For the Man (or Woman) who Appreciates a Good Drink: Drinking with the Saints

Drinking with the Saints: The Sinner's Guide to a Holy Happy Hour by Micheal P. Foley

I saw this book online somewhere just after it was published last May and sent a link to Kansas Dad with a note that perhaps we should buy it. He wrote back that he was only disappointed he hadn't written it. A few months later, I used some of the Amazon commissions I earned from the blog (thank you!) to buy it for him for Father's Day. Since then we've had lots of fun perusing it. We've made a few of the drinks, but I'm afraid we have gotten a little enamored with the sangria recipe and have therefore made it on more than its share of occasions. Our dinner parties are not elaborate affairs (kids eat at the table and grown-ups tend to stand in our kitchen because we don't have enough chairs), but we do like to serve tasty drinks.

The book is ordered by feast day with entries for major feasts, or just good excuses to fill a glass. The last section contains entries for the liturgical year (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Pre-Lent, Pentecost, and even, believe it or not, a section on Lent). Some of the recommendations are as simple as a kind of wine. Others are recipes for mixed drinks. For example, for the feast of St. Kateri Tekakwitha (on July 14th), there is a recipe for a Turtle because she was from the Turtle Clan of the Mohawks (Canadian whiskey and Benedictine) or a White Lily (Cointreau, Daiquiri rum, gin, absinthe). The author includes information on the feast day or the saint as well as suggested toasts, all entertaining enough to be an enjoyable read even for someone who isn't likely to mix any drinks.

Sometimes it's hard to find just the right gift. This book could be the perfect gift for a Catholic family who likes to entertain (perhaps as a hostess gift). If you have some extra spending money, pair it with some alcohol or an interesting set of glasses. I think if you scroll through this post about the book over at Like Mother, Like Daughter, you'll find a suggestion for a newlywed couple as well. It really seems to be just the right combination of joyful and useful.

Range Saints for All Saints

Our parish All Saints party was last weekend and the children were excited! Two hours of games, candy, snacks, and more candy with all our parish friends...that's just about a perfect afternoon.

First Son kindly agreed to be Blessed John Paul II again, which allowed him to wear the wonderful costume my mother put together for him last year. First Daughter wanted to be her favorite saint, St. Therese, and Second Daughter wanted to be St. Clare.

Bl. John Paul II, St. Therese, St. Clare

Second Son didn't get much choice in the matter. I informed him he'd be St. Bruno. Right up until we left he insisted he wasn't going to dress up, but when I pouted (after spending hours making that Sculpey skull), Kansas Dad convinced him to participate.

St. Bruno with his skull

If only there were as saintly as they look!

For those that may be searching for ideas on making All Saints Day costumes, we scoured Goodwill for the girls and Second Son. I bought women's skirts in brown and used safety pins to hold them up. (All the girls' skirts were too sparkly or too short or both.) These skirts will fit for years to come. We bought plain brown shirts for them. The wimples are white shirts pulled only around the face with brown and black pillowcases for the veils (also from Goodwill) held on with safety pins. I bought one white curtain at Goodwill, cut it to make two cloaks, and used safety pins to hold them on (no hems or anything).

St. Bruno is wearing one of his dad's white t-shirts with a turtleneck. I found a black hoodie sweatshirt at Goodwill (they didn't have any white ones), pulled the sleeves inside out and pinned them up so it would look more like a cloak.

The accessories are the most important part of any All Saints costume. You can dress in almost anything if you carry the right items. St. Therese is holding a basket of fake roses we bought years ago for saying the Rosary. They're a great All Saints feature. I made the monstrance for St. Clare out of Sculpey, but Kansas Dad found a big snowflake in the holiday section we were going to use if the Sculpey one failed.

Bl. John Paul II, St. Therese, St. Clare, and St. Bruno, pray for us!

What I Loved About Last Week (54th Ed.)

This post should be what I loved about the last two weeks, but most of the previous week I was sick followed by a weekend of stomach illness that spread through the whole family. Ugh.

So mostly we're just going to focus on the past week.

