, so that flexibility doesn't fade over into laziness or forgetfulness. Putting a little check in the box is all it takes, really, and I'm sharing with you my pocket-sized (smaller, really) booklet to help keep track of Lenten sacrifices. Write commitments in the first column, and then check them off each day you complete them. I've greyed out Sundays and solemnities, since it's not necessary to fast those days (though there's certainly no reason not to pray!).

To put together the book after you've printed it out (diagrams here):

• Fold in half and crease, with the text facing out, along the registration marks, both the long and wide way. Since every printer is different, you may have to trim a bit of the marginsto even up these edges. 
• Open it out, and then fold each side in to meet in the center (again following the registration marks). 
• Slit the paper along the tops of the center two sets of pages, then pull open this slit at the folds. Fold book so that the covers are in front and back.

Have a blessed and fruitful Lent!

Advent Music: Hymns

The second installment in my Advent Music series are hymns, ranging from translations of 9th century Gregorian chant to modern-day compositions. Since most of these are written for congregational singing, I've included links to the lyrics (and music, where possible) below. If your domestic church is musically inclined, give them a go, but even if you don't sing them, I'd encourage you to have a look through the theologically-rich poetry of the words. It makes beautiful food for your meditation on this season.

Advent Hymns from churchlady on 8tracks Radio.

1. Lo, He Comes With Clouds Descending
2. Adam Lay Ybounden
3. Comfort, Comfort, O My People
4. O Come, Divine Messiah
5. Savior of the Nations, Come (historical notes)
6. Hail! Blessed Virgin Mary
7. On Jordan's Bank, the Baptist's Cry
8. Jesus Christ the Apple Tree

NB: Old hymns show up in many different versions over the years, so the lyrics linked here might be slightly different from the recordings.

St. Nick reminder

While you're out this weekend doing your black Friday shopping (or better yet, your Small Business Saturday shopping), don't forget that St. Nicholas Day is next week.  There's nothing quite so wonderful as not having to go out, in a panic on December 5th to find shoe-sized gifts.

Printable: Fine Art Jesse Tree

I am always looking for ways to incorporate more beautiful art into our devotional life at home. So, as we approached Advent, a time that speaks to the domestic church in a particularly profound way, it seemed to me a natural time to bring some of this art into our home. Filling our Advents with beauty can also help sustain us through the season, when all around us is screaming to celebrate Christmas before its time (mostly by buying things, of course).

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the Jesse Tree consists of a daily reading from scripture, along with an ornament containing a symbol for each reading. The readings trace salvation history (the tree represents Jesus' family tree), beginning with creation and ending with the coming of the Messiah. For our version, Margaret Mary and I went hunting to find a piece of art for each day. We tried to represent a variety of styles and periods of art, so hopefully there is something here to inspire everyone. (If you ever need good sources of art for your own projects, I highly recommend starting with Wikipedia and the Web Gallery of Art. The wreaths on the back of the ornaments are courtesy the wonderful Graphics Fairy.)

These ornaments can be used in a variety of ways. At their simplest, they can be printed out and hung in a row on a garland or along your mantel. Hang a new one each day, or hang them all at once with the backs showing, then flip one so that a new piece of art shows every day.  If you are short on space, get a 3" display easel, such as this one or this one, and display just that day's picture on it. If you are willing and able to set up your tree this weekend, they can be the ornaments for this season, and then the tree can be decorated in all its festive Christmas glory after the last of them has been read, with the Christmas ornaments either replacing or adding to the Advent ones.

Prayer

Each day, gather as a family to read the reading printed on the back. NRSV and New Jerusalem translations tend to be nice for reading aloud. Use a children's translation if that's better for your crowd, or even find a storybook version where you can. This is a good time to light your Advent wreath each night. You may wish to close with your family's usual nightly prayers, or some special prayers for Advent (a few ideas are here). If you own a copy of the Liturgy of the Hours (or Christian Prayer), pray the closing prayer for each day (or some or all of Vespers, if your children have the attention span).

The ornaments are matched to days of Advent, rather than dates in December, so most years you will have some extra. You can choose whether to double up readings on some of the shorter days, or just skip some at the end. For example, this year, you could go straight from the Annunciation to the Nativity.

Using the PDFs

The ornaments are formatted to be 3.25" square. We've done our best to pick uncrowded, high-contrast pieces of art that shrink down to this size well, but I still recommend using the highest quality printing available to you. Our prints are made on a color laser printer. If your home printer isn't up to the job, a Kinkos-type place should be able to do it fairly cheaply.

There are four files linked below: one designed for printing double-sided, two containing fronts and backs separately (in case you want to avoid paying the color rates for the black-and-white backs, or if you'd like to print the backs on off-white or colored paper), and a sheet containing just the readings and information, in case you want to make the ornaments single-sided.

The color pages have registration marks to help you cut them out neatly. The file with the ornament backs only has registration marks that should be useful whether you want to cut them into squares or circles (I used a Fiskars circle cutter for the job). Cutting the circles can be a bit tricky to get used to, so I left a blank one at the bottom of the ornament backs file to practice on.

If you want to pass them along to a friend (and please do!), we'd ask that you send them a link to this post, rather than copying the PDF file itself. If you would like to use them in a group setting or redistribute print/PDF versions, please email us to ask first.  Thanks!

• Back-to-back ornaments (for double-sided printing)
• Ornament fronts (art pieces) only
• Ornament backs only
• List of readings

For laminated ornaments:

Print out the back-to-back PDF, double-sided, on cardstock (you may wish to test-print the first two-sided to make sure everything lines up correctly on your printer). Laminate the pages, cut out the ornaments and punch a hole for hanging near the top.

