Holidays in Review

I think I'm catching up. I think I'm catching up. I think I'm catching up!


Halloween jumped up on us rather quickly and was gone in a flash - along with our quickly rotting jack-o-lanterns. Thankfully, I had done some Halloween costume preparation before our trip. So Tuesday and Wednesday we spent time on the little details. Jacob and I made his robot costume. (Brian was a robot for Halloween once when he was growing up.) I cut the box and covered it and Jacob did most of the decorating. It was fun making a homemade costume.

Nicole wanted to be a flower fairy. I had found the tu-tu at Wal-Mart earlier in the month. I pulled up her hair, put flowers in it and made her a flower wand.

Andrew was a "towboy" (all his c's are t's)! And what a cutie he was. I think he really understood the whole dress-up, trick-or-treat idea this year. He really understood once the candy started filling his bag.


Brian took the kids trick-or-treating. Michael and I stayed home, cleaned up from dinner and handed out candy bags. This Halloween didn't seem near as busy as in years past, but it was fun. I sent all the chocolate with Brian today. I was slowing eating it all! Not good for someone counting Weight Watchers points.

All Saints Day came and went about as quickly! We started the day with 9 am Mass. After some brief lessons, we attempted to make little Saint dolls. I had noticed some people out in cyberspace were going to be making "spoon Saints" to celebrate the Feast. I love them. They are so precious. But I knew I would be totally frustrated working in such miniature, especially with my brood of "minis" making them. So I set about devising another option - that very morning! (Why do I do this?) I love the idea - just larger!

So....... I found these printable doll bodies and made some copies on cardstock (I decided to use the one on the right only so with some cutting and recopying, I put two on a page.) Then I set about making cardstock clothing templates. I drew these up as we went along. Then the kids used the templates to make their Saint's clothing out of colored construction paper. We added some other details that I drew for them and glued everything to the doll. Here's how they turned out! Andrew's has a bit too much stray glue and pencil marks, but still cute.

St. Michael the Archangel

St. Barbara

St. Andrew

They were so much fun to make that I spent a large portion of the rest of my day creating lots of other generic "saint-type" clothing templates. I would like to make these available to you all as a PDF file, but I have yet to get the templates to scan the correct size. If worse comes to worse, you can let me know you want copies and I will mail them to you. The nice thing is that the clothing fits these little dolls perfectly and you can use the templates year after year. Imagine the little collection of saints you could grow!

We read and talked about Saints and read this book for the first time. Later that afternoon we had an invitation to our very first ever Apple Tasting Party at Robin's house. That was a fun time! The kids loved eating all the different types of apples and comparing them. What a neat way to add something special to such a special Feast Day!


That evening after dinner we carved our Jack-o-lanterns. Always messy. Always fun. This year the kids designed their own faces all on their own. I wondered how they would turn out. We were all pleased with the results. We had pumpkin cake for dessert and I roasted most of the pumpkin seeds seasoned them according to this recipe. The kids even like them!


We had a fun several days, although they were crazy busy. Now we have the wonderful Thanksgiving holiday to look forward to! I can taste it now!

God bless you all dear friends!