Look what I just won!!

Thank you Ruth!!

This so completely made my day and put a smile on my face! :)

St. Louis de Montfort's feast day

Today is St. Louis de Montfort's feast day. And today as a family we will begin his 33 day Preparation for Total Consecration, ending on the feast of the Visitation (May 31).

Our family read aloud for this week is St. Louis de Montfort: The Story of Our Lady's Slave by Windeatt

I also have planned a French themed dinner of Hachi Parmentier, (using my grandmothers recipe) green salad and crusty french bread. A glass of good Cabernet Sauvignon will of course be enjoyed as well. ;)

I'm still not sure about desert...hmmm, maybe blue jello with white whipped cream in honor of St. Louis' devotion to Our Lady.

And, of course, today we will be praying our family rosary.

"Pray with great confidence, with confidence based on the goodness and infinite generosity of God and upon the promises of Jesus Christ. God is a spring of living water which flows unceasingly into the hearts of those who pray."

~St.Louis de Montfort

Totus Tuus!!

May God bless your day!

Wordless Wednesday ~ Little Man

Photo Credits

Tania Settje

Catching Keepsakes

I'm taking the rest of the day off and making this...

Beatty's Chocolate Cake

Because it's been one of those days...

Because I read this today...

and because

Chocolate is supposed to make it all better...

right?

The Good Shepherd's Garden Party:: Week 3

We really enjoyed this week! Maybe it's because the theme and symbols seem to go right along with the back and forth weather we've been having. One day it is bright and sunny and the next it's windy with clouds and the next day after that it's raining. We've even had some snow fall in the high country around us!

 I changed it up a little from what was in the original plans to fit my family. We had our party at lunch time and once again the children devoured enjoyed it all. :)

Week 3

~The Heavens Tell God's Glory~

The Menu

Hummus with Whole Wheat Flat Bread

Whipped Cream Clouds

SanPellegrino Aranciata

Thunder and Lightning Noodles

Windy Cakes

Rainbow Kabobs

Crushed Ice

Decorations

Lightning Bolt Straws

You can see all the original plans for week 3, including recipes, here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Sun

Psalm 19:1-6

For the sun I opted out of the cupcakes and went with a bowl of hummus

with whole wheat flat bread wedges placed around it to make it look like a sun.

I thought the kids would like this, but I didn't realize that they would love it!

Shhh...don't tell them it's actually healthy. ;)

The Cloud

1 Kings 8: 2-11

We ate this on the side with our rainbow fruit kabobs.

The Rain

Matthew 5: 43-48

The original plans suggested Talking Rain Sparkling Ice, but I didn't have any luck finding it. So, I served SanPellegrino Aranciata instead. It was delicious! It's a great alternative to soda.

The Lightning

Job 28: 20-26

This was so easy to make and so yummy too!

We printed out Charlotte's lightning bolts and then the older kids

cut them out and taped them to the straws.

The Hail

Job 38:28-30

Crushed ice to put in our drinks

The Wind

Ezekiel 37: 7-10

We saved the Hostess Cup Cakes for desert.

The Rainbow

Genesis 9: 12-15

I just love the way this looks! It's so pretty and festive! :)

I'm SO glad I decided to join in on the Good Shepherd's Garden Parties. We're having so much FUN and the kids REALLY look forward to it each week!

Please visit Catholic Cuisine to see how other families celebrated the 3rd week of Easter!

A Dragon Cake for the feast of St. George

Well, this is going to be one of those "keeping it real" posts...

The truth be told, my first attempt at making the cake yesterday was an epic FAIL. I had so much going on that day (one happened to be getting Little Man's pics taken professionally) that I completely forgot to grease and flour the cake pans! Yep...I pulled them out of the oven, let them cool and then couldn't get them out. I was so annoyed with myself!

But I could not be discouraged to the point of not giving it another go. So, today I tried again and had success! Yea! ...well, I thought it didn't turn out too bad considering that this was my first ever dragon cake. Thank. You. Charlotte! I just followed her tutorials on her blog and voilà! I had a dragon cake fit to be slayed. :)

I used Hershey dark chocolate squares cut in half and dark chocolate Heshey's Kisses for the spikes (and Kisses for the nose as well). For the eyes I used Dots candies in the color red. And for the teeth and claws I used white choco chips. The wings and flames were Fruit Roll-Ups. The children LOVED it! And really, I had a lot of fun decorating him. Even if at first I was beyond frustrated, lol!

