Though he was a quiet man, who left us not even a single quote, there is certainly no shortage of devotion to St. Joseph around the world. In my family, we draw on Sicilian traditions and St. Joseph’s occupation as a carpenter to inspire our food and activities for our celebration.

Watch as the kids and I make cream puffs, hammer nails, and eat spaghetti with our hands off the table. I hope you and your kids find this episode to be an inspiration for fun and easy ways to celebrate the Solemnity of St. Joseph later this month!

You can watch the St. Joseph episode exclusively at Formed.org.

My family will be saying the St. Joseph Novena this year for a special intention. Will you join us? You can sign up here for email reminders from Pray More Novenas if you’d like. The St. Joseph Novena usually begins on March 10 to finish on March 18, but since St. Joseph’s Day is moved to March 20 in 2023, starting on March 11 and finishing March 19 would work too. We’ll be praying for your intentions as well!

Access to all the great Catholic audio and video resources on FORMED is free if your parish has a subscription.

Signing up for FORMED is quick and easy.  Just follow the simple instructions below. 

1. Go to formed.org/signup

2. Search for your parish by Zip Code/ Postal Code. Click on your parish. 

3. Register with your name and email address

4. Check that email account for a link to begin using FORMED

If your parish doesn’t offer FORMED, you can sign up for a free 7-day trial of the individual membership, and if you choose to keep it, it’s just $10 per month.

THIS EPISODE’S RECIPES

St. Joseph – March 20th

Pasta on the Table (Pasta Alla Tavola)

Sfinge Cream Puffs

Caprese Skewers

Melon & Prosciutto Skewers

Spiced Play Dough

FEATURED PRODUCTS

Pasta on the Table – St. Joseph’s Day Kit

Ora et Labora Plaque DIY Kit

Feast Day Prep Squad Apron

St. Joseph Folding Yard Stick

Missed the last episode?

If you’d like to see more episodes, please consider watching, commenting, and sharing the links with your friends, family members, parish and school/homeschool groups.

We had such fun making these!

Special thanks from me to the awesome CAY at Home team.

• Leo Severino, executive producer, you might know him from Bella (2006) and Sound of Freedom (2022)
• John Haggard, producer and director, also Dean of Students and Faculty at my kids’ school
• Elizabeth Mirzaei, director of photographer/editor, academy award-nominated documentary filmmaker known for Three Songs for Benazir (2021) and also my YouTube videos
• Charley Blum, director of photographer/editor, JP Catholic alum
• Jennifer Rueda, makeup, wardrobe, set design, and fellow homeschool mom
• Keeley Bowler, production manager, also CAY marketing manager and homeschool mom
• Brian Battles, colorist, also visual effects for Star Wars and Star Trek and Transformers movies

They’re all super talented and super Catholic and it’s an honor to collaborate with them on my little show. Have you watched it? I’d love to hear what you think!

The post Catholic All Year at Home, Ep. 5: St. Joseph appeared first on Catholic All Year.

This episode is all about St. Frances of Rome, a young woman who wanted to dedicate her life to God as a nun. It turned out that God had a bit of a different plan in mind and instead, called her first to be, a wife, mother, and homemaker. Her story was very inspiring to me when I was a young wife, mother, and reluctant homemaker myself.

I hope that through this episode you discover a friend who can pray for you and your family as you all tackle your favorite (and not-so-favorite tasks) around your own home.

Plus you’ll get to hear a little bit about how I was introduced to liturgical living, and learn to make some delicious and simple lenten recipes with your kids!

You can watch the St. Frances of Rome episode exclusively at Formed.org.

Access to all the great Catholic audio and video resources on FORMED is free if your parish has a subscription.

Signing up for FORMED is quick and easy.  Just follow the simple instructions below. 

1. Go to formed.org/signup

2. Search for your parish by Zip Code/ Postal Code. Click on your parish. 

3. Register with your name and email address

4. Check that email account for a link to begin using FORMED

If your parish doesn’t offer FORMED, you can sign up for a free 7-day trial of the individual membership, and if you choose to keep it, it’s just $10 per month.

THIS EPISODE’S RECIPES

St. Frances of Rome – March 9th

Lenten Soft Pretzels

Trashcan Soup Stock

Universal Soup Recipe

Cheese Dipping Sauce

FEATURED PRODUCTS

The Catholic All Year Prayer Companion

St. Frances of Rome Pot Holder

St. Martha and the Dragon Spoon Rest

Feast Day Prep Squad Apron

St. Joseph Folding Yard Stick

Corporal Works of Mercy Print

Liturgical Living Weekly Meal Planner

Missed the last episode?

If you’d like to see more episodes, please consider watching, commenting, and sharing the links with your friends, family members, parish and school/homeschool groups.

We had such fun making these!

Special thanks from me to the awesome CAY at Home team.

• Leo Severino, executive producer, you might know him from Bella (2006) and Sound of Freedom (2022)
• John Haggard, producer and director, also Dean of Students and Faculty at my kids’ school
• Elizabeth Mirzaei, director of photographer/editor, academy award-nominated documentary filmmaker known for Three Songs for Benazir (2021) and also my YouTube videos
• Charley Blum, director of photographer/editor, JP Catholic alum
• Jennifer Rueda, makeup, wardrobe, set design, and fellow homeschool mom
• Keeley Bowler, production manager, also CAY marketing manager and homeschool mom
• Brian Battles, colorist, also visual effects for Star Wars and Star Trek and Transformers movies

They’re all super talented and super Catholic and it’s an honor to collaborate with them on my little show. Have you watched it? I’d love to hear what you think!

