Craft an All Saint's Day Treat Bucket

At my house, I work really hard to make being Catholic fun, and I like to make the fun of All Saints' Day rival the fun of Halloween!!! Are you with me?! To even the playing field, I think celebrating All Saints' Day should include candy. Whether you're going to an All Saints' Day party where candy will be used as prizes or if you're going trick-or-treating dressed as your favorite religious hero, you'll need a way to carry the goodies you collect.

This year, I decided rather than using the pumpkin shaped buckets you see everywhere, we would decorate our very own All Saints' Day candy buckets! I mean, if you can make it Catholic, why not? ;-) You could use any bucket, bag, or container, but we used sand pails because we had them on hand.

I started by writing messages on them with fabric paint. I wrote things like "Happy All Saints' Day", "Pray for Us", and "Our Heavenly Family". One bucket that has all pictures of Mary says "Queen of the Saints". I also thought about writing "When the Saints Go Marching In", but forgot to. I let the messages dry overnight.

Next, you'll need to get some saint stickers, or print some images from the internet. I printed out these adorable saint images from Happy Saints!

These are some of the Happy Saints I cut out with scalloped scissors 

to use as cupcake toppers for Lydia's CCD class this Sunday.

These pictures are so cute! Happy Saints is a great site dedicated to creating cute pictures of the saints to get kids more excited about their faith! There's actually a Happy Saints store where you can get these images on things like bags, t-shirts, coffee mugs, and you can even get stickers for crafting. You should keep this store in mind for future presents- the next time I'm a Godmother, my new Godchild will be getting a patron saint onesie as a present for sure!

We cut out the circles, and mod-podged them onto the buckets. If you don't have any mod-podge, you can just water down a little white glue. (One part white glue, one part water. Do NOT use washable glue.) Paint the Mod Podge on the bucket where you want the picture, and stick it on.

 

Once you have all of your images where you want them, take the Mod Podge and paint over the entire outside of the bucket. Yes, even Mod Podge right over your words.

For this one, I used Marian stickers that I got at the Dollar Tree. Even though they stuck by themselves, I still Mod Podged over the top to hold them on better and give the bucket a finished look. Plus, the Mod Podge helps keep the fabric paint on there, too.

My favorite part- on some of the buckets I used glow in the dark fabric paint. Check it out!

I found the glow in the dark paint with the rest of the fabric paint, and I'm glad I saw it because I wouldn't have known to look for it! My kids are really excited about their buckets, and they love the glow in the dark paint.

Here's some more pictures of the final product:

Have fun celebrating All Saints' Day, everyone!

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Easy Party Food Ideas for All Saints' Day- Downloadable Labels Included!

In an effort to make some easy snacks for our All Saints' Day party, I've been brainstorming ways to make every day food into cute Saint food. I did this a few years ago by attaching holy cards to bowls of food, such as a St. Francis holy card (Patron saint of animals) on a bowl of animal crackers.

This year I decided to take that a step further by making these free printable saint labels! Here are the ones I made:

"St. Isidore's Pumpkin Patch"- St. Isidore the Farmer is the 

perfect saint to use for bringing in pumpkins! I used pumpkin shaped 

candy corns, but any pumpkin treat could go with this label.

"Saintly Halos"- I paired this tag with Funyuns, but a healthier

alternative would be to serve some pretty pineapple rings.

"St. Francis' Friends"- aka, animal crackers. This would also be
cute served with Puppy Chow which is Y-U-M-M-Y!

"St. Nicholas Treats"- I kept this one generic on purpose.

That way you can either serve candy canes, or chocolate coins.

"St. Bernadette's Firewood"- Use with pretzel sticks or pretzel rods.
St. Bernadette was out collecting firewood the first time Our Lady
of Lourdes appeared to her. It would be cute to put them in a basket.

"Tonsure Treats"- This haircut is most well known on the
Franciscans. Think St. Francis of Assisi and St. Anthony. Pair this
label with mini chocolate doughnuts, or a chocolate bunt cake.

"St. James' Fish- Fresh from the Sea of Galilee!"
The Typo is now fixed on the downloadable version. Yay!
Pair this label with these easy fish in net snacks, or simply

use this label with Goldfish Crackers or Swedish Gummy Fish.

"Saintly Stigmata Sandwiches"- Make strawberry jelly
sandwiches. Cut them out with a hand-shaped cookie cutter,
and make a hole in the top so the jelly shows through.

