Picture Day

Just because we home school our children doesn't mean we don't have Picture Day.  And just because one is not in fact 'in' school does not mean he doesn't get his picture taken on said Picture Day:

Cutest non-student ever.

Here are a few shots of the kids and how intelligent they look:

Okay...back to school work!

Have Courage and Be Kind

SENTIMENTAL WARNING: The following paragraph contains words of sentimentality and sadness.  Read at your own risk or skip to the next paragraph which details the more joyous accounts of a young girl's 10th birthday.

Our 'Little Girl' is not so 'little' after all.  She recently turned 10 (against our every effort to the contrary) and this inevitable event weighed on my poor maternal heart a humble and acute heaviness. I cried the other day watching her swing away carefree on our tree swing. As I watched, I remembered when she was just a young thing, running around, singing and playing in her distinctly cute fashion.Well, she is still the sweetest thing and it cannot be argued that she is indeed growing into a very kind and intelligent young lady of whom Richard and I are exceedingly proud!

In honor of her 10th birthday, we decided to have a Cinderella themed party (not the cartoon but based on the 2015 live action film).  If you have seen the film, you know that the moral of the story is to "Have Courage and Be Kind" (and if you haven't, you really really should) and that was the central theme of the party.

We started with the invitation:

She loves the Fairy Godmother... so there you have it.

Next we worked on the gift bags.  We made these homemade whimsical bookmarks replete with glitter gold:

We encased a handful of gold-wrapped Almond Kisses in tulle and trimmed it in blue ribbon and then added all things Cinderella-blue: a bracelet and nail polish to boot.

Finally we personalized each bag to make it a truly royal affair.  Plus, we found these really age-appropriate Cinderella coloring sheets that the girls loved and added them to the bounty as well.

Next, we found these nylon butterflies at a consignment sale and thought they would make the perfect touch:

I also printed up this poster from online and bought a cheap frame to glam it up:

 Here we have the table set for our guests...

We have mini pumpkin muffins topped with homemade fondant pearls.  These were such a hit!  Did y'all notice the metal decorative pumpkin carriage in the background?  Perfect, right?  Thank You Hobby Lobby for reading my mind.

We  also have Magical Wands: sesame bread sticks dipped in melted white chocolate and sprinkled with blue.

And the two-tier cake topped with Cinderella's glass slipper!

 After the girls watched Cinderella, we had a toilet-paper gown making competition.  The boys were beside themselves with the excitement of it all.

One more touch...

And the winner is,,,

After the competition we made origami butterflies which held a kind hand written message for someone special.  A real cute craft!

Here is the link to the instructions.

Next was the cake and once you introduce cake everything becomes a blur - it's not the camera, its the situation: everyone is dizzy with excitement and anticipation!

 Let the real fun begin...

Okay so when Mila turned 8 we went to get her ears pierced and they ended up getting infected so we waited 2 years before trying again...

See those tiny gold studs...they really make her eyes POP, don't you think?

Fingers crossed.

Happy 10th Birthday to our kind and courageous girl!

2 if by Sea...

One of the problems of not keeping up a blog is, of course, that when you do start back up and endeavor to chronicle the simple goings-on and events that are particular to any domicile from here to Timbuktu, they are not chronicled in any discernible order at all.  A small price to pay when one plays catch-up. you don't mind, right?
Here are some pics from our youngest one's 2nd birthday.  We had a Whale/Sea theme:

 Aren't these super cute? I got the idea from the http://www.makemecake.me/ where she suggests using a balloon cookie cutter on its side for the desired whale shape - love it!

And the crowd goes wild...

I tried for a more aquamarine tint, but this works.

A handmade crown by Big Sister for the birthday boy

Happy Name Day

"No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it."