The post Catholic All Year at Home, Ep. 4: St. Frances of Rome appeared first on Catholic All Year.

FORMED provides the very best Catholic content to help parishes, families and individuals explore their faith anywhere. Supporting thousands of movies, children’s programs, ebooks, audio, parish programs and studies direct to your browser, mobile or connected device.

Many Catholic churches offer FORMED free to their parishioners, so call your parish office to see if you already have access. If not, you can subscribe for less than $10/month.

The first episode of Catholic All Year at Home is steaming now and it’s all about St. Nicholas Day.

You’ll get to see the kids and I make mulled wine and cider, speculaas cookies, and a Dutch fried meatball pub snack called bitterballen. Also, Bobby cries. #theonionsgothim I’ll share about some of the stories associated with these fun feast day foods, like why St. Nicholas is often pictured with three golden balls and without his mitre.

Most importantly you’ll get to see what actual feast day prep looks like in our kitchen. I hope you’ll be inspired to give it a try in your own home.

St. Nicholas’ Feast Day – December 6th

Complete recipes from this episode are available here:

Speculaas Cookies

Bitterballen

Hot Mulled Wine / Bisschopswijn

Hot Mulled Cider

If you like liturgical living recipes, check out the Catholic All Year Membership. CAY Members get exclusive access to the complete library of hundreds of recipes, organized by month and feast day, plus lots of other liturgical living resources.

We’ve got one more episode of Catholic All Year at Home in post-production right now, for Christmas Eve, so be on the lookout for that one.

If you like the show, please share it with your friends, family members, parish, school, and homeschool communities. We’ve got more episodes planned, but in order to get them greenlit, we need a lot of folks to watch these first two!

You can also find lots more Catholic All Year liturgical living video content on FORMED. Check that out here.

The post Catholic All Year at Home (on FORMED!) appeared first on Catholic All Year.

Here’s how it works . . .

If your kids are dressing up in a Catholic costume for Halloween or All Saints Day share a photo on Instagram and Facebook using #catholiccostume tag @catholicallyear and @kendra_tierney. (If you have a private account, you’ll need to set it to public for the day so I can see your tag.) If you are not a social media type, you can email your photo to me at helpdesk@catholicallyear.com.

We’ll do a round-up post following the close of the contest, which is November 1, 2022 at 11:59PM. Three winners will be selected & announced on November 2!

And now, for the PRIZES:

1. Requiscant In Pace Banner:
   Requiscant In Pace is Latin for “May They Rest In Peace.” Decorate for Hallowtide and the Month of the Holy Souls (November) with this beautiful and meaningful banner. Twenty-one 2.5 x 3.5 inch cards, professionally printed on 110 lb smooth white cardstock, featuring vintage line art illustrations of the Holy Souls and stamped gold foil details. Includes three yards of black waxed cotton string for hanging. 

2. Eternal Rest Candle
Use this candle during the month of November or any time, to remember to pray for the souls of beloved friends and family members who have passed away, and for all the holy souls in purgatory, especially those who have no one else to pray for them. Burn it daily during prayer time or dinner. Following the instructions for use below, the candle will burn for about 40 hours. 

Catholic All Year Handmade Candles are 100% beeswax + essential oils + natural resin incense. 9 ounce amber glass jar, wooden wick, black metal screw-on lid.

3. Memento Mori Hat
You will be the first to get one of our brand new Memento Mori embroidered hats! This is a special edition Catholic All Year item.

4. $100 CAY Gift Card
Treat yourself (or a friend) with a $100 CAY gift card! Grab that subscription box or a membership that you’ve had your eye on for sometime.

5. Eternal Rest Wooden Sign

This Eternal Rest sign was handmade in our VA warehouse. “Eternal Rest, grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.”

Don’t want to wait to see if you win to grab some Hallowtide items for yourself? We are also happy to refund the winners for a previous purchase.

The post The Catholic All Year Costume Contest is BACK! appeared first on Catholic All Year.

I’ve written about family movie nights before, see that post here. I think it’s been a really important part of establishing our family culture to watch movies together as a family. It gives us shared experiences and common points of reference and inside jokes. As a general rule—at any time of the year—I avoid letting my kids watch kid movies that are so insipid that I couldn’t sit through them, and the grown ups in our family avoid movies that are so racy or violent that we wouldn’t want our teens to see them. We will sometimes watch a shorter kids’ movie as a whole family, then put little kids to bed, then watch something a bit edgier with just the older kids. But in our family, the main goal of movie-watching is family togetherness. And that’s especially true for us at Christmas time.

I spent the month of November (that’s BEFORE Advent, so it’s okay ) previewing Christmas movies on various streaming platforms in the hopes of adding some new movies to our rotation. This post is a roundup of what I thought about the best of those, plus our family favorites . . . 

