All Saints Day Link Up!

Happy (almost) All Saints' Day! Remember the All Saints' Day linky I had last year? Well, I decided that I didn't want the ideas lost in the archives, and I wanted everyone to keep adding to the collection! So today, I've re-opened the All Saints' Day Link-up! Go ahead... add some links and check out the other ideas.

Because I re-opened last year's linky, I changed the settings so the newest things that are linked up show at the top! If you just want to share a picture of your kiddos in costume but don't have a blog, go put them on the Catholic Icing facebook page. There's already quite a few pictures there, and some really cute ones! 

I also wanted to share my All Saints' Day posts from my archives:

All Saints' Day Party Ideas:

Saintly Food Ideas (Turn easy-to-find foods into cute Saintly treats with my free downloadable labels!)
Cute Saint Cookie Ideas (At our party this year my friend is going to provide gingerbread people cookies and let the kids decorate them like their favorite saints!)
Saintly Party Game ideas
Printable Saint Games

Saintly Costumes:

Costume Ideas for Boys
Costume Ideas for Girls
How to make a Juan Diego Costume
How to make a Nun Costume
How to make a Mother Teresa Costume

Crafts:

Saint Craft  (The Saints are in Heaven with Jesus)
Paper Bag Nun Puppets (And St. Patrick and St. Valentine)
Round up of cute saint crafts including spoon Saints
Make an All Saints' Day Treat Bucket 

Ok, now it's your turn!

The box below is open for links now, so if you have something ready go ahead and post it! If not, don't sweat it. The box will be open until November 10 so you'll have plenty of time to link what you do this year, too!

What to link:
All Saints' and All Souls' Day Ideas including costumes, games, decorations, party ideas, food, celebration ideas... you name it!

What to do:
Link directly to your All Saints'/All Souls' day post - do not enter your generic blog address. Feel free to use your archives and link more than one post as long as it's on topic. Don't forget to link back to this post so everyone knows where to join in the fun! 
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Happy Martinmas!

... almost. ;-) St. Martin of Tours has a feast day coming up on November 11- Martinmas! Roman soldier turned monk makes for a pretty cool feast day to celebrate! There are many traditions associated with this day including going door to door with paper lanterns, and making horseshoe cookies. You can read more about Martinmas here.

A common symbol for St. Martin is a horse, and horseshoe cookies

are traditional for this day! I love these from Every Last Cookie

because they're dusted with powdered sugar and he was know for

riding in the snow. Find the recipe here.

While you're eating your snowy horseshoe cookies, you

can sing this St. Martin Song (lyrics here) about him riding through the
snow! Under Her Starry Mantle has posted the song on You Tube.

Growing With My Girls made these horseshoe cookies
along with other crafts and activities.

If you're feeling more adventerous than horseshoe cookies,
why not try making this Cloak of St. Martin Cake?
This amazing idea comes from Under Her Starry Mantle.

Heart of the Mater has some Michaelmas ideas for celebrating
that involve giving since St. Martin was so well
known for giving his cloak to a beggar.

Under Her Starry Mantle has some great directions and
links for printables to help you make some St. Martin Lanterns!

Inside My Domestic Church also has some ideas
for Crafting Martinmas Lanterns.

By Sun and Candlelight crafted these Glass Lanterns
to celebrate this feast day.

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Religious Thanksgiving Craft for Kids

Thanksgiving is coming up and I wanted to do a craft with my kids to help them reflect on the things that we are thankful God has given us. Plus, you guys all know what a sucker I am for handprint crafts, so how could I let Thanksgiving go by without making a turkey craft? ;-)



All you need for this craft is an assortment of colored paper, scissors, a marker, a glue stick, and a thankful heart. Have you child trace their hand and cut it out - they might need help with this. Cut the feathers out of construction paper (I used scalloped craft scissors) and also cut out a yellow triangle and a red teardrop. 



Ask your child what they would like to thank God for. My 4 year old was pretty cute coming up with what she was thankful for. My 2 year old wouldn't say anything but "Lightning McQueen"... Anyway, wright one thing you're thankful for on each feather, and glue your turkey together.



When your thankful turkey is all glued down, use a marker to give him an eye and some feet. Don't forget to write "Thank God for..."  at the top. Also, this week I saw that The Crafty Crow has a Thankful Craft Roundup with some super cute ideas! (The Crafty Crow is one of my favorites!)

