My Home Altar

I've been meaning to get back to this, but life, you know. Anyway, I wanted to post pictures of my home altar in my new house (I moved since Christmas, two days before actually, which was fun.)



So there's my Catholic Home Altar. I'm lucky in that because I'm single and have no children, I can afford to buy things I want, and so this is the direct result of that. There'll be an incense burner added soon, but right now I have my Holy Water (in the green bottle), Statues of the Sacred Heart of Christ, Our Lady of All Graces, and St. Joseph, with a tiny on of St. Padre Pio beside Christ. One of my rosaries and my St. Joseph's chaplet are there as well, and the white stuff in the wooden container is Blessed Salt. The basket holds extra medals, crucifixes, and rosaries. I have a vigil candle in the back that my sister got for me of the Sacred Heart, and the books on the left are my Family's Bible and my Christian Prayer book. The white cloth under the statues I inherited from my very Catholic German grandmother when she died.




Some tips for those setting up your own altar:

Start small. If you can't afford much, use what you have. My first altar I used the figurines from my nativity set for The Holy Family. Worked great and I got more use out of it.

TV. Stands work well for altars. Thy're the perfect height, have a large, flat top, and can be found everywhere, especially yard sales. The storage underneath can be used to hold extra candles, cloths, cards, books, anything really. I had a stereo that I used to play Gregorian Chant under my first one. I've also seen bookshelves, mantlepieces, and just plain tables.

Use your altar to help remind you of the changing Liturgical seasons. I have purple on there now, for Lent, but it'll be switched to white for Easter soon. There're lots of things you can do with this; put your nativity set or advent wreath on your altar. Cover your statues in purple cloth for Holy Week. Crown Mary for May and Christ for Christ Our King. Display Holy Cards of the saints on their day.

Use flowers to decorate if you get pulled in that direction. It's a common and traditional (and manly...ahem) practice to give flowers to Our Lady. I don't have any on there right now, maybe I'll get a rose for May or a Lily for Easter.

If you have a priest bless your home, have him specifically bless your altar as well. If not, bless it with some Holy Water and prayers that it will be used, and used to bring about a closer connection to Our Lord.

Anybody else have a home atlar? I love pictures!

Almost the Feast of St. Nicholas!

I cleaned our kitchen today in preparation for all the cooking that I'll be doing in the next couple of days. I already bought everything for the Speculaas cookies, so that'll be our dessert, and we'll also be having Apple Stuffed Chicken, homemade French Bread, Potato Soup, and Maple Glazed Carrots. I'm totally going to be roasting chestnuts too. I found out how from online:

You can roast chestnuts in the oven: Preheat your oven to 425 F (210 C), and make cuts in the round sides of the nuts. Sprinkle with salt and/or red wine if you want. Arrange the chestnuts either on an oven rack or on a cookie sheet and roast them until the skins have pulled back from the cuts and the nutmeats have softened (exactly how long will depend upon the chestnuts, but at least 15-20 minutes. wrap them in an old cloth, squeeze them until they crackle, and let them sit in a warm place for five minutes.

The cuts in the side is important, because it keeps them from exploding. CUT THE SIDES!

We'll be putting up the Christmas Decorations tomorrow as well so the house will be fully decked out for The Feast. Anyone else have a St. Nicholas Tradition?

I'll post pictures too of the shoes all done up in each family's house. It's still all a secret. Shhh...

Advent Wreath Prayers

Ok, so not exactly "later that day" but still, I got them up before Advent officially starts. I have been quite busy too, with a lot of family get togethers (Thanksgiving for example), work, shopping (all of my Christmas Shopping is done and wrapped) and I got my bedroom decorated for Christmas because my Mother is a grinch and won't let me decorate the rest of the house.

Anyway, I'm going to be using the prayers found at Fisheaters.com :

http://fisheaters.com/customsadvent2.html

There's also a great history about the wreath there too.

I've got to get some stuff on here about my Advent Calendar, and about St. Nicholas Day (yes there's more) and possibly the celebration of St. Barbara's Day. I think I'll do something for St. Lucy's Day, but maybe not. I don't know. I really aught to be getting to bed, because I have to teach CCD tomorrow morning, but blogging is so much more fun then sleeping....

The Advent Wreath

I've been looking forward to the advent wreath since last year (not that this has anything to do with why I purchased it a month in advance...)

The Advent Wreath is an age old Catholic Tradition. The entire wreath is symbolic; the circular shape is to remind us of God's eternal nature. The greenery is to show us that even in the darkest times (the darkness of winter in this case) His love is with us. There are four candles in the wreath; three purple and one pink (rose, if you want to get technical). Each candle stands for persons who played a part in the waiting of thousands of years for Christ's coming.

The first purple candle stands for Adam and Eve, the first children of God and our first parents.

The second purple candle stands for the Prophets who prophesized the comming of the messiah.

The third candle is the Rose candle and stands for St. John the Baptist. This candle is rose in celebration of the fact that this is the third Sunday of Advent - we're over halfway through, and the amount of light outnumbers the dark. This Sunday is called Gaudete Sunday and at Mass the priest will also be wearing Rose vestements. This is one of the two days in the year when there are Rose vestements. The second is the third Sunday of Lent.

The final purple candle is in honor of Our Blessed Mother, Mary.