ANIMATED SHORTS & MOVIES

The Small One (1978, Disney+, 0:25, TV-PG)

The Small One is a classic Jungle Book-era Disney animated short film. It’s sweet and fun and has catchy, if not-always-relevant-to-the-plot musical numbers. And, spoiler alert, it’s got the Baby Jesus at the end.

Illumination Presents: Dr. Seuss’ the Grinch (2018, Amazon, 1:26, PG)

We all love the 1966 classic version and most of us hate the 2000 live action version. IMHO this version is the best. Religious carols. Hilarious a capella group part. Not the usual bad guy backstory. I love this take on the Grinch. He isn’t the terror of the town. The whos shrug off his antisocial behavior. He’s isolated by his own hurt and his own choices. So accurate. All he has to do is get out of his own way to learn to love his fellow man, er, who. 

Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983, Disney+, 0:26, G)

This is a surprisingly good version of A Christmas Carol. I’ve watched quite a few and they have always been too badly animated, or too badly musical, or too frantic for my taste. So, even though this one is very short, and takes quite a few liberties with the plot, I’ve always really liked it. As have my kids. We love how familiar characters are cast in the story and how it manages to get Dickens’s message of redemption across with humor. There are some slightly scary parts, but it’s Goofy as the ghost of Marley, and Pete as the undertaker, so I really think all but the most sensitive kiddos would be okay with it. It’s a good starter version.

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992, Disney+, 1:26, G)

The Mickey one is a good version. But this one is my favorite. By a landslide. It’s the Muppets, so, like Mickey’s version, we’ve got familiar faces in the roles, but in this version we also get great songs, top notch live actors, and a VERY faithful adaptation of the book, complete with actual quotes. I actually think this version is also a little less scary than the Mickey one, but its more sophisticated plot may be more difficult for little kids to understand. But they won’t mind, because they’ll be watching Kermit. (P.S. it’s not animated, it’s puppets and live action, but I made the executive decision to list it here. 🙂 )

Klaus (2019, Netflix, 1:38, PG)

An amusing (if mistaken) origin story of Santa. Great visuals, great voice acting, sweet message, gentle reference to an afterlife.

Alien X-mas (2020, Netflix, 0:42, TV-Y)

Amazing claymation, a sweet (if secular) message of love and giving, and a Santa who wields candy cane nunchucks in “The Battle for Christmastown.” It’s awesome. (Violence is limited to snowballs and automatic ribbon machines.)

Prep & Landing (2009, Disney+, 0:22, TV-G) & (2010, Disney+, 0:07, TV-G)

These Pixar shorts feature the elves who get houses ready for Santa’s visit. 2009 & 2010 are cute and unobjectionable. (We skip the 2011 one since the plot of that one centers around hating the new baby, then deciding that you like the new baby. That’s not a concept I support.)

Rankin Bass Stop Motion Christmas Movies

We have many of these on DVD and really like them, but they’re unfortunately not easily available now, either for purchase or streaming.

DON’T RECOMMEND

Angela’s Christmas (2018, Netflix, 0:30, TV-Y)

I much prefer to shine a light on good entertainment rather than point out bad, but . . . I think this deserves to be the exception. Angela and the Baby Jesus is my favorite book in our Advent/Christmas book collection. Our Christmases have been improved by the phrase, “His mother will be roarin’ an’ bawlin.’” The book is sweet and funny and poignant. The Netflix show . . . not so much.

I wanted to like it. Really I did. But its heart is all wrong. In the book, Angela’s brother Pat tells their mother of Angela’s transgression for just the reasons we tell our kids they should tattle: because something is dangerous or destructive. In the show, he’s a taunting little bully who terrorizes his sister constantly and tries to push her into traffic and can’t wait to tell on her.

In the book, the policeman makes a good natured joke to the priest about the Limerick jail, to which the priest doesn’t even reply. In the show, the noble policeman must talk the priest out of his apparent intention to throw a small child into prison . . . just like her poor father had been, traumatizing everyone. It’s just preposterous.

There’s other stuff, but I won’t bore you with more. Just, please get the book. It’s darling.

OLD-TIMEY CLASSICS FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY

White Christmas (1954, Netflix, 2:00, TV-G)

It’s got war and slapstick for the boys and dancing and romance for the girls, how could you go wrong? It’s mostly just an excuse for a bunch of musical numbers, but there is a sweet story of helping out an old buddy woven in there. Plus Phil tells Bob that what he really needs to do is get married and have nine kids. 

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946, Prime, 2:10, PG)

We often watch the Veggie Tales version of this story AND the classic black and white version. I HOPE my kids prefer this one, but it’s hard to tell. There are a lot of sweet, funny moments, and the message is timeless. Its theology about angels is, um, how to put this . . . totally wrong. But we just explain to our kids that people don’t become angels when they die anymore than cockroaches become horses when they die, and then we enjoy the movie. Hee-haw and Merry Christmas!

The Bishop’s Wife (1947, Prime, 1:50, TV-G)

Though centered on a Protestant Bishop and his wife and daughter, it’s a more theologically Catholic take on a movie featuring an angel who intervenes in human affairs. He’s not a person who became an angel, which is nice since that isn’t possible. I like how everyone around him is simultaneously drawn to and confounded by him. That seems accurate! It’s not as funny as It’s a Wonderful Life, though.

