Sunday Fun Links

 

Guess what?  I'm starting yet another weekly feature here on my blog!  It seems every time I try to do this, I let it fizzle out.  It's mostly due to my laziness, but, I'm feeling especially energetic this week and I'm excited to start something new!

Now, I know that Sunday is a special day.  It should be reserved for worship, for family and for rest.  The way I figure it, you can click on these fun links while you are resting and spending time with your family AFTER you've been to church!

I will do my best to remember to post these EVERY Sunday!  If I forget...feel free to remind me!


10 Halloween Seasonal Treats

Free Halloween and Fall Printables

Cheap, fun and easy Halloween Stuff

Great Halloween Crafts (make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom to see all the crafts and activities!)

11 Halloween Games from Martha Stewart

31 Days of October Crafts for Kids


I hope these links help to get you into the spirit/mood of the season!  If you happen to be on Pinterest....there are a ton more ideas!  If you're not on Pinterest.......why not?

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween everyone!  I found a great post over at Tea at Trianon regarding the American origins of celebrating Halloween.

Here is a link to the article mentioned in the post and here is a direct link to Fr. Augustine Thompson's article.  Interesting stuff.  Another good article, Should Catholics Celebrate Halloween is worth the read?

Honestly, I never understood the big deal over little kids dressing up like their favorite cartoon characters or their favorite saints and going door to door for candy.  I don't allow my kids to dress up in anything "evil".  I don't see the point.  I think the "scariest" thing that ever came out of this house was a Ninja and that was because his favorite book at the time was the Magic Tree House:  Night of the Ninjas.  Of course, I wasn't aware at the time that there is also an apparent controversy over the Magic Tree House Books too. Sigh.

Whatever you choose to do tonight with your children, make sure it begins and ends in prayer....and enjoy!

The Pumpkin Prayer

Dan and the kids carved our pumpkins today!  A wonderful friend (Hi Kathy!) sent us this Pumpkin Prayer to say while carving.  It was so cute, I wanted to share it with you.

The Pumpkin Prayer

Dear God,

As I carve my pumpkin help me

say this prayer:

(Cut the top of the pumpkin)

Open my mind so I can

learn about you;

(Clean out the inside)

Take away all my sin and

forgive me for the bad things I do;

(Cut eyes shaped like hearts)

Open my eyes so Your love I will see;

(Cut a nose in the shape of a cross)

I'm sorry for turning up my nose to all

You've given me;

(Cut ears shaped like the Bible)

Open my ears so Your Word

I will hear;

(Cut the mouth in the shape of a fish)

Open my mouth so I can tell others

You're near;

(Place a candle inside and light it)

Let Your light shine in all

I say and do!  Amen.

Catching Up

Life has been very busy in our household lately!  I've hardly had time for the computer at all!  I logged on last night for a few minutes and noticed that my Google Reader has over 300 unread blog posts!  YIKES!  I might have to do a quick "mark all as read" and move on!

Here's what has been going on in our neck of the woods:

My sweet Olivia turned 5!!  Can you believe it?  It seems like only yesterday that she made her first appearance in this world!

We had a small party on Sunday with some of her best friends and our family!  She enjoyed herself immensely!  Her favorite part of the party was opening presents (of course) and she LOVED, LOVED, LOVED the dress up clothes!  Here she is in her best princess garb:

I guess we don't need to wonder what she wants to be for Halloween!

Our parish also enjoyed the annual Oktoberfest!  The kids had tons of fun!  They each got a new shirt to wear for the festivities!  Originally, I wanted all three of them to have the skeleton shirt as this goes along with our recent science studies.  However, I couldn't find it in Nathan or Olivia's sizes, so I ended up with two other ones that I thought were cute!

Olivia loves to wear hair bands, so she was extra proud of her new outfit.

Speaking of skeletons, we've been doing tons of fun activities for our science lessons!  One thing (of many) that I really love about Catholic Heritage Curricula is that the lessons coincide with one another.  The first grade (Amelia) and the fourth grade (Nathan) science lessons are both working on the human body at the same time.  As a homeschooling novice, this really makes things easier for me, and more fun for them.

This week, we focused on the 5 senses.  A great resource that I found is called The Body Book!
I can't tell you how much fun this activity was!  Even Olivia and I made one.  Take a look....

Through the magic of paper, crayons, scissors and tape....we can see how all 5 senses work by using flaps!  We saw the inside of the eyelids, the ears, the mouth, the nose and what our skin looks like!  And of course, none of our sense would work without the brain!

By the end of this school year, we will have the entire body put together!  Next week is "The Tongue"!  I highly recommend this book if you happen to be working on the human body or the 5 senses!

We've also been working on our pumpkin decorating craft.  It seems that every year we carve the pumpkins too darn early and they start rotting because of the very warm Florida weather.  So, this time, I decided we would just decorate our pumpkins instead of carving them.  This idea came from Family Fun Magazine.  The are called Decoupage Pumpkins.  Although I don't have a photo of the finished product yet (they are still drying), here are some pictures of us making a huge mess!

Here's what the finished products are supposed to look like.  I don't think ours will look like this, but we sure had fun making the mess!

Can you say P.U.M.P.K.I.N. ?????

What can I say? I just love pumpkin! I love everything about this time of year (except the weather here in Florida)! I love to fill the pantry with goodies that I can whip up whenever the need arises. I'm also usually counting down the months until I can get a Pumpkin Spice or Eggnog Latte at Starbucks! Here's what's lurking in my pantry already.....

Can I just say that I really, really enjoy World Market! I found one of these cookie mixes there and I found another one at Hobby Lobby!

Can you just smell the pumpkin pancakes & muffins?

These Fright Bites are corn tortilla chips in the shapes of ghosts, bats and pumpkins...how fun! And of course, Halloween pasta!

Pictures from Halloween

The girls were cheerleaders (obviously). Their favorite part was getting to wear some lipstick and eye make up. Nathan had gone to his cousins right after school so I never did get a picture of him in his costume....he was Indian Jones. The picture of him above is from the pumpkin patch.

They got more candy than they could eat in a lifetime! I will slowly remove it from the house until by Thanksgiving...it will be all gone!!

Now we get to focus on Thanksgiving and all that we're thankful for. I plan on doing a Thanksgiving tree this year. I will have to work around my next chemo treatment (which is the 6th). Hopefully I will feel well enough to follow through, but, I know I'm better off with a plan.

As an extended family, we have not talked about what we plan to do for Thanksgiving. Last year, Dan and I were in Rome celebrating our 10th anniversary. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner at Cardinal Levada's home. We had all the traditional American dishes as well as some awesome home made pumpkin ravioli!

I know that whatever we do...we will be together...thanking God for all of our blessings!

Seasonal Crafts

I was searching around the internet today and came across this wonderful site Craft & Found. Please take a few minutes to browse around this site...especially the "30 Days of Halloween" crafts. Some of them are pretty creepy!

Anyway...enjoy!!

Very Cool!!!

Halloween Crafts

Since we were out and about and the urgent care center was too busy, I wandered on over to Hobby Lobby to see what was on sale. All of their seasonal items are 40% off (and any wall decor was 50% off). I thought I would do some crafts with the kids especially since the girls still have sticky eyes!!

This turned out to be fun! These pictures are of all of my supplies and then our finished products.

Note to self: Black glitter, glue and little kids....don't mix!!!