Happy All Hallows Eve!

The many moods of St. Elizabeth of Hungary…

(There will be some bread in that basket tonight.) We are doing a small little family party thing. We'll set out a bowl of candy for the trick or treat crowd or let the big kids hand it out. We'll play some games inside (Saintly Bingo, Pin the Candles on St. Lucy's Crown, St. Nicholas's Chimney Toss) and roast brats and marshmallows on the fire pit out back. Hope you all have a safe and fruitful evening!

Last minute boy's saint costume...

I kid you not, my 10 year old son, BigBoy, just came up with this costume in a matter of an hour. He decided he wanted to dress up as Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati. My first thought was, "Shoot! We don't own skis!" but hey, that didn't stop him. Here is what he came up with and if you've got a boy who can't decide on a saint, this might help.

Here is how we did it. The shirt is his big brother's with the button-down collar folded to the inside and the sleeves also rolled up on the inside. The cargo pants are his as are the hiking boots. The boot socks I purchased this afternoon but plan on giving to The Professor to use after BigBoy's done with them. The cane belonged to my grandfather and is serving the purpose of the walking stick (you could use just a big stick from your yard). We plan on putting some gel in his hair tomorrow to help poof it up a little and adding a pipe. I think he looks awesome and I'm so proud of him for coming up with such a great idea. He spent the day reading this book to learn a little more about Blessed Pier. You can find out more about this charming heavenly friend here.

Have a great All Hallows weekend!

And for those of you who are new here, here are my thoughts on why we celebrate All Hallows the way we do and why we hope you have fun doing what you do. 

Baptisms, boardgames, birthdays, and (not) bees

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~ with the lovely ladies at Like Mother, Like Daughter

{pretty}

Pretty is this little princess on her baptismal anniversary yesterday. My how she's grown!

{happy}
A gaggle of teens having fun playing a new-to-us board game that is sadly out of production. It's called Heroscape. If you love hearing riotous laughter and merriment and your kids like strategy type board games, get yourself over to Ebay and hunt down a copy!

{funny}

Yesterday was also my mom's birthday. I posted this picture of her on FB.  She's the spunky little one in the red dress. Her mom is the one smiling affectionately at her while two of her older sisters look on. The original was very dark and the two faces on the left were almost completely in shadow. I lightened it up using Picmonkey and was surprised to see them so clearly.
My mom is the baby of a family of 7… one boy… SIX girls. My grandpa used to tell the story that when he and Grandma got married, being a farmer and needing lots of help to run the farm, he expected to see nothing but overalls, overalls, overalls hanging up on the family clothesline. Instead, he got nothing but panties, panties, panties.
That man sure loved his girls, though and they did their job helping to haul in the cotton.

{real}

This is a Texas Spiny Lizard. We have quite a few around our house and they stay mostly outside. Lizards don't freak me out because they eat the bugs and we don't like the bugs more than we don't like lizards. However, they don't eat yellow jackets. Grrrrr.  We've been dealing with a yellow jacket problem. 

This is where they first started building a nest, in the ancient retaining wall that keeps the neighbor's yard from sliding into ours. (Yes, it needs to be replaced.) When we first noticed this activity, we checked to make sure they weren't honeybees. Honeybees we would have had relocated. Don't want to kill the bees. But yellow jackets? Just kill them all. So we had them treated with the spray and dust of death and not even a week later, we found they had moved about 15 feet further down the same wall. So today, we are dropping the death dust on them again. This time, the pest control people are sending out TWO technicians. Not sure what two guys can do better than one, but hey… whatever gets them gone.

Over at Catholic Cuisine

Hi there! Didn't mean to step away for a break. I don't really have a good reason, except… life. Anyway, just wanted to point you over to Catholic Cuisine where you can read about our plans to celebrate the feast of Saint John Paul II today (and Miss Cupcake's baptismal anniversary) with a delicious Polish meal of kielbasa and cabbage served over mashed potatoes and Piernik for dessert, a spiced honey bread which made my house smell amazing when it was baking this morning.

John Paul II, we love you! Please pray for us.

{phfr} Early fall-ish edition

Remember that lovely family that my Sunshine sold gloves for? Well, they have recently been burdened with even more troubles (of the plumbing variety) but if you want to see what the power of prayer and some intercession of the earthly kind can do… check out this little miracle.

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~ with the lovely ladies at Like Mother, Like Daughter

{pretty}

On Tuesday, I had a splitting sinus headache so we postponed our candy rosary to celebrate the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary until yesterday. It still counts, right? In fact, since the whole month of October is dedicated to the rosary, I think you've got until October 31st to make one, if you really want to.

Kendra has been touting the simple and lovely M&M and chocolate chip rosary route. Me? Well, I've got teenage girls who take it upon themselves to create beautiful things. As we've done in years past,  Rain decided to put together a rosary with candies made from white chocolate and candy melts all on her own without any assistance from me so… it doesn't get any easier than that in my book. (OK, I did the dishes for her when she was done, just to say "thank you" for her sweet service to the family.)

{happy}

My new tortilla press is making everyone happy these days. Corn tortillas are so easy to make! Like Jennifer's family, mine never much cared for corn tortillas, but homemade corn tortillas are a different story. This one was filled with eggs and asparagus. Yum!