The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945, DVD, 2:06, NR)

The second Bing Crosby movie on the list (White Christmas), we also love this classic sequel to Going My Way. It’s very funny and very Catholic, and features an adorable Christmas pageant, which makes it appropriate for the season. It would be worth watching just to hear Bing Crosby singing as Fr. O’Malley, but you also get Ingrid Bergman as Mother Superior teaching a little boy to box. And there’s a grumpy rich old coot and the sisters’ blind faith in miracles, and it’s all just lovely. It’s slower than today’s movies, of course, but my kids really think it’s funny.

Come to the Stable (1949, Amazon, 1:34, NR)

Like It’s a Wonderful Life and The Bishop’s Wife, Come to the Stable seems VERY like The Bells of St. Mary’s. Come to the Stable has the advantage of being based on a very sweet true story of two French religious sisters who came to a small New England town and involve the townsfolk in helping them to build a children’s hospital. But it has the disadvantage of not having Bing Crosby for its random song insertions or quite as much humor.

EIGHTIES TO OUGHTS LIVE ACTION MOVIES

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (1983, YouTube 0:48)

Not Catholic, but a sweet and very religious faithful TV adaptation of a favorite Christmas book.

The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe (2005, Disney+, 2:27, PG)

I love these books. They are such a lovely mix of adventure, fantasy, and allegory. I think the movie adaptations from the oughts are well-cast and enjoyable. The Father Christmas cameo makes this one a Christmas movie in my book!

A Christmas Story (1983, Amazon, 1:33, PG)

Our whole family loves this movie, but perhaps we shouldn’t. The dad uses gibberish words instead of actual swear words, but there are a handful of lesser but still significant bad words in there. It’s got the infamous leg lamp, which Ralphie caresses. The department store Santa is mean, and Ralphie is pretty convinced that the meaning of Christmas is Getting Stuff. Still, somehow, it seems fun and funny and lighthearted, and the family is loving. We’re going to watch it again this year, but it’s okay with me if you don’t.

Home Alone (1990, Disney+, 1:43, PG)

This one is another Tierney family favorite, but maybe not for everyone. It has some language, an unpleasant family fight right at the beginning, and a very brief scene of Kevin finding and tossing aside an adult magazine. (Nothing that a quick trigger finger on the remote can’t handle.) It also has an extraordinary amount of comic slapstick violence that results in very nasty looking injuries. BUT. The soundtrack is perfect, the kid is brave and resourceful, and there is a message of forgiveness and redemption and the importance of family. There are beautiful scenes involving a Catholic church, in which a character listens to his granddaughter’s choir sing Christmas carols, and Kevin hides from the bad guys in a life-size nativity scene. 

I screened the new Home Sweet Home Alone and it’s trying really hard to check all the boxes of the original, so it’s got sickening slapstick violence and even a scene in church, but it’s just not as charming and the “accidental bad guys” angle just didn’t do it for me.

Elf (2003, Amazon, 1:36, PG)

It’s really funny, for sure, and the overall messages of making time for family and learning to find your place in the world are great. But in my house this is a teens and up movie. Out of wedlock secret pregnancy, paternity tests, and lingerie are not things I want to discuss with my littles.

Joyeux Noel (2006, Amazon, 1:56, PG-13)

A bleak look at war, but a heartwarming take on the stories of enemy combatants in WWI coming together to celebrate a trench-style Christmas. Dialog is in French, English, and German, with subtitles. There’s a nudity-free sex scene between a married couple that we don’t need to see, so we jump past that part. For older teens and up.

Die Hard (1988, Amazon, 2:12, R)

It’s a well done action film. It’s not very Christmassy. But it’s okay with me if you want to call it a Christmas movie. Utterly pointless brief topless scenes (because the eighties) that can be jumped through, very bloody violence. Pro-marriage. For older teens and up.

CHRISTMAS ROM-COMS

This is a whole genre now, as I’m sure you’re aware. Christmas rom-coms have a deserved reputation for being poorly acted and poorly written, but, ya know what, some of them are fun to watch anyway. I think it’s good to celebrate romance and happy endings. We avoid rom-coms that feature divorce or living together as a plot point.  

While You Were Sleeping (1995, Disney+, 1:43, PG)

A movie from my youth that I can actually show my kids! Very sweet and old-timey romantic and definitely at Christmas time, though it’s not really about that. It’s rated PG, but because of mild references to adult situations, I think it’s more appropriate for teens and up. I love the message of appreciating family as they are. Bonus: They are Catholic and go to Mass and there’s a priest to perform the wedding.

A Christmas Prince (2017, Netflix, 1:32, PG)

Probably the most sophisticated of the Netflix Christmas rom-coms (not a super sophisticated bunch). Fun, sweet, family-appropriate, and features more interesting characters than I expected. And all the chaste romance and Christmas decorations you’d want. The sequels get progressively dumber and have subtle nods to less appropriate content.

