Lacy

Welcome, Baby Anabelle!

May 14, 2012 By Lacy

If you hadn’t guessed from total lack of blog posts, I had my baby!

Introducing Anabelle Lila!

Future Crafter

Purple Baby Names

Did y’all know that I’m an absolute freak for purple? I love it! All of my girls have names related to the color purple. My first daughter’s name is Lydia, who is the bringer of purple cloth in the bible. My second daughter’s name is Violet- a little more obvious. Anabelle’s middle name is Lila, which means purple in many languages including Hungarian and Dutch. My husband says we should just name our next girl “Purple” and be done with it- lol!

Nearly Born in the Car!

Although I’d been having contractions all morning, they just weren’t regular enough to go into the hospital… and then my water broke and it was on! We called a neighbor to come sit with my other kids, and left asap, but my contractions were right on top of each other! The neighbor arrived at 12:07, and we had a 30 minute drive to the hospital ahead of us. Anabelle was born at 12:45!

Y'all know me- always taking pictures!

We recently moved from Virginia to South Carolina because my husband is pursuing a career change from IT Manager to Law Enforcement. He’s been at a live-in police academy for the past 3 weeks (it’s a 12 week academy, and he comes home on the weekends). He left immediately when we let him know my water broke, but he was an hour and a half away, so he missed the actual birth. Honestly, Anabelle was born so fast that he might have missed the birth even if he had been in town. Seriously, my mom almost missed the birth because she had to park the car. He was still there within an hour of her being born, and it was such a blessing to have him there! He had been sprayed with police-grade mace earlier that morning at the academy, but it had mostly worn off by the time the baby was born… thank goodness!

Having my husband gone has been so much harder than I had imagined. He truly is my other half. What a blessing that we are able to stay with my family until he graduates from the academy in July. I know I couldn’t be doing this without my mom’s help right now!

So here we all are- a family of 6!

No Catholic crafts today- sorry! It takes forever to make a blog post with a newborn around… but I will leave you with one more picture of my new baby daughter.

Filed Under: Personal Nature 90 Comments

How to Plan a May Crowning for Kids

April 26, 2012 By Lacy

Planning a Marian Coronation is not as hard as you might think, and a May crowing ceremony is a great way to recognize Mary as the Queen of Heaven and Earth! I’ll start with the basics. The month of May is dedicated to Mary. It’s traditional to have a May crowning on May 1 (also known as May Day) but you can do it any time during May.

The Essentials- A Mary Statue and a Crown

First, figure out what Mary statue you are going to be crowning. You can try calling your parish to arrange a crowning of the Mary statue there. You can also crown your own Mary statue in your garden, or even a little plastic statue inside- just make sure you have or make a crown that will fit your particular statue. It’s traditional to crown Mary with flowers of some kind. If you’re looking for ideas on crafting a crown, check my May Crowning post from last year. Take the statue’s placement into consideration when planning. If you’re crowning the Mary statue at your church, you may need a step ladder to reach her head. If you’re crowning a Mary statue at home, you may want to put together a simple May Altar.

Bring Flowers for Mary

You can ask all the families attending the May Crowning to bring flowers for Mary. These can be hand picked, store bought, or artificial- no pressure. Alternately, you could provide flowers there and give one to each child to offer to Our Lady. These flowers will be placed at Mary’s feet. You can check out the Marian symbolism of different flowers here, but anything works, and you certainly can’t go wrong with Our Lady’s color- blue!

Plan for Procession

Usually there is a procession with the crown before it is placed on Mary’s head. You can line up all the kids, and sing a song while you process with the crown. (For song ideas, scroll down). The children can all carry flowers to be placed at Mary’s feet as they reach the statue. You can either provide a vase for these flowers, or just lay them individually at Mary’s feet.

Prayers for May Crowning

After you’ve crowned Mary, it would be great to say some prayers! The Hail Mary and the Hail, Holy Queen would both be good choices. You could also pray a decade of the rosary depending on the age of the kids at the crowning.