1. We made our Advent ornaments. I'm even contemplating attempting a picture with all four children for the label...

2. Advent has begun! We have a few new things this year and some treasured traditions.

3. Kansas Dad took good care of us when we were all sick. He went above and beyond.

4. Kansas Dad finished up a big work project last week. We're all glad the hard work is behind him and are hoping for some good results.

5. We celebrated the feast of St. Nicholas last Thursday. The kids were up early begging to pull the goodies out of their stockings.

happy Second Daughter

6. The three older children and I made plaster-of-Paris "fossils" with some shells. They turned out really well and I was only a little impatient with them. Hopefully we'll have time to paint them in the near future. (Painting isn't quite authentic, but it said in the book you could paint them, so of course we must.)

7. We are busy preparing for First Son's ninth birthday. His party is on Sunday and there are many goodies to make.

8. Second Son has been using the bathroom. He's always successful if I take him in, but it's not like his diapers are dry so we've got a ways to go.

9. One night last week, Kansas Dad took all four kids out to help him with the chickens. They were entertained for hours throwing straw around the chicken run, rolling in it, and even playing some sort of baseball game adapted from Calvin and Hobbes.

10. First Son and Kansas Dad have been playing chess nearly every night after the younger three go to bed. I don't like to play chess myself, but I love that First Son wants to play. (I've been playing a lot of dominoes with the kids this week. Second Daughter loves matching up the dots.)

11. The children are singing in the choir at mass today.

Advent Is Coming

I started to request some picture books from the library for our Advent picture-book-or-two-a-day and ran into my request limit before I'd gotten more than half-way through my list.

I'm guessing I'll have enough books since I think the limit is 50...

My new St. Nicholas cookie cutter arrived this weekend, too. I've wanted one for years and finally allowed myself to order it. A group of young girls has been meeting once a month and we're going to dedicate our next meeting to decorating cookies for the feast day.

Advent starts December 2nd!

Our 2011 Advent Books, Week 2

Apparently I'm not going to post our Advent books on an actual schedule, just as I get around to them. Here are our picture-book-or-two-a-day for the second week of Advent.

Saint Francis and the Christmas Donkey by Robert Byrd. We've read this for many years now and my children love it every time.

Saint Nicholas: The Real Story of the Christmas Legend by Julie Stiegmeyer - I reviewed this in my post on St. Nicholas's feast day last year. I still love it.

The Miracle of St. Nicholas by Gloria Whelan is such a wonderful story about how faith can survive and be revived through the simple acts of a child.

The Christmas Knight by Jane Louise Curry is a new one for us this year. I'm not sure how I feel about mortgaging the farm to pay for Christmas parties, but I think First Son will enjoy the story.

The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie dePaola (Hooray for PaperBackSwap!)

The Lady of Guadalupe by Tomie dePaola (another PaperBackSwap aquisition) in celebration of the feast days of St. Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe. We're having tacos for dinner, too.

The Crippled Lamb by Max Lucado seems a bit forced to me, but my children always respond well to it. I do like how the lamb's adversity gives it the opportunity to be in the presence of the Lord. I think we can find ourselves in similar situations.

Our 2011 Advent Books
Week 1

Is it possible to read too many Christmas picture books? I don't think so!

What I Loved About Last Week (8th Ed.)

1. Halloween night - We had a wonderful time at Grammy and Paw Paw's house: pizza for dinner and then trick-or-treating in her neighborhood. I took six videos trying to get Second Son to growl for the camera. This is the best one:

Second Daughter as Elmo, First Son as Mario, First Daughter as Princess

Handsome Kansas Dad as lion tamer

2. Walnut bread for the feast of All Saints on Tuesday from the My Bread cookbook - delicious!

3. Second Daughter at choir rehearsal. She refused to go up on stage at first. When she did for the last song, she sang little but twisted and turned a lot. I hope the choir director did not find her too distracting. I thought she was adorable. (She will probably choose not to sing in the concert, and that's alright.)