The Princess Switch (2018, Netflix, 1:42, TV-G)

A Christmas/fairy tale version of the Prince & the Pauper. There are some plot holes, but overall it’s cute and sweet. There’s a “hubba hubba” shirtless guy scene. Hey, how about we all agree it was inappropriate to objectify women’s bodies in the movies of my childhood and it’s inappropriate to objectify men’s bodies in movies now? Could we just NOT? Anyway, the two sequels introduce a third doppelgänger with a troubling worldview and really bothersome accent and mannerisms. They’re not making it into our rotation, even though the third one features a bishop (who isn’t the bad guy , shocking, I know) and some sort of relic of St. Nicholas, but it’s just all dumber than it needs to be.

The Knight Before Christmas (2019, Netflix, 1:32, TV-14)

This one isn’t even trying to make sense, plot-wise. And it really confuses things in the Netflix Christmas Cinematic Universe (NCCU) by introducing a fourth character who looks exactly like Vanessa Hudgens. But it’s sweet and romantic and there’s a focus on honor and virtue, which is nice. (If only also faith!)

Christmas Catch (2018, Netflix, 1:26, TV-G)

My girls get a kick out of the hilariously awkward heroine. It breaks my rule against divorcee rom-coms, but we are pretty sure he could qualify for an annulment.

A Very Country Christmas 2017 Netflix, 1:24 (TV-G)

A sweet, chaste romance featuring a widowed mother, a fun gramma, a cute kid, getting back to one’s roots, and a lot of country music. Also a shirtless guy scene. Argh.

12 Dates of Christmas 2011, Disney+, 1:26 (PG)

Groundhog Day . . . but make it Christmas and Andie MacDowell is the guy from Saved by the Bell. Predictable, but aren’t they all? And she learns some good lessons and even goes to midnight Mass a couple times, so that’s good!

Some Notes:

1. These movies are mostly secular. Ideally, a list of Christmas movies would feature a lot of religious movies, right? Right. However, while I don’t mind correcting secular movie misconceptions about St. Nicholas/Santa Claus, I find the misrepresentations in religious Christmas movies to be more problematic and just, generally, bothersome to me. I know there are religious Christmas movies out there. I have previewed most of them. In my experience, they all get Mary wrong. They all show the Three Wisemen arriving on Christmas day. It. Bugs. Me. So, we read the story of Jesus’ birth from the gospel, we go to Mass, we do a family Nativity Play. There’s no question in our house as to the “reason for the season.” But the majority of Christmas movies we watch are secular.
2. In keeping with the whole “if you don’t have anything nice to say . . .” thing, if I didn’t like a movie, I just didn’t include it here. (There is one exception, but I just really wanted to warn you about that one.)
3. I’ve tried to note instances of language, violence, or racy-ness that I remembered, but I’m sure I missed a few. IMBD.com has a very helpful and detailed “parents guide” section at the bottom of their information about movies. I highly recommend checking that out before watching these or any family movies, since your screening priorities might be different than mine.

The post A Christmas Family Movie Night appeared first on Catholic All Year.

For many years, creating awesome costumes with my kids for our annual All Saints’ Day Pageant has been a whole family affair. We’ve had a homemade suit of armor for St. Joan of Arc, and arrows for St. Sebastian. We’ve had nuns, and princesses, and peasants, and viking kings. My all time favorites have been two takes on headless saints: Saint John the Baptist’s head on a platter, and St. Denis, carrying his own head.

I love coming up with costumes that can do double duty for Halloween and All Saints’ Day, sometimes as the saint, sometimes with a few tweaks to become something different. Check out the MANY saint costume posts on the blog for more ideas . . .

Over 150 All-Saints Day Costumes for Kids

Over 150 MORE All Saints Day Costumes for Kids

Last Minute Twofer Costumes for Halloween AND All Saints Day

More Twofer Costumes for Halloween and All Saints

I love making complicated All Saints’ Day costumes. I always like say that my motto is: Anything worth doing is worth overdoing. But I also like to say that you don’t have to overdo things to bring the Catholic faith into your home and family life. So today I’d like to show you how to create simple, fun, recognizable saint costumes for little kids out of t-shirts. All you have to do is find a familiar image of the saint from art or a photograph or a holy card. Keep in mind that saints, just like all of us, had varied lives. Feel free to represent your saint from whichever era of his life will be easiest. And don’t forget props! Saints have traditional attributes that are usually found in representations of them. Having a prop can really make the costume. So, look at your image, grab a few t-shirts in the right colors, make a few snips with scissors where necessary, use safety pins and rubber bands if needed, add a prop or two to represent the saints’ attributes, and you’re done! 

The shirts I used are mostly adult extra large t-shirt from a craft store, and that’s also where most of the props came from. You can also use shirts from the thrift store or old shirts from around the house. Just turn anything with graphics inside out. The costumes you’ll see here, buying new t-shirts and some props, and using some things we had around the house, cost an average of fifteen dollars each.

Let’s get to it! Here’s the video version:

And here are the details:

1. Saint Elizabeth of Hungary

• White t-shirt tunic
• White t-shirt veil
• Red t-shirt over-dress
• Metallic gold (or regular) duct tape circlet and belt
• Optional accessories/attributes: bread, roses

Cuts & taping: on the red shirt, cut the sleeves off with a scalloped edge to make the over-dress. Tear a 2 foot piece of duct tape. Fold it in half lengthwise to create a thin doubled 2 foot piece for the circlet.