For the picture I also added my little painted St. George. He is not finished yet, but I wanted to include him in the photo. After all, it's his feast day, not the dragons. ;)  ...thank you Jessica for the fantastic inspiration as always!

Please pop on over to Catholic Cuisine to see how other families celebrated the Feast of St. George!

Ok, well, it's getting late and I need to get some solid sleep while Little Man is snoozing. I need to be in tip top shape to celebrate our 3rd Good Shepherd Garden Party tomorrow!

The children are really looking forward to it! :)

This is a great day...

for a TLM nerd like me! :D

Please click here to watch the Pontifical High Mass live on EWTN!

The Good Shepherd's Garden Party:: Week 2

This last Sunday we concluded our celebration of the second week of Easter with another Good Shepherd's Garden Party. This weeks party was inspired by the second week in the The Garden of the Good Shepherd reusable sticker book.

I decided to incorporate this weeks party into a dinner for my family. I just added turkey salad sandwiches to the menu for the main course. I had the chopped up meat left over from a 23 lb. turkey I had cooked earlier on in the week so there was plenty of meat left to use. Yum! It was so good! We had the sparkling juice for our drink and the bread with honey along with the fruit salad made nice side dishes. Of course the highlight of the meal was desert! How perfect it was to have an ice cream sundae bar on Sunday. The children took note of this and are now trying to convince me to do this for every Sunday now on, lol! :) While the children ate I read to them the corisponding Scripture passage that went with each symbol.

Week 2

~Welcome to the Lord's Table~

The Menu for this Week:

Lamb of God rolls

Sparkling White Grape Juice

Ice Cream Sundae Bar with Easter Candy Toppings

Honey Butter

Fruit Salad

You can find the details for this week including recipes and Scripture quotes here.

The Table & The Chairs

For the Table and Chair symbol's I instructed the children in how to set the table properly and let them help me decorate the chairs with streamers we had leftover from a past birthday party.

The Bread & The Honey

Instead of making the honey butter as suggested in the menu plans I just kept it simple and pulled out our bottle of honey to put on a slice of the bread. I decided against making the bread into a lamb shape. I was running short on patience time, as usual. So, instead for the bread I tried to make a braided loaf using tubes of refrigerated bread dough... it kinda came out looking like the sticker I think. I appologize for not getting a better picture. My hungry crew were quicker to get to the bread than I was. ;)

 The Fruit

All my children have always loved all kinds of fruit and next to the ice cream sundaes, this was their favorite.

The Wine

Sorry, again. No picture. If you look at my first picture of the table you can see the Sparkling White Grape Juice sitting on the table.

The children really loved this drink and it was gone before I realized that I hadn't gotten a picture of it. :( I was more than a little distracted that night. Little Man has become quite the handful and the evening is his most demanding time.

The Milk

It should go without saying that the ice cream sundae bar was a huge hit!

The children really enjoyed being able to make their own treats using the toppings of their choice. We actually didn't have much Easter candy left over, but we did have some white choco covered pretzels and choco covered mini graham crackers that we smashed up to use for some of the toppings. We also used hot fudge topping, strawberry topping, blackberries, bananas, Easter sprinkels and whipped cream.

Please visit Catholic Cuisine to see how other families celebrated the second week of Easter!

Going gluten free

My oldest son, Soldier, is waiting to take his online Math test for Seton so I'll have to make this quick...

I had mentioned in the first week's GGS's post that the baby has been colicky. Well, things haven't gotten any better for him. :( We've had a couple of very rough nights (I only got 3 hours sleep last night) and days for the past week. So, last Friday I decided to try going wheat/gluten free in my diet. I had talked to a few other nursing mothers who have had similar problems with their  babies and had success in calming them by changing their own diets. Some have told me it was the dairy and some have said it was the wheat. I decided to start with cancelling the wheat from my diet first because that is what I tend to eat more of.  I really don't eat a lot of dairy. Occasionally I might have some cheese, but really I'm not a big milk drinker or yogurt eater.  So, after deciding to give up wheat I quickly realized that there is not a lot of options for bread. But yesterday we made it to the health food store and picked up a loaf of Udi's Gluten Free Whole Grain Bread.