4. We used a bunch of our Halloween candy to celebrate the Feast Day of St. Martin de Porres on Thursday with mouse cupcakes (original idea here). Then the kids and I delivered some to friends. I loved how they called to tell us how much their family enjoyed them. It was a wonderful lesson for my children on sharing our excess to bless others.

5. Library book sales - I had the opportunity to preview a sale at our little library and came home with about 20 books I want to read, plus a handful for the kids. I also found a copy of Unlikely Pairs (Bob Raczka's Art Adventures), which I think will make an interesting addition to our art appreciation for the year.

6. Dinner out and frozen yogurt on Friday for no reason.

7. A hair cut with a friend on Saturday morning. We went to an academy where students cut hair at a discounted price and it was wonderful! They treated us wonderfully, the stylist behind the academy made an appearance and complimented everyone and the hair cut is great. Of course, Second Daughter was inspired to cut her own hair...so now she has a few bangs again.

8. Last soccer game on Saturday! We have Saturdays free until the spring! Well, except for the choir concert coming up.

9. Planning week 12 of our year - I am loving my planning system and am looking forward to the week. We're starting Pagoo, finishing our second unit of Connecting with History (right on schedule), preparing for our choir concert and I'm starting to think seriously about Advent.

10. My first earthquake! Kansas Dad and I were awake for the aftershock in Oklahoma that could be felt in parts of Kansas on Saturday night. I was scared at first, but it was fairly gentle and over quickly and I gleefully announced, "I think that was an earthquake!" Who would have thought after six years in Kansas, I'd have never seen a tornado but felt an earthquake?

11. A handsome seven year old, First Son. I should have taken a picture of him hard at work on math or Latin or copywork or something! He still captures my heart when closely studying the Lego magazine (essentially a glorified ten page advertisement, sigh).

What did you love about your week?

Celebrating Pentecost: Decisions, Decisions

Should we make Pentecost Sundaes or Holy Spirit Ice Cream Balls?

They both involve ice cream, which always makes feasts in June better. So hard to decide...I'm leaning toward the sundaes, only because we wouldn't have to buy very much to make them. I'd need sugar cubes and liquor for the flaming ice cream balls.

And ice cream. That stuff is too dangerous to keep in the house.

The Catholic Company Review: Celebrating Saints and Seasons

Celebrating Saints and Seasons: Hundreds of Activities for Catholic Children by Jeanne Hunt

I was so excited to review this book for The Catholic Company!

For each month of the year (with Lent in March and Advent in December), Ms. Hunt provides a list of feast days and holidays with suggestions for ways to make the day meaningful for children of various ages. Activities are marked for either school or home, though a great many of them are appropriate for both.

Ms. Hunt begins each month with descriptions and ideas of the major holidays (like Lent, Advent, Thanksgiving). Then she has a section for "Saints and Heroes" which includes feast days for particular saints or angels and also notable historical figures (mainly American). Finally, the month ends with a section for prayers or prayer services.

I started with December and Advent and found quite a few good ideas I hadn't seen in quite the same way. I especially liked the suggestions for family activities to help slow the season down and spend time with each other or helping our neighbors. Most of these were activities that would involve a significant portion of the day and would be better with older children, but I think we'll try to incorporate something like this in our Advent plans for next year.

I found some new ideas in every month, especially for holidays that aren't feast days like Kwanzaa and the Festival of Tachiu. I'm not interested in celebrating these holidays in big ways, but I think it's would be nice to talk about them with the kids.

I also liked the chapter at the end on special occasions which included some ideas for family vacations. I think it would have been nice to include a celebration for the anniversary of baptisms there. It's something new our family has started this school year and I think it's a wonderful.

This book probably wouldn't work as a complete resource. For many saints' feast days, for example, Ms. Hunt writes a sentence or two about the saint and then suggests an activity (many of which are good ideas), but if you really want to share the story of the saint with children, you'd want more information. With a good library and a decent search engine, it's not really a problem. A detailed history for each saint would bog the book down considerably.