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Christian Thanksgiving DIY Decor

I know you've all heard me say it before, but I love Jeanne Winter's blog- Inspiring Ideas. She has a lot of great crafts for making your home all Christian cozy for Thanksgiving. You can search all of her Fall Ideas Here.

She made these Paper Thanksgiving Napkin Rings.

I think these are just beautiful!

Check out this adorable Thanksgiving Placecard Idea.

Also check out how she made her

BLESSED Banner for her mantle with real leaves!

Or try making Jeanne's Thankful Centerpiece.

After you have your house all pretty and ready for Thanksgiving, I'll find some religious craft ideas for your kiddos! "Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever." Psalm 107:1

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Day of the Dead Arts and Crafts

All Souls' Day is coming up on November 2- this is also known as the Day of the Dead (Spanish: Día de los Muertos). I love all the colorful skulls used to celebrate this day in Mexico! I'm a really colorful person- I know... total shocker! :-P

Make this centerpiece with Dollar Store Crafts.

This Day of the Dead Art Project comes from

Deep Space Sparkle.

I found this Day of the Dead Sandwich on Edible Crafts.

Find directions on how to make Edible Sugar Skulls

on Dollar Tree Crafts! (These sugar skulls by Crafty Chica).
Sugar skulls are super traditional for this day. 

Buzzville has directions for making this cute 

Day of the Dead Craft.

Another traditional treat you can try is
Bread of the Dead. This recipe is from MEXonline.

I'm hoping to have the time to try out the sugar skulls with my kids this year, and I did get a skull ice cube tray from the Dollar Tree for molding them. And of course, don't forget to pray for the deceased. :-)

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Make a Mother Teresa Costume

Any of you looking for last minute costume ideas for All Saints' Day? I know I am! How about making a Mother Teresa costume from a pillow case, a single bed sheet, and a roll of blue painter's tape? Read on my friends, read on!

Little Violet is going to be Mother Teresa for our All Saints' Day party tomorrow. She's too small for a sheet, so I cut down some white fabric. The best part??? This costume doesn't involve any sewing!!! (Now that's my kind of costume!)

All you need is some white fabric and some blue painter's tape, scissors, a safety pin, and either some bobby pins or a headband. You'll also need one adorable child for inserting into the costume.

I have found that a veil falls more evenly around your head if it's the shape of a half circle rather than a rectangle. Mother Teresa's order (Missionaries of Charity) have one wide blue stripe and then 2 more narrow blue stripes on the edge of their white garments. So I ran one strip of blue painter's tape and then cut another one length wise for the 2 more narrow strips. I hot glued the veil onto a headband for baby Violet to keep it on her head because she has no hair for pinning it into.

 

This piece I made for wrapping around her body. I put her in a white long sleeved shirt and white tights, then wrapped this around her (over her left shoulder and under her right arm) and then safety pinned it to the top of her shoulder. 

 

She's ready to go!

For an older child, you could use the painter's tape on a white pillow case for the veil and a white single sheet for wrapping around the body. Use a safety pin and don't cut the sheet, and pin the pillow case into her hair with some bobby pins. At the end of the day remove the tape and return your sheets to your linen closet! :-)

As always, supervise your children at all times and always take necessary precautions. In other words, don't let your children choke on painter's tape and then try to sue me. I promise you'll find I don't have much to sue me for anyway ;-)

Hope this last minute costume idea helps you guys out! I still have 2 more to come up with before tomorrow. Suggestions???
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All Saints' Trading Card Swap

Kimberlee at Pondered in My Heart is arranging a trading card swap of Saint artwork- made by you! There's no age limit- anyone may participate! Toddlers to Mommies, everyone is encouraged to make mini artworks and mail them to Kimberlee for trading. All the cards are to be 2.5 x 3.5 inches, and they need to be in the mail by November 5. She's asking for everyone who's participating to send 5 cards.

Click for Participation Details

My kids and I really enjoyed the Marian ATC swap, and we're really looking forward to participating again! I also wanted to suggest you use this as an All Saints' Day party activity! Have all the kids make their cards at your party and have their moms address envelopes for them. Mail them to Kimberlee in one big package, but have all the cards they get in return mailed straight to their house. I'm definitely doing this at our All Saints' Day party! Can't wait to trade artwork with you!