Assembly: put on white tunic, put on red over-dress, use a long strip of tape to belt the over-dress above the waist. Add veil. Wrap the doubled tape around the forehead and secure with a piece of tape in the back. Add accessories.

2. Saint Patrick

• White t-shirt tunic
• Green t-shirt cape
• Optional accessories/attributes: green pipe cleaner shamrock, staff, toy snakes, green bishop’s mitre (can be made from cardstock, a craft foam sheet, or poster board)

Cuts: on the green shirt, make a trapezoid-shaped cut from the front (leaving the collar band intact) to make his cape

Assembly: put on white tunic, add green cape. Add accessories.

3. Saint Brigid

• Green t-shirt tunic
• White t-shirt toque (head covering)
• Black t-shirt veil
• Optional accessories/attributes: green pipe cleaner reed cross, staff

Assembly: put on green tunic, add white toque. The face should look out the head hole. Fold up the bottom of the white and gather most of it to the back, add the black veil on top. Fold the pipe cleaners into a St. Brigid Cross. Add accessories.

4. St. John the Baptist

• Brown t-shirt tunic
• Green t-shirt wrap
• Optional accessories/attributes: head on a platter, honey, crickets, shell

Cuts: On the brown shirt, make jagged cuts on the bottom & sleeve edges. On the green shirt, cut 1 foot off of the bottom (shorter than the brown shirt.) Cut off left sleeve with a straight cut about 2 feet long. Cut off right sleeve and collar with a diagonal cut.

Assembly: put on brown tunic, add green wrap, add accessories

5. Saint Mary Magdalene

• Off-white t-shirt tunic
• Red t-shirt cape
• Burgundy t-shirt veil
• Optional accessories/attributes: jar, egg

Cuts: on the red shirt, make a trapezoid-shaped cut from the front (leaving the collar band intact) to make her cape

Assembly: put on off-white shirt, add red cape, add burgundy veil. Add accessories.

6. Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta

• 3 white t-shirts (tunic, wrap, & veil)
• 1” wide blue painter’s tape 
• Optional attributes/accessories: Rosary, crucifix, safety pins

CUTS & TAPING: On shirt 1 (tunic) add tape all around the bottom edge. On shirt 2 (wrap), cut off left sleeve with a straight cut about 2 feet long. Cut off right sleeve and collar with a diagonal cut. Cut about 1 foot off of the bottom. Add a stripe of tape to the newly cut edges. Shirt 3 is the veil. (Add tape to that one later.)

Note: cut lengths of tape into 4 very thin strips lengthwise and add two thin stripes with each thick stripe for a more realistic look, but a more challenging project.

Assembly: put on white tunic, add veil, add wrap, pinning if necessary to keep it on the shoulder. Add a stripe of tape to the veil around the forehead. Add accessories.

7. Saint Pope John Paul II

• White t-shirt tunic
• White t-shirt pellegrina, fascia, and zucchetto
• Red t-shirt cape
• Optional accessories/attributes: crucifix, rosary, red shoes

Cuts: On 1 white shirt, make a rounded cut, shortening it to about 1 foot long from the collar and cutting off the sleeves. Make a trapezoid-shaped cut from the front (leaving collar band intact) to make the small cape. Cut a 3 inch band from the bottom of the shirt and cut one edge to make a long strip for the fascia (sash belt). Not pictured in the video: Cut off one sleeve. Turn it inside out and gather the cut edge, use a small rubber band to secure it. Turn it right side out. This is your zucchetto (skullcap).

Assembly: put on white tunic, add fascia, wrapping it around the upper waist, feeding one long end through the waist loop and laying it down flat. Add pellegrina, add zucchetto, add red cape. Add accessories.

8. Saint Joan of Arc

• Gray long sleeve t-shirt tunic
• White t-shirt overlay
• Red tape cross
• Silver duct tape helmet, cuffs, and belt
• Optional accessories/attributes: sword & shield

Cuts & taping: Cut straight down each side of the white t-shirt, cutting off the sleeve and going to the bottom. Leave the collar intact. Cut a scalloped edge across the bottom. Add a red tape cross or fleur di lis to the front and back center. Tear off a 2 foot piece of duct tape, fold it in half to create a 1 foot doubled piece.  

Assembly: put on gray shirt tunic, leaving it over the head as a covering. The face should look out the head hole. Place a piece of duct tape around the head on top of the shirt to keep it up. Use tape to secure the doubled piece of tape across the forehead as a visor. Use duct tape to make wrist guards (and keep the sleeves up). Gather the shirt at each side of the neck and secure with a 3 inch piece of tape on each side. Place the overlay over the tunic. Add tape belt, add accessories.

9. Saint George

• Gray long sleeve t-shirt tunic
• White t-shirt overshirt
• Red tape
• Silver tape
• Optional accessories/attributes: sword & shield, dragon 

Cuts & taping: Cut straight down each side of the white t-shirt, cutting off sleeve and opening the sides to waist-length. Leave the bottom sides intact. Add a red tape cross to the front and back center. Tear off a 2 foot piece of duct tape, fold it in half to create a 1 foot doubled piece. This will be the visor of his armor.