I think it's odd that the prayers for each month come at the end of the chapter. I felt like they should appear with the appropriate holiday or feast day. Also, some of the prayers were for feast days not mentioned earlier so it wasn't really clear why celebrating the feast was worthwhile. Frankly, I found many of the prayers a bit hokey. I can't imagine saying most of them with my children, let alone Kansas Dad or a teacher in a classroom. (Just to be clear, some of the activities are also a little hokey, though in my experience sometimes children enjoy those the most;  you just have to know your family or your classroom.)

Overall, I think this is a good addition to our liturgical year library. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as the only book in a liturgical library, but I could never have just one myself anyway.

This review was written as part of the Catholic book reviewer program from The Catholic Company. I did not receive any compensation for this review other than a copy of the book. Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on Celebrating Saints and Seasons . They are also a great source for first communion gifts and baptism gifts.

Those Who Love Nicholas the Saintly

First Son had fun playing St. Nicholas in our homeschool choir concert yesterday while the little ones sang Nicholas the Saintly.* After a long day of mass, singing and feasting with Grammy, we came home to hang our stockings!

Here on the Range we hang stockings for St. Nicholas to fill on the eve of his feast day. (Some families use shoes.) We tell the children St. Nicholas will fill them, but I have a feeling First Son guessed it was us this year. He's not saying anything, though.

We chose one slightly larger gift each for the girls and First Son in addition to some smaller items.(In case anyone is wondering, St. Nicholas does not wrap his gifts. The kids also receive stockings from Grammy and PawPaw on Christmas day that have lots of "essentials" like socks, toothbrushes,** toothpaste, Kids Flossers, and a some fun gifts, too.) Here are this year's gifts:

1. Chopsticks - St. Nicholas left some of these a year or two ago but we didn't have enough for everyone, especially after First Son accidentally broke one set, so St. Nicholas brought four more. Now we'll have extras for guests.
2. Basic Beat Pair of 8" Combination Rhythm Sticks - St. Nicholas knows how much fun they've been having with rhythm sticks in choir. Second Son received some of these as well.
3. Dollar coins - two for Second Daughter, four for First Daughter and seven for First Son (whose birthday is in less than a week, oh my).
4. Homemade bookmarks and a matching game.
5. For First Son: Ribsy. (I haven't read this book, at least not in years, so we'll be reading it together. Kansas Dad picked it for us. We have listened to Henry Huggins and Henry and Ribsy in the van. First Son enjoyed them immensely. He sometimes even laughed out loud. There are quite a few instances of kids being not nice to one another, but nothing too awful and we've talked about how that behavior isn't acceptable. Also, in one of these, though I can't remember which one, Henry says he knows his father is the one who leaves money under his pillow when he loses a tooth, just in case you don't want that kind of knowledge shared in your household.)
6. For the girls: doll diapers. These are so adorable!
7. Gold coin chocolate candy, of course! I was lucky to find it this year. I think I tossed it into our cart sometime before Thanksgiving when wandering the Christmas aisles of a superstore. (Is anyone else disturbed that "superstore" is a real word?)

For breakfast, we feasted on waffles! Kansas Dad and I even had homemade strawberry syrup.

I bought a new book to read for the feast day. It's the first of our Advent books to be one we own (yes, I wrapped library books; the kids don't mind a bit), and it was a surprise when the kids opened it. I had intended to take it to adoration to share with the other families there, but Second Daughter was sick and needy today and I didn't feel capable of handling her and Second Son at adoration, so we just read it at home together. Saint Nicholas: The Real Story of the Christmas Legend by Julie Steigemeyer is delightful! Ms. Steigemeyer expands on the legend of the dowry gifts in a wonderful way that exemplifies how we can learn through prayer and petition how to do his work on earth. St. Nicholas's deeds, and ours, are directly linked to our love for Jesus and our thankfulness for his blessed birth. Don't worry that it may be "too Catholic" as it's written by a pastor's wife. The illustrations are also lovely - full of light and life. This is most certainly one of my new favorite books!

We also watched what I think is our first video of Advent. Through no real effort on my part, we seem to have gotten out of the habit of watching every day, or even every week. Today, though, was a feast day. And Second Daughter was sick, so we had a relaxing day with a few lessons, lots of Legos and a video: Veggie Tales: Saint Nicholas: A Story of Joyful Giving, of course! (If you're interested in VeggieTales, I wrote brief reviews of our favorites last year.)