The traditional color of Advent is purple, just as in Lent. Purple is considered a penitential color and Advent is still a penitential season.

For my wreath I bought a plain artifical wreath and wrapped purple berries, small white flowers, and a few silver/white ornaments to the base with floral wire. I tied the Candles to the base the same way, but I think I might change this because it's sort of flimsy. Our Director of Religious Education told me she sometimes sticks some masking tape on the bottom of her candles because her wreath is done the same way.



I've also heard of placing a large white candle in the center of the wreath to be lit on Christmas night; the Christ Candle, but I think I'll stick with the traditional four candles.

I'll pose the prayers in a little bit, I have to find the ones I want. Happy Thanksgiving Eve!

Making of the Christ Crib

Well here's my Christ Crib, and the making thereof:

First I bought this wooden box because it was the closest thing I could find to what I wanted. You could just buy a cradle, or use a shoebox, but I wanted a wooden cradle that looked like a manger.

I didn't need the top, so I put took it off using a pocket knife because we don't have a screwdriver small enough for the screws. Then I glued it on the bottom, because I figured I might as well use it, I paid for it. I put some heavy books on it and left it for about half an hour.

So once I removed the books I stained the end parts a dark brown, as so:



I ended with gluing some red and gold ribbon around the inside and writing a prayer around the outside "If soft enough Thy crib seems not to be, accept Sweet Infant Jesus, my heart as crib for Thee! Amen"



I'm drying some long grass in our backyard to act as 'straw'. When advent comes, for each good deed I do (and anyone else if they want to join in) I'll put one piece of straw in the crib. Hopefully by the time Christmas comes I'll have a soft Crib for Our Lord!

I thought of another way to make the crib as well, if you don't like the box look and want something very easily stored. I demonstrate with cardboard, but with wood it'd look better I think. Cut two pieces of wood the same size and then a slit about a quarter of the way up each one, halfway through each piece:



Then slide them together, like so:



So that's one project down! If you wanted to write a different prayer on/around/in your crib, I think "Oh Holy Night," or "O' Come O' Come Emmanuel" or "Away in a Manger" would all be great. For now we have to put our cribs away though. Advent will be here soon enough!

And So it Begins...

I think the Christmas Rush has started. The stores were packed today when Mom and I went to go get our new artificial Christmas tree (you can see that planning and buying in advance runs in the family, no?) and when I went in to work it was the busiest I've ever seen it. I thought I had a little more relaxing before the stress of the season started but apparently not. Ah well.

I found out that I can buy pecan logs at this local nut shop. I love pecan logs but haven't been able to find any in my town. Grandma told me today that apparently this store sells them, so I swung by but they're closed on Sundays. I'll have to try tomorrow, or Tuesday maybe, as I don't work on Tuesday.

Grandma's birthday was today, so we all went to Applebees for lunch. I think we drove our waiter crazy. "They're will be eight of us". Ten minutes later "Oh, are they coming to? Ok that makes twelve plus a baby." Three minutes later "Ok, last count, fourteen, plus two babies, we'll need a child's menu for the eight year old, and don't put a chair at the end, one's in a wheelchair." Ah, when my family gets together. We also took the opportunity to plan Thanksgiving. I'm apparently bringing pies.

Fooled around with the layout today, but decided I like it best the way it was. Was thinking about this blog a bit, and decided a lot of it would be dedicated to how to celebrate the Liturgical Year. It's an interest of mine to look into old Catholic celebrations and so I'm going to try and focus a lot of stuff around that. I already kind of started with the St. Nicholas celebration, but there'll be more once I get pictures, and I still have to make my Advent Crib (made my wreath, but as that's not that difficult I'll just show pictures of it with the history behind it later) Assuming I can figure out how to post pictures anyway.

Preparations for Advent

So I plan to drag my family through Advent this year, starting with St. Nicholas's feast day, which is December 6th. I went to the craft store today (a scary prospect for any male, but one which is necessary to gather supplies) and bought some things. I want to surprise my family with shoes filled with goodies, including Speculaas, Candy Canes, Gingerbread Cookies, Candles, Ornaments, Advent Calendars, Oranges, etc. etc.

I've had to pull my Grandmother into this plan, as I couldn't find the wooden shoes I wanted, so we're making 'elf' shoes out of green felt, one for each person (I didn't want to use their regular shoes. I don't know why, it seemed more 'right' to have a special St. Nicholas day shoe). I bought the ornaments, candles, and advent calanders, and bells and ribbon for the shoes (as Grandma dictated were necessary).

I couldn't find any advent calendars that surpassed the ones found here: http://www.sellmer-verlag.de/shop2/index.html , so I bought five (one for each 'couple' in my family; Mom and Dad, Marie and Anthony, Andrea and Ben, Lauren and Dan, and one for me). The shipping was pretty expensive, I guess they're shipped from Germany, but they're beautiful calendars.

So the preparations begin. I still have a lot to bake and buy, but this way at least I can get some of it out of the way early. If I can figure it out I'll post pictures of everything - the shoes, everything set up, etc.

By the way, just for future reference; Marie, Andrea, and Lauren are my sisters, (not their real names, but close) and the others are all their fiances. Marie and Andrea are older than me, and Lauren is younger. I'm the only son. Yes, this means I've been spoiled my entire life and yes, I'm the only one who was not proposed to in 2007, as I'm constantly reminded.