Assembly: put on gray shirt tunic, leaving it over the head as a covering. The face should look out the head hole. Place a piece of duct tape around the head on top of the shirt to keep it up. Use tape to secure the doubled piece of tape across the forehead as a visor. Use tape to make wrist guards (and keep the sleeves up). Gather the shirt at each side of the neck and secure with a 3 inch piece of tape on each side. Place the overlay over the tunic. Add accessories.

10. Saint Joseph

• Brown t-shirt tunic
• Green t-shirt cape
• White t-shirt head covering
• Optional accessories/attributes: lilies (usually white), staff, hammer, carpenter’s square, dragon

Cuts & taping: On the green shirt, make a trapezoid-shaped cut from the front (leaving the collar band intact) to make his cape. Tape lilies to the end of the staff.

Assembly: put on brown tunic, add green cape, add white head covering, tie the sleeves in the back. Add accessories.

11. Mary (Our Lady of Grace)

• White t-shirt tunic
• Blue t-shirt cape & belt
• White t-shirt veil

Cuts: On the blue shirt, cut a 2 inch strip from the bottom and cut one edge to create a belt. Make a trapezoid-shaped cut from the front (leaving the collar band intact) to make her cape.

Assembly: put on white shirt, add blue belt, add blue cape, add white veil

12. Saint Nicholas

• Red t-shirt tunic
• Off-white t-shirt pallium 
• Black tape

Optional accessories: beard, fancy book, money bag, three gold balls, three little boys in a barrel (if you happen to have little triplets about . . . Rebecca Gorzynska).

CUTS: On off-white shirt, cut a thick curved capital Y shape pallium, keeping the top of the Y connected at the shoulders. Add black tape crosses to the pallium.

Assembly: put on white tunic, add pallium. Add accessories. 

13. Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

• 3 black t-shirts (capelet & bow, veil, tunic)
• Optional accessories/attributes: cross, pocketwatch

CUTS: 

On shirt 1, cut the capelet by making a rounded cut 1 foot away from the collar and cutting off the sleeves. On the same shirt, cut a 3 inch band from the bottom and cut one edge to make a long strip. (Or use wide black ribbon for this.)

Assembly: put on black tunic, add black capelet, tie a large bow with the shirt-strip around the neck, add black veil. Add accessories.

14. Saint John Vianney

• Black t-shirt tunic and collar
• White t-shirt cassock
• Green t-shirt stole 
• Accessories: crucifix, rosary

Cuts: On the black shirt, under the collar band, cut two rectangular flaps about 4” long On the green shirt, make a continuous cut from the bottom edge of the left front (lined up with the left side of the collar), over the left shoulder, across the back yoke just at the edge of the collar, and down the right side. Make a second cut 3-4 inches away from the first to create a 3-4 inch wide stole.

Assembly: put on black tunic, put white shirt over, pull the two rectangular collar pieces out and lay them on top of the white cassock. Place stole over shoulders. Add accessories.

15. Saint Bernadette

• Burgundy t-shirt tunic
• Blue t-shirt apron
• Yellow t-shirt wrap
• Off white t-shirt veil
• Optional attributes/accessories: Rosary, safety pins

Cuts: On the yellow shirt, cut off the sleeves & straight down each side to the bottom. Make a straight cut from top to bottom. 

Assembly: put on burgundy shirt, layer the wrap on top of the tunic crossing the ends in front. Put the apron over and tie or pin it in the back. Add veil, add accessories.

16. Saint Benedict

• Black t-shirt tunic
• Black t-shirt hooded cape
• White t-shirt beard
• Optional accessories: staff, fancy book, crow, safety pins if needed

Cuts: On 1 black shirt, cut down the center front for the hooded cape(not pictured). On white shirt, leaving neck band intact cut a long wavy beard. 

Assembly: put on black shirt, placing neck band over the top of the head as a strap, put on t-shirt beard, drape hooded cape on top of head and over shoulders. Secure cape to tunic at shoulders with safety pins if needed. Add accessories.

17. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

• Brown t-shirt tunic
• White t-shirt toque (head covering)
• Off-white t-shirt cape
• Black veil
• Optional accessories/attributes: roses, crucifix

Cuts: On the cream shirt, make a trapezoid-shaped cut from the front (leaving the collar band intact) to make her cape

Assembly: put on brown tunic, add white toque. The face should look out the head hole. Fold up the bottom of the white and gather most of it to the back, add the black veil on top. Add accessories.

18. Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina

• Brown t-shirt tunic
• Brown t-shirt cowl
• Rope belt
• Optional accessories/attributes: 4 bandaids, one for each side of his hands, or black fingerless gloves, a twin (for bilocating Padre Pio)

Cuts: On 1 brown shirt, make a rounded cut, shortening it to 1 foot long from the collar and cutting off the sleeves to make his cowl. Cut a 6-8 foot length of rope. Tie three large knots 6 inches apart on one end.

Assembly: put on brown tunic, add cowl. Leaving the knotted end long, wrap the rope twice around the waist and tie. Add accessories.

19. Saint Francis of Assisi

• Brown t-shirt tunic
• Brown t-shirt cowl
• Rope belt
• Optional accessories/attributes: bird, tonsure

Cut: on 1 brown shirt, make a rounded cut, shortening it to about 1 foot long from the collar and cutting off the sleeves to make his cowl. Cut a 6-8 foot length of rope. Tie three large knots 6 inches apart on one end.