Now that we're past St. Nicholas's feast day, it's time to prepare for First Son's birthday. I never realized how complicated life could be when I married a man who was born in December and then had a baby in December who was baptized before the end of the month. It's a lot of celebrating!

* For those who do not know the song (as I did not before we learned it for choir), you can see the lyrics (slightly different than what we learned) and listen to the tune at the website for the Saint Nicholas Center.

** I find it necessary to have a solid stash of kids' toothbrushes. I can't believe how often they drop them into the garbage or the toilet or decide to scrub the sink or bathtub with them. Seriously? You won't pick up a few toys off the living room floor without groans and moans, but you'll scrub the sink? With your toothbrush?

Tasty Tuesday: Hot Cross Buns

Remember the Feast of the Triumphant Cross? It was way way way back on September 14th.* Remember now?

Well, Second Son took an afternoon nap that day. I remember, because I decided at the last minute to make some Hot Cross Buns to celebrate the feast. Not having prepared ahead, I turned to my most trusted baking cookbook: King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking: Delicious Recipes Using Nutritious Whole Grains (King Arthur Flour Cookbooks). (Seriously, if you read my blog with any regularity and like baking in the least and haven't checked out this book...there's just something wrong with that.)

Let me just tell you, these are just about the most delicious buns I have ever eaten. I adored them! I ate three of them! And three more the next day. (Wait, did I just admit that?)

Kansas Dad said they were good, but they would be better without the raisins. No worries, I told him, next year I'll make them with currants soaked in rum. If that doesn't want to make you try them, nothing will.

I hope no one gets too upset that I have now participated twice in Tasty Tuesday and have yet to actually post a recipe, but I have that phobia, remember? I searched and found basically the same recipe online posted by someone who knows a good cookbook when she sees one. Or, you could just go get a copy of the book from your library or favorite bookstore. These buns might just convince you to buy it. (If not, try the Sour Cream Blueberry Muffins and use the white whole wheat flour...so light and delicious and...oh, we have sour cream in the fridge and I just might have to make a batch tomorrow...if only Second Son would let me put him down without crying!)

Check out today's Tasty Tuesday post at City Wife, Country Life and be sure the read the comments for some yummy-looking fudge and caramel recipes.

* Yes, I did start this post in September. It's been sitting in draft form for over two months. And I didn't even post the recipe. I'm not a slacker, though. Really, I'm not. Really.

Sweetness

I told myself we'd do many more feast day celebrations this year and had every intention of starting with the Feast of the Assumption...back on August 15th. My Marian Devotions in the Domestic Church suggested a Greek meal for this feast, because apparently it's a very important holiday in Greece. I wasn't quite ready to tackle it on the 15th, but last Thursday I decided to take the plunge. (Thursdays will be our liturgical celebration or baking or art day, depending on how ambitious I'm feeling and where we are in the liturgical year.)

So Second Son and I made baklava, by which I mean, of course, I tried to chop nuts and assemble this decadent dessert while bouncing him in the carrier. He pretty much cried until he fell asleep, probably because he's not old enough to eat it himself.

The cracked top at all the cuts is what happens when you're rushing to put it in the oven while Second Son has been dumped in the swing (because the oven is one thing I won't use with a carrier) and forget to cut it halfway down before putting it in. Trust me, it still tasted amazing. I've never had real baklava so I can't compare it to anything else, but it was good and incredibly sweet. In fact, I might decrease the honey next time. Kansas Dad seems to think we should make it an annual tradition.

It is, by the way, a very easy dessert, if you're looking for something to impress. The phyllo dough is the trickiest part, but you can by the sheets already cut to fit a 9 x 13 pan so you don't have to cut or shape at all, just lay it down and spread some melted butter. Repeat with layers of chopped nuts and cinnamon every so often. There's also a syrup to pour on top after it's baked, but that only takes a few minutes on the stove.

We sent most of it to the office with Kansas Dad so we wouldn't eat it all ourselves.