Merry Christmas

May everyone have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

       We try to remember Christmas through
 the 12 days of Christmas and beyond. At least until Epiphany. I heard someone the other day on EWTN say we should remember Christmas until the Feast of the Baptism, so I hope you haven't stopped celebrating the birth of our Lord yet but continue to enjoy the season.







Just a little note, we celebrated Christmas Eve this year at midnight mass. It was beautiful. Half hour of beautiful carols, followed by a beautiful mass with the incense, the altar servers, 3 priests and a deacon and of course Our Lord in the Eucharist.  It was awesome. At the end of mass, the parish turned out the lights, leaving only the Christmas tree lights and we all sang Silent Night. I loved it.

I love being Catholic. It is a challenge and not always easy in this culture but I know God is my help and it is His Church.

Advent Wreath

 Happy first week of Advent.

I had been wanting to do my advent wreath different for the last couple of years. Part of the reason was that the taper candles never stay standing up straight. Strange but that always bothered me, so I bought these thicker, shorter candles and used a pine wreath. Then added the burlap tie and placed it all in a vintage pie tin. For aroma, I added cinnamon berries, so not only does it look festive for Advent but smells great too. I think it turned out pretty good. There are different ways to do an Advent wreath and you can make it fun or to your own taste. I usually set up my Advent wreath along with Christmas decorations. I try to stay away from the commercialism of the season and focus on the purpose of Advent and Christmas; waiting for his coming and celebrating his coming. The tree will go up in a couple of days but I have put out a few other decorations. I put out my crèche without Jesus. He will show up Christmas Eve. I try to just take it slow enjoying the season.

Have a blessed day.

Advent

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It is the first week of Advent. We just got back in town and I will be putting my Advent wreath up tomorrow, so hopefully will be posting it on here for you all to see. I am trying to live a simpler and a more country life and hopefully can create something a little more simple this year. It is a long story which I may tell sometime on here but we had a fire this summer, with a lot of smoke damage and have come to realize I had a lot of stuff that needed taken out and cleaned and I did not want to put it all back in the house, so I have done a lot of decluttering and looking more to simpler ways, so we'll see what it looks like tomorrow. See you and have a blessed Jesus and Mary day.

Catholic Mom's Cafe: Seriously - who enjoys doing the laundry?

Catholic Mom's Cafe: Seriously - who enjoys doing the laundry?: In my Laundry Room As I carefully fold my sheets, Smoothing out the wrinkles,                                            ...

Pleasant Family Meal Times

I think my family would get a little laugh at this video. It is outdated and seems kind of hard to reach when first watching but I think that maybe looking at it as ideals to aim for might be a good idea. There is nothing in this that isn't said in scripture:  " Love one another, or Better is a dinner of herbs, where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith, or A gentle tongue is a tree of life; but perverseness therein is a breaking of the spirit."

How many times do we hear someone say, "have at least one meal together a week as a family."?  A lot. That is what I get out of this video. Ideas that say, share the family meal, make it special, share your day and ideas and show love and compassion to one another and keep the meal from being a place of strife and rush.

Well, anyhow, I see this as  a video with guidance for meal times. This video dates back to the 1950's, which shows even then people were needed to be reminded what the family meal should be.

Planned Parenthood does not provide mammograms

Need to watch the video.

http://youtu.be/uIBHID10Ntg

Our Sunday Visitor posts in 2011, still true today.

When Catholicism was respected in U.S. culture

Believe it or not, there was a time when the media identified the faith with core American principles

By Robert P. Lockwood - OSV Newsweekly, 1/16/2011

Growing up in Yonkers, N.Y., in the 1950s, I assumed that most everyone in the world was Catholic. There were Jewish kids peppered here and there, but we just didn’t meet that many Protestants.

Read more here