St. Joseph Free Printable Coloring Book!

Holy Heroes has an entire coloring book of St. Joseph's life available to print for free! These are really beautifully drawn coloring pages, too! There are actually 17 coloring sheets in this download, and they're all drawn by formerly Disney animators. Remember that St. Joseph's feast day is on March 19, but the whole month of March is actually dedicated to St. Joseph, so you can color these later this month when all the St. Patrick's day stuff has died down, too. :-)

Print your free St. Joseph Coloring Book here.

(Just click "Holy Heroes Coloring Page")

I have a post with more free St. Joseph printables here.

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

St. Joseph Feast Day Celebration Ideas for your Home

St. Joseph's feast day is coming up on March 19, and it's actually a solemnity, which is a little higher ranking than a feast day. In other words- it's a fun and important day! :-) There are a lot of ways to celebrate the solemnity of St. Joseph at home. Last year, we made a St. Joseph altar for the first time, and it was a ton of fun! We're totally making another one this year, and I'll be linking it up at Evann's St. Joseph Altar Blog Fest 2011! All the coolest bloggers are going to be there. ;-)

If you're thinking that you have no idea of how to go about making a St. Joseph's Altar at your home, then you need to check out my post on St. Joseph Altar for Beginners, because that was soooo me last year! But I put everything you need to know in one easy-to-bite-off blog post. (And no, you don't need a super fancy St. Joseph statue to have your own altar- it's all in my beginners post!)

If you're looking for ideas of different foods and things to place on your St. Joseph Altar, check out last year's post about St. Joseph Altar ideas, including one of my favorite (and very easy projects) where you carve symbolic fig newtons!

If you're still feeling intimidated about putting together a St. Joseph altar, check out this cut and color version from the Virtual St. Joseph altar. Very easy and cute!

I also have a post with links to a bunch of different Saint Joseph printables. From paper dolls and prayer cards to coloring pages and lapbooks, there's a lot of free stuff available!

If you're not feeling up to anything complicated and your printer is out of ink, just serve some sloppy Joe's and tell your kids about how awesome Saint Joseph is! ;-) God bless! 

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

St. Joseph Altar For Beginners

I have a confession to make. Before this year, I didn't even really know what a St. Joseph Altar was. And I've never seen one in real life, nor had my own. (Part of me starting this blog was to encourage my own self to get more into the "Catholic Stuff" ;-) So I'm typing this post for beginners like me! Here's our completed altar:

What's with the weird "stair shape"? Well, St. Joseph Altars are generally in 3 'steps'. This symbolizes the trinity and also the holy family. I made mine by stacking boxes and covering it with a white rag:

What goes on top? St. Joseph of course! We only have such nice St. Joseph statues and pictures because he's my husband's confirmation saint, so they were presents. You can use any picture of St. Joseph- even a holy card. And don't tell me you don't have a St. Joseph statue because I KNOW you have a nativity set! Lol! It's also ok to put the entire holy family up there. If your nativity set is all packed away, check out my printable nativity and have your kids color the holy family today :-)

Ok, what else do I put on the altar? Traditionally you put bread, fancy pastries, fish, lilies, roses, candles, wine, all kinds of fruit, fava beans, and symbols of St. Joseph (like sawdust) on your altar. To learn more, check out this post at Catholic Cuisine.

How did this start? Once there was a famine in Sicily, and the people prayed to St. Joseph for relief. Their prayers were answered, and they made an altar and brought their bountiful food to offer. Then they distributed the food to the less fortunate. So it's also traditional to donate the food from your altar :-) You can read more about this history here.

What are 'fava beans'? They were food for cattle, but everyone was considered lucky to have them to eat during times of famine. Check out the "Fava" bean craft we made!

Like our "fancy pastries"? They're  made from fig newtons. See the post on how to make them yourself here!

Here are some more of my posts you might be interested in today:

St. Joseph Feast Day Fun!

Making St. Joseph's Altar at Home

PS. Couldn't help myself but to draw attention to this. Can you believe I had a bottle of wine with Mary and Jesus on it to put on our altar? Lucky! :-)

Don't forget to check out everyone's altars at
the St. Joseph Altar Blog Fest 2010! :-)
And you can link yours through the end of the month!

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

St. Joseph's Altar Ideas

We're preparing our St. Joseph's Altar for tomorrow, and we've been working on something I'd like to share!

Traditionally on St. Joseph's Altar, there are symbolic pastries made in the shapes of crosses, ladders, staffs, sandals, doves, flowers, fish, and more! They're decorated with dry fig, and are not always eatable. Here is an example of the 'real thing' (You can find a recipe here)

So we made our own simple version using fig newtons :-)

Here's How:

Cut your symbol in with a little knife. (use caution

when working with knives)

Then pry out the unwanted area.

Keep picking out the remaining crumbs with the end of

the knife until leaving only the dark fig. Voila!

I made a cross, fish, monstrance, heart, and chalice.

If I were you I'd keep the designs simple. I don't think that little kids could do this, but older kids could.

Have you heard of fava beans? They were food for cattle, but in times of famine one was considered lucky to have them to eat. They're very traditional to have on St. Joseph's Altar. We don't actually have any real fava beans, but we did make this craft:

Great northern beans worked well because they're light in color. It would have been good to have something bigger. Suggestions? Be sure to use card stock because regular paper is really too flimsy. For younger kids, write "FAVA" in glue first and just let them stick on the beans.

Come back tomorrow to see our whole altar, or head over the Evann's St. Joseph's Altar Blog Fest tomorrow- we'll be there! :-)

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

St. Joseph's Feast Day Fun!

We covered the tradition of having a St. Joseph's altar, but today lets look at some other fun things we can do to celebrate St. Joseph's feast day! 

I love this printable St. Joseph paper doll from Paper Dali!

Be sure to download it from her site :-)

Isn't this gingerbread St. Joseph's tool box amazing?!

Check it out over on Catholic Cuisine.

Jessica at Shower of Roses made an adorable

St. Joseph matching game, and has it all 

set up to print for you already! 

Check out this St. Joseph lapbook from

Homeschool Goodies. Love it!

These prayer cards are free to print from 

That Resource Site. Just scroll down to St. Joseph.

There are lots of St. Joseph coloring pages available 

at the Virtual St. Joseph Altar.

Here's another St. Joseph coloring sheet

from Good Shepherd Online.

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.

Making St. Joseph's Altar at Home

St. Joseph's feast day is coming up on March 19. To learn about St. Joseph altars, you have to check out The Virtual St. Joseph Altar! It's run by Evann of Homeschool Goodies, and she's got some amazing resources compiled- pretty much everything you need to know about celebrating St. Joseph's feast day!

Evann at the Virtual St. Joseph Altar is hosting

the first St. Joseph Altar blog fest on March 19!

Show up to link a picture of your own altar!

Don't have an altar? No problem! Check out this

3D color and cut version from the Virtual St. Joseph Altar! :-)

Inside My Domestic Church has a great post on making the altar!

 Catholic Cuisine has an amazing post on making

food for your St. Joseph altar! Love it!

The Virtual St. Joseph Altar shares many recipes as well!

Here's a downloadable pdf booklet on St. Joseph Altars.
This really has some great information!

Here's a recipe for St. Joseph bread to put on your altar.

Find this recipe for St. Joseph Raspberry Cream Cupcakes
over on Catholic Cuisine. Yum!

If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.