Baptismal Anniversary Mats

It seems every year there are so many important occasions to celebrate. We have birthdays, wedding anniversaries, liturgical feast days, but other major occasions seem to be left out.

One major occasion in my life that I never wanted to forget was the day I was baptized. This was a day I would rank right up there with my wedding day and the births of all my children. Truly, it is one that has changed my life forever! Now that we are converts to the Catholic faith where all my children were baptized as infants, I really wanted the importance of this beautiful sacrament to be remembered and celebrated each year, along with their birthdays.

Several years ago, I came up with the idea to make Baptismal Anniversary mats. Each year on the anniversary of a particular child's baptism, we set the dinner table with their personal Baptismal Anniversary mat, then celebrate with a special dessert, and share reminiscent stories about that special day. The mats provide wonderful visual aides. Now, when we are blessed to become God-parents, I like to make one for our Godchild.

Since the children did this as a group project, each mat was personalized with their own creative flair. The girl's mats had the prayers printed on pink and the boy's were on blue.

Here is a list of items I printed out for them to use while creating their mats:

• Special pictures from their Baptism day
• Pictures of their Godparents
• Cards with their Godparents names
• Quotes from the Saint they shared their Baptismal day
• Pictures of the church they were baptized.
• Copies of a Baptism Prayer from this book
• Copies of their certificate of baptism (shrunken down on the computer)

Other items: Poster board, ribbon, glitter glue, construction paper and fancy scissors, stickers of saints and other christian symbols etc. After the mats were throughly dry, I got them laminated at Kinkos.

We have recently added the feast day of Our Lord's Baptism to this celebration, and on that particular day we place everyone's baptismal mat on the dinner table.

More Advent Ideas....

If you are looking for children's literature and craft ideas to do each day during the Advent season, this wonderful link just came across my homeschool loop yesterday. I think this is a definite keeper for our preschoolers!!!

St. Nicholas Feast Day Coins

Here is another fabulous post by Jessica on how to create your own St. Nicholas Feast Day coins! I am thrilled with this idea because it is such an inexpensive craft. I will definitely be adding this link to my St. Nicholas Study.

Our Lady of Sorrow

A couple years ago we did this simple craft project for Our Lady of Sorrows Feast Day.

In the picture above you will see all the supplies we used. Let me tell you where we got them:

• Square cork board, pieces felt, bag of flowers, paints and fabric glue all came from Walmart
• The Cocktail swords came from my local grocery store
• An outline of the Immaculate Heart came from A Catholic How to Draw

We took the outline and traced then cut a heart and flame out of the felt. Then we laid the felt patterns on top of the cork board and cut out the shape of the immaculate heart.

Then we glued on the hearts. Made seven holes in the fabric and painted the entrances with a dab of red paint.

Then we took the plastic cocktail swords and spray painted them silver.

As they were drying we typed up the seven sorrows and placed them on labels. After the swords were dryed we placed them on the swords.

Here is the finished project. Simple but effective.

Our Christ Candle

Today I want to talk about how we made our 'Christ Candle'. If you click on any of the pictures you will see an enlarged image.

In order to make our Christ Candles the resources we used were a white pillar candle (we made our own out of beeswax hence the yellowish color), Jesse tree symbols, crayons, engraving tools, wood burning tool, acrylic paint and some fine point paint brushes. A helpful tip for those who will be using a store bought candle make sure it is not treated or glazed. We found the exterior glaze would chip off and ruin the engraving.

The purpose of the Christ Candle is to engrave pictures depicting the events that took place in the bible that lead up to the birth of Christ. First, we took the Jesse tree symbols from the book Celebrating the Faith in the Home: Advent and Christmas for the Christian Family, and shrunk them on the computer to fit our candle. Then the girls cut out the symbols, taped them onto the candles and used and engraving tool to out line the symbol onto the candles. After they made the outline, the paper was removed and we engraved the symbols deeper into the candle.

After the girls made their engravings they chose the colors they wanted for their pictures.

Then using a wood burning tool we melted the crayons into the engravings. If any of the melted crayons spilled outside the engravings it was easy to clean up by scraping them away with a finger nail after the wax cooled. After all the engravings were finished being 'colored' I used a fine point paint brush with black acrylic paint to outlined them. This added a nice finishing touch.

Here is a pictures of all the symbols we chose for our Christ candle.