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All Saints' Day Costume Ideas

My favorite part of All Saints' Day is the costumes! There's just something so cute about little kids dressed up as saints, isn't there?

Saint Elizabeth

All Saint Day Costume Ideas- the ultimate lists!

Click the links below to find over 100 easy saint costume ideas!

All Saints' Day Costume Ideas for Girls

All Saints' Day Costume Ideas for Boys

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Alphabet of Saints Crafts for Catholic Kids

With the combination of our Catholic ABC's preschool we're working on and with All Saints' Day just around the corner, I wanted to run some awesome saint crafts! And I wanted to start with a "String from Heaven" craft made by my friend Jackie. 

Here's what Jackie said-

So we are doing Elizabeth Foss' Alphabet Path at home with our daughter. Since I can't paint we purchased the gingerbread cutouts of cardboard people at Michael's. Each week I trace the outfits from construction paper for her to cut and paste them together to correspond with the pictures from An Alphabet of Catholic Saintsfor each letter. I do the faces typically and some of them I've cut too (you can probably guess which). We do this in addition to cutting out the Letters (upper and lowercase) for the week and gluing things that start w/ the letter or the actual letter from magazines to that Letter's page.

St. Anne

St. Bernadette

 

St. Cecilia

St. Dominic

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

St. Francis of Assisi

St. George

And here are some more Saint Crafts A-Z!

I just love these Adorable Alphabet Saints
from Pinewood Castle! And you can find some good
directions on making these kind of dolls at Crafty in Coffeeland.

If you want to try your hand at painting, check out these
Painted Alphabet Peg Dolls from robynallen2 on Flickr.

Here are some other ways to make yourself a procession
of saints- whether they're in alphabetical order or not! :-)

I have always been in love with Alice's Spoon Saints!

You have got to click over to Cottage Blessings to

see her procession across the mantle! :-)

Are you ready for this? These Saint Dolls are so adorable,

and the patterns are available to print for free at 

Ana Braga-Henebry's Journal. I love these so much!

Soon your saints will all come marching in! I hope your kids enjoy making some saint crafts soon - I know mine will!

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All Saints Day Party Games

I'm very excited about All Saint's Day this year, and I think it's a great time to have a big party for kids! If you're having an All Saint's Day party this year, here are some game ideas I've seen around the internet from some very creative Catholic moms!

Ring Toss: "Canonize the Saint"
This is a basic ring toss game where you 'canonize' the saint by tossing a halo over them. In my version below we used small saint statues and those glow bracelets or glow necklaces (which are available everywhere around Halloween). Be sure to attach your statues to the floor or a piece of poster board to keep them from tipping over. You could also use pictures of the saints taped to 2 liter bottles.

Another variation of this is "Crown Mary". At Blair's Blessings, they used their light up Mary from their nativity set and some embroidery hoops. You could also use your Mary statue from you garden!

Tossing Game: St. Therese's Shower of Roses Game
The object of the game is to toss roses to St. Therese. The version below comes from Blair's Blessings. You can find more versions of this game using basket ball hoops here and here.

Pin The Halo on the Saint:
You can pin a halo on any saint! Here are some variations from Under Her Starry Mantle - Pin the Shamrock on St. Patrick and Pin the Habbit on St. Theresa!

St. Cecilia's Musical Chairs:
You can play this like regular musical chairs using the song "When the Saints go Marching In". Under Her Starry Mantle has a Christian Martyrs Musical Chairs game. You can also label the chairs with different saints (having enough chairs for everyone) and then draw a holy card to see who is "out". (Picture below from 6 Hands 2 Hold). You can use this same concept for a Saint Cake Walk.

Educational Saint Games: Wouldn't it be great if your kids could have fun playing games and learning about the saints at the same time? Well, they can! Memories of a Catholic Wife and Mother posted a Practice the Virtues of the Saints Game (for example, feed the hungry like St. Elizabeth, filling a basket with bread). Under Her Starry Mantle also has a Saint and Symbols Relay Game, and a Patron Saint Match Relay Game.

Hope y'all found some fun game ideas for your All Saints' Day parties! I know I have :-) 

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