"St. Cecilia's Musical Keys"- Just lay out cookies like piano keys. I
used small wafer cookies and squares of chocolate Hershey bars. If
you use larger wafer cookies, I would suggest mini Kit-Kat bars for
the black keys. By the way, this is the second use 
I've found for this plate my husband said I would never use. ;-)

"St. Ambrose's Honey-Tongued Treats"- I paired this with 

Bit-O-Honey candies, but you could also use honey buns,

honey comb cereal, or anything honey or bee related.

"Dr. Gianna's Saintly Soda"- These are for Dr. Pepper!

Ya'll knew Saint Gianna was a Doctor, right? You can print a
label for a 2 liter bottle, or individual labels for the small 7.5 ounce
cans by visiting my post about Saintly Soda.

I wasn't able to take pictures of everything, but here are a few
more ideas that come with free printable labels:

"Saint Juan Diego's Salsa Guadalupe!"- I was torn between this 

or Guadalupe Guacamole... but I don't like guacamole. 

"Mother Teresa Chips"- This label is supposed to go with blue
corn chips. Couldn't decide if these were too much of a stretch or not,
but the label is there if you want it.

"St. Gabriel's Trumpets"- a label for bugles.

Might I suggest chocolate peanut butter bugles? Yum!

"St. Therese's Little Flowers"- Use flower shaped butter cookies.
I really was going to take a picture of this, but my grocery store
was all out. How weird is that?

Now you're ready to download the labels and bring some cute food to an All Saints' Day Party! If you're throwing an All Saints' Day party, you can ask those who come to sign up to bring the foods in this post, then have the labels ready when they get to your house.

Print the labels onto card-stock, cut them out, and fold in half on the line. They can stand on your platters or tables like place cards.

Saintly Food Download 1

Saintly Food Download 2

Saintly Food Download 3

Saintly Food Download 4

You can't imagine the amount of ideas I've had running through my head for this post, and as I grocery shopped today. The rest of my ideas will have to wait until next year! 

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Saintly Soda for All Saints' Day

I just got finished making some labels for the All Saints' Day party we're going to this weekend, and I wanted to share them with you! It's a knock off of Dr. Pepper. Check it out!

Dr. Gianna's Saintly Soda

Before I go on, I just wanted to check and make sure... you guys knew that Saint Gianna was a doctor, right? Good! Just wanted to be on the safe side and state the obvious there. :-)

I made 2 different label sizes. One label goes around a 2 liter bottle of soda.

The other set of labels prints 3 to a page, and they go around the small cans of Dr. Pepper. The size of cans I used were the 7.5 FL OZ, and I got them at Wegman's. These are smaller than standard coke cans, but pretty common to find.

You may as well buy off brand for the 2 liter bottle, because you're going to cover the label anyway, so who will ever know? I got "Dr. W's", also available at Wegman's. ;-)

I'm really excited about this "Saintly Soda"! I think it will be a hit at our All Saints' Day party because all of my friends really love Saint Gianna (including me). 

Download 2 Liter Bottle Label

Download Labels for Cans

Just print the labels, cut, and tape them on.

I'm working on some more labels for Saintly food right now, so hopefully I'll post those for ya'll tomorrow. I'm so excited that All Saints' Day is almost here! :-) 

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Printable All Saints' Day Games

Last year I posted some game ideas for All Saints Day parties, but most of them were for bigger parties. Today I wanted to feature some saintly games that can be useful for smaller crowds, classrooms, or even just fun this week for at home!

First up, Guess Who: Saint Edition! What a great idea! This game comes from Arma Dei, and they have tons of great stuff for Catholic kids. Over at Arma Dei, find the FREE printable templates to convert your Guess Who game into Saintly Guess Who! If you have an older version of Guess Who (because you shop at yard sales like me) you can find a free printable template to fit your older game here, and yet another here. I think this game is just too cute!

 

 Also, check out this Saint Syllable Bingo from That Resource Site.

You can teach little ones about the saints and about their syllables

at the same time.You can print this for free!

 

Check out this free printable Saint Bingo Game from Catholic Mom.

Perfect for an All Saints' Day Party!

I almost forgot! Check out this Saint matching game on The Homeschool Classroom!

They made this game using stickers, but you could easily print the pictures

for the Guess who game or bingo and do the same thing.

 Hope these printable Saint games help you out this year! More All Saints' Day ideas to come soon! :-)

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