We spent a delightful day with some dear friends up at our alma mater last Friday for Family/Alumni Weekend. It was such a fun afternoon watching the kids play and laugh together at the place where our stories both began. Sunshine took this picture just before we headed up to meet Dr. O. for some stargazing. Some of those crazy kids climbed that tower… twice!

{funny}

One of the day's earlier activities was getting to sit in on some classes. The Professor wanted to see what college classes were like so he and I headed up to campus. Discussing the necessity of Hector's death, Sumerian and Egyptian art and some Latin review… yeah… he was in Heaven! I posted this picture on IG with the caption, "Over 20 years since my last Lit. Trad class and I can't not take notes!" It was true. The paper looks washed out here so you can't see the half page of notes I'd already taken. Old habits die hard.

{real}

Knitter or ninja in training? Don't mess with her!

I'm hosting a Mom's Night Out tomorrow night for our homeschooling group and it's a Pumpkin Party! I guess for me, it's a Mom's Night In. Everyone is bringing their favorite pumpkin flavored dish to share. I decided to turn a pie pumpkin into a flower vase for decoration (you can see it up there in the candy rosary picture) and toasted up the seeds... much to the delight of my children. First toasted pumpkin seeds of fall! (Totally ignoring the almost 90 degree temps.)

Feast Day Round Up

It's been a busy week with some major feast days to celebrate. Our celebrations used to be more elaborate, but as my kids have grown older, they've become more subdued.  I think that's only natural, but sometimes I feel guilty about my littler ones. Are they missing out by not celebrating the way we used to? I think I need to try to make a few things a little more festive, but I like this more relaxed pace too. It's such a balance, isn't it?

September 29th (Michaelmas, Feast of the Archangels, The Professor's Confirmation saint)

Blackberry jam spread on homemade bread

This is some Blackberry Cobbler jam that I ordered for Sean a while back from the winery that we visited on our honeymoon. The kids prefer plain blackberry jam.

October 1st (Feast of St. Therese the Little Flower, special friend of Sunshine's and Confirmation anniversary for Sunshine and The Professor)

Pumpkin Cupcakes with super easy Frosting Roses

My babies 6 years ago.

October 2 (Feast of the Guardian Angels, special friends to all of us)

Angel Kisses (peppermint meringue cookies)

October 4th (Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, Rain's Confirmation saint)

Pot Pie Soup over at Catholic Cuisine… Rain is going to spoil us with some of her Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread today!

Calling all Doctor Who fans!

{Non-Whovians might want to skip this post. It's gonna get a little geeky. You've been warned.} 

Last Friday, the kids had some friends over for a viewing of The Day of the Doctor {affiliate link}. They had never seen it and it's one of the few Doctor Who episodes that all of my kids have seen.

My caveat regarding Doctor Who and young children… my children are 16, 15, almost 14 and 10… not little kids anymore although, the 10 year old doesn't get to see everything the oldest ones do. I preview EVERYTHING before they watch it. We pick and choose who watches what. Not all of my kids are sci-fi fans, not all of them can handle scary scenes or scenes of great peril, not all of them like slimy aliens, and not all of the episodes are child friendly… just my opinion. We watch what we like, skip over anything we don't, discuss why not and fill in the plot holes when necessary.)

We had invited their guests for a Doctor Who themed dinner and then set up a dessert buffet table with more Doctor Who themed treats. The Professor made place cards for everyone with their Time Lord names courtesy of this online generator.  Most of the food stuff I either found on Pinterest or altered from something I found elsewhere. I didn't take pictures of everything, here are the highlights…

~Dinner Menu~

Cassandra Thin Crust Pizza

 (the eyes are potato slices with olives and the lips are cut from a red bell pepper)

"Bow Ties are Cool" Pasta with Meat Sauce 

(literally bow tie pasta with meat sauce mixed in)

Forest of Cheem Salad 

(exactly as it sounds… I used a very leafy mix of salad greens)

~ Dessert Menu ~

Sonic Screwdrivers

Sonic Screwdrivers… one for each Doctor; Chinny, Sandshoes and Grandad.

 Pretzel rod Sonic Screwdrivers dipped in melted white chocolate and rolled in sugar sprinkles.

Fish Fingers and Custard

I think these were the hit of the party. There are two ways you can go with this dish. Either use real fish sticks and make a savory sauce that looks like custard. Or use real custard and go with a sweet fish stick look alike. My kids were lobbying for actually trying real fish sticks dipped in real custard (weirdos!) until I told them that not even Matt Smith did that. He was eating coconut breaded cakes. Hah! Mine were made out of sugar cookies rolled in crushed graham crackers. If you try them, roll them extra skinny because they will spread a little when baking.

Adipose Pops

Adipose Pops… another favorite. 

I stuck the marshmallows together with melted white chocolate. The face was piped on with melted dark chocolate.

Chocolate Fezzes

Fezzes are cool! 

Rolo's would have looked more authentic, but with four kids in braces, I thought mini Reese's peanut butter cups would be safer. Embroidery thread tassels glued on top. Super easy. It took longer for the glue to dry than it took to make these.

TARDIS Self Destruct Buttons

We also served TARDIS self destruct buttons (Jammie Dodgers) but I didn't make those. They came from a box that looked like this:

It was so much fun to share what is probably one of our favorite episodes with some fellow Whovian friends. Has anyone been watching the new season? I have and I've let the kids watch a few episodes. It started out a little iffy for me, but then Listen took my breath away and I've been hooked on Peter Capaldi ever since!