May Crowning Songs- Marian Hymns

Who doesn’t love to sing a Mary song? There are so many great choices! There’s actually a song called Bring Flowers of the Rarest (Queen of May) and another called Tis the Month of Our Mother. Some other favorites include Hail Holy Queen, Immaculate Mary (Ave Maria), or Hail Mary (Gentle Woman).

Fun Food for your May Crowning

Check out these ideas for fun food you can serve for any Marian feast day! You could also try making some cute crown shaped snacks of some kind, like crown shaped cakes or these May Crowning cookies from Family at the Foot of the Cross. You could also make some fun edible rosaries!

Crafts for your May Crowning- Extra Fun!

If you’re looking for craft ideas for your May crowning, boy have you come to the right place! You can make Mary, Queen of Heaven Suncatchers, make my Hand and Footprint Queen Mary Craft, make a Paper Mary Statue, or check out this assortment of fun Mary Printables for kids!

May Crowning Dress

It’s traditional for girls to wear their First Communion or Easter dresses for the May crowning, and for the boys to wear their Sunday best as well. You may or may not choose not to have the kids dress up for a casual May crowning at your home.

Resources for a May Crowning with a Mass

If you’re looking to plan a whole May crowning mass, Catholic Teacher Resources has an amazing printable May crowning layout for you! I also found a lovely May Crowning proposal from Little Flowers Girl’s Club that you can send to your priest to have a May crowning during mass, along with plans.

You can find more resources for planning your May Crowning at the Catholic Toolbox, and at Catechist’s Journey.

I attended my first May Crowning last year with our preschool co-op. We’re having another May Crowning with our preschool next week, and I was thinking about having a home May crowning here on Mother’s day!

Pin It

Filed Under: 05 May, Mary, May Crowning 2 Comments

Dogwood Flower Craft {To Go With the Legend of the Dogwood!}

April 17, 2012 By Lacy

We’ve been working on some Dogwood flower crafts to go along with The Legend of the Dogwood tree during this Easter season. Check out this dogwood flower cross craft!

These simple dogwood flowers were made out of cardboard egg carton cups by my 5 year old. (Note: I don’t think this craft will work with styrofoam egg cartons) Here’s how we did it:

Cut out an individual egg carton cup.

Next, cut 4 slits down the corners of the cup:

Cut off the corners:

You can stop here, OR…

You can cut little notches in each petal:

Now it’s time to paint! Start by painting them white:

Then, touch the edges with a little pink paint, and paint the little circle inside the egg carton green. Here’s one I painted:

And here are some Lydia painted:

We glued 3 popsicle sticks into a cross, and glued 6 of Lydia’s dogwood flowers into a cross:

I cut up little pieces of green pipe cleaners and glued them in the middle of my dogwood flowers. I felt like this made them more “crown of thorn” like to go along with our Legend of the Dogwood story. I placed mine in a grapevine wreath.

Don’t forget to read about the Legend of the Dogwood!

Pin It

Filed Under: Christian, Crafts for Kids, Easter, Easter Season, Legend, My Crafts 2 Comments

The Legend of the Dogwood {A Religious Tradition for the Easter Season!}

April 15, 2012 By Lacy

Have you heard the legend of the dogwood tree? It’s a fun, religious story you can tell kids at Easter time. Since we celebrate the entire 50 days of the Easter season here, we like to include the legend of the dogwood flower! Note* I’m not saying this legend is true, I’m just saying it’s a fun Easter story that my kids love!

The Legend of the Dogwood:

In Jesus’ time, the Dogwood tree had grown to a great size, like that of an Oak tree! They used it to build the cross that Jesus was hung on. This made the Dogwood tree sad. Jesus, sensing this sadness, promised the Dogwood tree that it would never again grow large enough to build a cross. It’s branches would be narrow and crooked-not good for building at all. And now the Dogwood tree has many traits to remember this promise.

The Dogwood flower has 4 petals, shaped like a cross:

The middle of the Dogwood flower, a crown of thorns:

At the edge of each petals, a nail dent:

The nail dents are stained with the color of Jesus’ blood:

So that’s it- the Legend of the Dogwood flower! I’m going to be posting some Dogwood flower crafts and activities this week that go with the legend. In the mean time, happy Easter season!