At the top we engraved a picture of a snake - for the fall of Adam and Eve and the ark - for Noah's ark.

stars - Abraham, and an angel - Zachariah and Elizabeth.

lilly flower - Virgin Mary, and a shell with water - John the Baptist. These engravings have not been outlined yet with acrylic paint.

and Chi Rho - Jesus Christ.

The work was time consuming but the reward was well worth the effort. We have thoroughly been enjoying our new prayer candle this Advent season.

Advent Cube Activity

Well Alice over at Cottage Blessings has done it again. She came up with a great idea to celebrate Advent with the kids this year. Inexpensive, simplistic and educational way to celebrate the season. I love it!!

We have always wanted to make our own Jesse Tree but in combination with the all the other ideas Alice posted about on O Night Divine we are looking at six activities for the price of one!!! We so look forward to getting started.

All Souls Banner

Today I wanted to talk about my All Souls Banner.

I absolutely love having hands on traditions that allow us to live out our faith and share with each other in the family every year! In addition to going to the cemetery which I talked about here I wanted to create something for in the home.


The idea for our banner actually originated from a couple different resources. It started with suggestions made in a book we have really grown to love around here called A Year with God: Celebrating the Liturgical Year, then with all the talk about the Advent calenders and gifts at the 4 Real Learning Forums I became inspired to combine some ideas from both of these resources.

The materials used to make the banner included: 2 yards of green felt (green for ordinary time), 1 yard of batting (optional - I wanted a quilt look), 1 square of yellow felt (for the sun), 1 sheet of 8x10 white felt with a sticky backing (clouds), 1 sheet of 8x10 black, yellow or red felt (the headstones), 1 yard of clear vinyl (pockets), thread and some paper holy cards of Mary, Joseph, guardian angels and or some household name day saints, then one picture with God, Son and Holy Spirit.

The first step was to cut out all the pieces as shown in the picture above. Then on the machine I sewed the two yards of green felt and batting together so that they made a quilt like blanket.

Then I set the scene for how I wanted my banner to look, see picture above. The sun with the Holy Trinity represent the direct rays of God's love reigning on all the saints, angels etc. in heaven. In our banner we chose to have Mary our mother, St. Joseph, a guardian angel, St. Michael the Archangel and a couple family name day saints in heaven.

The line of clouds separate the direct burning rays of God's love in heaven from the souls in purgatory. These souls are represented by headstones, as seen in the final picture below. We are currently working on finding pictures of beloved family members that have passed on that we will cut and glue or stick onto the head stones. As each week goes by the kids will be able to use their good prayers and sacrifices to help these souls move to the Church Triumphant in heaven.

I really wanted something durable and hands on that I could use every year with the kids on this important feast day! I personally chose to sew on all my pieces, including the saint cards but I imagine this can just as easily be done with a glue gun. I can't say this was a quick craft project for it took two days to complete but it was fairly simple. If one chooses to make it with a glue gun instead of sewing the pieces on it shouldn't take more than a day to make.

I think it has already begun to help the kids understand their important role in the Communion of Saints here on earth, and the importance of offering up sacrifices and prayers for the Church Suffering. The younger kids were going out of their way today to do good deeds and prayers for those precious souls in purgatory.


I can't wait to display this banner every year for the whole month of November.

Saint Holy Card Frame Idea

I was over visiting Dawn's weblog today and came across this really neat idea she had for holy cards. My kids have these tucked all over their bedrooms -- candle holders above their beds, dresser mirror, and push-pinned to the walls.

My son gets upset because his St. Michael's saint card keeps falling behind his bed and he can't sleep without knowing St. Michael is there to protect him. I think these frames would be a perfect Christmas gift!

All Saints Day

I ran across wonderful idea over at Cottage Blessings. Alice is a home school mom and incredibly talented when it comes to creating simple craft activities that provide very visual and hands-on ways, of helping our children live and learn their faith.

I don't think time will permit for us to create a whole bunch in one sitting but we definitely plan on completing one for each of our monthly saints. Next year by the time the Feast of All Saints rolls around on Nov. 1st we too should have a mantel full!! The details for St. Faustina could not have been more timely since this was October's saint of the month here at Knottypines Academy.

Thank you Alice we can't wait to get started. Remember if you feel inspired to make some Spoon Saints with your children please don't forget to let Alice know.