On August 14th we celebrated the life of St. Maximilian Kolbe with unique emphasis.  Ezra's middle name is Maximilian and for each child we always try to do something special on the feast day of their namesake.  Here are a few things we did (in addition to going to Mass) to celebrate Ezra's Name Day:

1.  We listened to his Glory Story.  If you have never heard of Glory Stories, they are audio CDs that do a wonderful job bringing to life the story of a particular saint (they are many). Richard and I enjoy them as much as the kids do and this is one instance when I happily "collect them all":)

2. We also colored pictures of this amazing saint.

3. We had Nut Kiffels, a special Polish pastry typical to his native land that happens to popular in Germany, Austria and Hungary as well.  Nevertheless, I used this recipe and they turned out like little precious pillows.  I will be making these again...yummy!

4. Ezra got dressed up for the entire day! So handsome...

5. I wanted to make this craft but we ended up not having enough time:(  At any rate, Ezra had a very special day in honor of a very special saint.  

St. Maximilian, perfect Knight of the Immaculate Mary, pray for us...

Good Things

Clearly I was unprepared to maintain school, a family, moving into a 'new' home that needed serious attention and a blog all at the same time.  Something had to give while we moved in and renovated our 'new' (old) house and, sadly, the blog was it.  Nevertheless, I will try to update this dusty blog and devote some time to doing so with attention, thoughtfulness and an acceptable degree of humor: my readers would have it no other way.

Let's start with my favorite subject: Baking. Here are a few goodies that I whipped up in the last 6 months or so:

 I made these in honor of Our Lady.  I was shooting for the Immaculate Conception but I didn't really finish until the feast of Our Lady Of Guadalupe.  No harm done...they were ever so tasty but almost too pretty to eat. Almost.

Ezra's 8th birthday cake. 

I love the checkered layers inside...fun, right?

Here are some Easter cupcakes that turned out nicely. I made two buttercream frostings: Fresh Lemon and Fresh Strawberry.  It was too hard to decide which I liked best...but if you had to twist my arm, I'd say Lemon: DElightful!

My first First Communion Cake:) I call it the Pretty in Pink.

An assortment of biscotti.  Who doesn't like biscotti?

Here are some pickles I canned with the staggering abundance of cucumbers from our garden.

Canned peaches I made with honey instead of sugar...my goal is that they last us through the winter.  I hope they make it that long;)

I know this isn't a very exciting or thorough post but I'm a little out of practice.  I hope to have another entry SOON showing the improvements we have made on the house as well as other exciting events! Stay tuned...

A Fine Feast Day

We love St. Nicholas' feast day.  Don't ask me why, none of our children (yet) is named Nicholas and we have no family ancestry tying us to Lycia or Turkey.  We just like him.  He is a saint after all...what's not to like?  Maybe it's because we want to focus more on St. Nicholas and less on the commercialized Santa Claus.  Here is how the two stack up against one another.

Anyway, every year we celebrate this day in a special way: I bake cookies and the kids leave out their slippers the night before and in the morning they find goodies in their slippers along with a personal note from St. Nicholas himself. There is also a gift wrapped in plain fabric from St. Nicholas for all the kids to share.

I make these coins every year.  I buy chocolate coins and paste vintage/traditional images of St. Nicholas on them. They look so cute! (I get the images from the Shower of Roses blog)

I put the coins in their slippers along with a candy cane, a clementine and a personalized note from St. Nicholas.

And in the package, the kids found this book.  A family favorite! I just found out that this book was Hilda van Stockum's first picture book ...how very talented she was.  It is perfectly charming as a read aloud.

Included in the little package was this Saints Stained Glass Coloring Book: a great way to showcase your kids' coloring abilities and evangelize the world;)  They look lovely on the windows!

Last but not least a game for the whole family to play.  

These took way too long to make.  I'll probably never make them again unless someone pays me a LOT of money or the Queen of England herself makes a request and seeing as how she is Protestant, I think it is highly unlikely.  

They sure do look cute though and they tasted delicious!!  St. Nicholas, pray for us.