This bread is AWESOME!  I love it! And after trying out some other brands that were just awful, I am so happy to have found this. They are located out of Denver, so I'm not sure if they can be found in stores outside of Colorado or not. But you can order directly from their website.

Anywho...I just wanted to pass along the info. just incase anyone else out there was having as hard a time as I was finding something to eat. I'm such a carboholic that I really felt deprived of having to go without bread completely.

I hope this helps someone. Oh, and if you wouldn't mind, could you please say a prayer for my Little Man and that we may be able to figure out what is causing him all the discomfort.

Thank you and God bless.

Happy Birthday Papa Bene!!!

Today was Pope Benedict XVI's 83rd birthday! So, to celebrate I decided last minute to decorate some cupcakes and fix up a quick dinner of brats with sauerkraut. Can you see the theme here? Hey, I'm all about fast and easy these days. Especially with a colicky 3 month old in the house. *sigh*

I first made a quick visit over to Catholic Cuisine for some ideas. I knew they would have great ideas! They always do. :)

And then I got to work...

uhm...yeah. No "from-scratch" here. Nope. Like I said, quick & easy.

Then I moved on to dinner...

Brats, Saurkraut & of course, some German beer for hubby.

And after we had enjoyed our "popecakes" for desert, we sat down and read our two new books on Papa Bene.

Max and Benedict & Joseph and Chico

Cheers, Holy Father!!

May God bless your 83rd birthday and grant you with many more to come!

~*~

Prayer for Pope Bendict XVI

Lord, source of eternal life and truth, give to your shepherd, Benedict, a spirit of courage and right judgment, a spirit of knowledge and love. By governing with fidelity those entrusted to his care, may he, as successor to the Apostle Peter and Vicar of Christ, build your Church into a sacrament of unity, love and peace for all the world. Amen.

V. Let us pray for Benedict, the pope.

R. May the Lord preserve him, give him a long life, make him blessed upon the earth, and not hand him over to the power of his enemies.

V. May your hand be upon your holy servant.

R. And upon your son, whom you have anointed.

The Good Shepherd's Garden Party:: Week 1

This is our fist year using The Garden of the Good Shepherd reusable sticker calendar to count down the 50 days of Easter. So far I'm loving it and the kids really seem to be enjoying it as well! I'm so glad that I decided to give it a go this year after reading about it on Jessica's blog last year.

To accompany our journey through the Easter season using the sticker calendar and quotes from Scripture we have also decided to join Jessica and Charlotte in their Good Shepherd's Garden Party!

Week 1 ~ The Good Shepherd's Pasture

This weeks party menu was as follows:

*Mini Shepherds Pies (The Good Shepherd)*

 *Shepherd's Crooks Breadsticks (Shepherd's Crook)* 

*God's Sheep (The Sheepfold)*

*Graham Cracker Gates (Gate of the Sheepfold)*

 *Ewe and Ram Cupcakes (The Ewe and Ram)*

 *Lamb's Wool (The Lamb)*

 *Wolf Paw Cookies (The Wolf)*

The recipes and Scripture quotes for this week can be found here.

Our plan was to do it on Friday, but that didn't work out. So we did it on Saturday instead. Which worked out well because it was also the day we put the last sticker symbol for the first week on the calendar. It made for a great end to the first week. :) The children were so excited they were practically bouncing off the walls, lol!

While the children ate I reread to them the Scripture passages that we had read earlier in the week that corresponed to each of the symbols. All of the food was a hit, except for the yellow, red and orange bell peppers that I had cut up for them to make the face on the Shepherd's Pies. Ah, well. We had plenty of peas and carrots left over for them to use instead. Over all, I'd say it was a HUGE hit and the children are already looking at this weeks stickers to see if they can figure out what we will be having for our next party!

Here are a few pictures from our first party: 

 Mini Sherpherd's Pies

Shepherd's Crooks

The Sheepfold & The Gate of the Sheepfold

The Ewe and Ram Cupcakes

(beacuse of a lack of decorating skill time we only made the ewes)

The Lambs Wool

(all the children, except Archangel, really enjoyed this)

Wolf Paw Cookies

(I also could not find the Voortman's so I substituted with Pepperidge Farm lemon cookies)

Happy Easter!!

ALLELUIA!!

Please visit Catholic Cuisine to see how other families celebrated this first week of Easter.