For wooden ornaments:

Any craft wood about 4" square should work. We used Darice MDF coaster blanks (found at JoAnn) for the base of the ornaments.

After drilling a hole near the top (you should have just shy of 3/8" margin at the top), we painted the borders and edges with two coats of gold acrylic paint. If you are cutting the backs in a circle, make sure to paint well into each corner on one side to cover everything that will show (cut a scrap piece to the same size and use it to check)

Print the art and label files separately on cardstock and cut them out. We used a round corner punch on the art pieces to better match the wood, and cut the backs out as circles. After the paint was dry, we attached the art and labels with spray glue, and sealed the ornaments with spray varnish. You could use Mod Podge in place of both.

We hope you enjoy, and if you come up with other creative ways to use the PDFs, please do pass them along!

Christ the King

The Solemnity of Christ the King will be here soon.  How are you planning to celebrate?

A Little Aid for Your Lent

I've often found that my mid-Lent slip-ups come not so much from a lack of will power as from forgetfulness. With that in mind, I've put together this little booklet to help keep track of Lenten sacrifices. You write your sacrifices, prayer commitments, etc., in the first column, and then check them off each day you complete them. I've greyed out Sundays and solemnities, since it's not necessary to fast those days (though there's certainly no reason not to pray!).

To put together the book after you've printed it out (diagrams here):

• Fold in half and crease, with the text facing out, along the registration marks, both the long and wide way. Since every printer is different, you may have to trim a bit of the margins to even up these edges. 
• Open it out, and then fold each side in to meet in the center (again following the registration marks). 
• Slit the paper along the tops of the center two sets of pages, then pull open this slit at the folds. Fold book so that the covers are in front and back.

Practically free Christmas Decorating

Our front door tends to look a little drab at the best of times, so I decided that some Christmas decorating was in order. We have a juniper topiary in the front yard that looks scraggly if it doesn't get a good pruning every year, and some pine shrubs that were encroaching on my tomato patch, so I spent a half-hour or so with the pruning shears and got 2-3 five-gallon pails worth of foliage. I also clipped some seed pods from my Rose of Sharon bushes for decoration. The only other materials were:

• Cotton twine/yarn (green or brown is easiest to camouflage, of course)
• A spool of galvanized wire
• Optional: A red berry garland ($3.50 at JoAnn this time of year), or any other trims, ribbons, floral picks you like.
• A tape measure, and nails for hanging.
• gardening gloves (A lot of sap in there!)

The process was time-consuming, but really quite simple. Begin by tying the string and wire together (I recommend keeping both on their spools, if possible. lay a branch on the string, and wrap the wire around both once or twice to secure it. Lay the next branch so that the pretty end overlaps your wire wraps, and wrap the wire around the stem end to secure it. 

Since this garland was only going to be seen from one side, I kept everything on the same side of the string, but you should work things around all sides if it will be hung on a banister or other such location.

Add the other decorations as desired, wrapping them together with a piece of the greenery. When I wanted to add the berry garland (cut in halves), I just held it together with the string and made sure the branches didn't hide the berries as I went. I also sorted out some of the more interesting branches (with attractive berries or pine cones) to intersperse with the decorations as well. Give the string a good firm tug every few wraps to make sure you haven't introduced any loops or slack.

The project took a few hours, all told, and I'm very pleased with the result. The same idea works well on a wreath form. You can either purchase one, or make your own from a pool noodle or a couple layers of sturdy cardboard (I wouldn't recommend the latter for anything long term, but it should last as long as live greenery).

A couple of helpful notes:

• I tied/twisted loops in the string and the wire once I got to the corners, for hanging. I recommend stopping a few inches short of your door measurement, because the vertical sections of the garland will stretch once you hang it. 
• For my doorway, I saved the smallest branches for the top section, so that nothing would interfere with opening the door.
• I worked on the front step, since the weather's been so warm, but I'd recommend laying down newspaper if you're working inside, to catch sap and stray needles. 
• If your garland is living inside, mist it with a spray bottle every couple of days to keep it fresh.

Naturally, I didn't run across this...

...until the last day of the Octave of All Souls'.

(source)

Oh well, maybe next year. I think I'd have to scrounge up some Protestant friends to invite over for the occasion. All in the name of ecumenism.

Quotes: Celebrating the Liturgical Year

We're on the cusp of a liturgically packed time of year, especially when it comes to our domestic churches. All Saints' and All Souls' are this week, and Christ the King and Advent are just around the corner. Given that, I thought Mary Reed Newland's reminder to take any hitches to our best-laid plans in stride was particularly timely:

"We planned things that never quite came off. We planned things that fell through. Sometimes the family didn't respond, or the order of the day was disturbed by some unexpected event and we celebrated not a thing, except perhaps by way of a passing thought that today was to have been different—if only it had turned out right. But looking back, some of the most valuable lessons are learned with the failures, because this is a way of life we hope will perfect us in doing God's will, not in having our own. Once St. Gertrude complained to Our Lord that He didn't send her the grace to enjoy one of the greatest feasts as she had hoped to do. He replied that it would have pleased her to enjoy it, but it pleased Him more to have her offer the lack of Joy to Him. So sometimes He teaches us best by letting us get nowhere."

 from "The Year and Our Children"

All Saints' Day

It'll be here before you know it, so start planning your awesome costumes!  Catholic Icing, a fantastic source of faith-filled fun for the under 12 crowd, has just posted their ideas for group costumes. Mary and baby Jesus is a no-brainer for your two preschoolers, but how about Cecilia and an angel, George and a dragon, or (my favorite) St. Margaret Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus?  Hop on over to Lacy's site for lots more ideas and the details on how to make them happen.

Be sure to get to the bottom of the post for links to her other costume and party ideas!