Assembly: put on brown tunic, add cowl. Leaving the knotted end long, wrap the rope twice around the waist and tie. Add accessories and, for maximum commitment . . . a haircut.

20. Saint Lucy

• White t-shirt tunic
• Red t-shirt cape & belt
• Optional attributes/accessories: dish of eyes (table tennis balls + paint pens), palm (leftover from Palm Sunday), wreath of branches + candles

Cuts: On red shirt, cut 2 inch strip from the bottom & cut one edge to create a belt. Make a trapezoid-shaped cut from the front (leaving collar band intact) to make her cape

Assembly: put on white shirt, add red belt, add red cape, add accessories

That’s it!

I hope you’re inspired to try one of these costumes or come up with one of your own.

Stay tuned to the end of the YouTube video for this month’s 25% off book recommendations!

How Saints Die: 100 Stories of Hope

Saints: Becoming an Image of Christ Every Day of the Year

Catholic Saints for Children

Get 25% off these three books at Ignatius.com through November 2021 with the code CAY1121

by @Ignatius_Press

by Elizabeth Mirzaei

CAY products featured in the video:

RIP Banner

Eternal Rest Candle

2022 Thirteen-Month Liturgical Year Wall Calendar

2022 DIY Patron Saints Poster

You can find out more about liturgical living in the home and throwing an All Saint’s Day pageant in the Catholic All Year Compendium

And find prayers and scripture readings for All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls Day in the Catholic All Year Prayer Companion

Get printable liturgical living resources for November with a Catholic All Year Membership

Get the Catholic All November prayer booklets here

Now Available! Limited Edition Advent Resources

The post 20 Easy Saint Costumes Made of T-Shirts! appeared first on Catholic All Year.

So, here’s what I’ve got to tell you about . . .

The Catholic All Year Liturgical Living Weekly Meal Planner

I’ve been making attempts at creating a Catholic meal planner for years. Seriously. And they just never seemed quite right. Until now. I finally think THIS meal planner setup is one that’s going to be useful for many years to come.

It has undated weekly pages with the liturgical seasons, a place for notes, and a tear-away shopping list. In the back it has a list of all the feast days on the universal liturgical calendar along with a bit of information to inspire your meal planning, like a country or particular foods with which the saint is associated.

It’s available as a printable PDF now, or for preorder as a beautiful, sturdy, hardcover, wire-bound, 6.5 x 8.5 inch, lay-flat book including 54 weekly pages plus the calendar of feasting and fasting in the back.

Why preorder?

Because if we learned anything from the subscription box launch, it’s that I am not great at estimating interest in things. I hoped we’d sell 50, maybe 100 boxes. And I had to shut it down at 450 because we had NO PLAN for being able to fulfill that many orders. (We are now set for the first box and working on figuring out how to open more spots.) So, if you don’t mind ordering now and waiting a while to receive your order, I’ll hopefully be able to get the correct number of books printed. I really think you guys are going to love it. The moms at my parkday liked the prototype. And they’re vicious. (#thatwasajoke)

A hardcover copy of the planner is included in the Praying and Planning Level Membership and above. And if you sign up before March 2021 you’ll also get the PDF version AND a sweet liturgical year recipe binder. That cute engraved pencil on the right is part of the thank you pen and pencil set early sign up bonus for the Benefactor Level. (It says “I am a little pencil in the hand of God. -St. Teresa of Calcutta”)

New Wooden Devotional Sets are Coming

I’m in the midst of trying to set up a more practical solution for creating my wooden devotional sets than me cutting them on a laser cutter in my guest room twenty hours a day and having my kids peel the masking off while watching TV. Fun, yes. But not sustainable in the long term.

This is the Tabletop Stations of the Cross. Fourteen stations on two panels, with engraved images from an 1898 Roman Missal and fourteen 100% beeswax tea light candles.

This is a Tenebrae Hearse Candelabra. A bit more obscure, I know, but we started doing a short at-home version of the beautiful Tenebrae Holy Week liturgy last year and really loved it. Read more about it in this post. I think you’d love it too. It can be done with any fifteen candles, but you guys know my policy re: overdoing things. #imforit

The stations should be available for purchase next week, and the tenebrae set will be available in mid-March.

My hope is that by next year, I’ll be able to offer the Jesse Tree Sets and these new sets to everyone who would like one. But we aren’t there yet. Right now it’s just me and my new laser-sidekick Ashley. We are working hard, but I doubt we will be able to meet demand.

People with a Catholic All Year Membership will get early access to limited-edition product releases.

Catholic All Year Membership

Here’s a video I made yesterday wherein I explain the whats and whys of a Catholic All Year Membership, and Barbara makes funny faces and tries really REALLY hard to get her thumb into her nose.

Recipe Keeper Binder

I created this binder for myself to try to keep my liturgical year recipes organized as I work on a Catholic All Year cookbook.

Then I realized that it’s a great complement to a bunch of the products I’ve launched this week. You can keep the PDF meal planner in it if you got that in the Catholic Mom Bundle or as a membership bonus or on its own. You can keep the monthly recipe packets in there if you have a Praying and Planning Membership. You can store the 5×7 recipe cards that come in the Subscription Boxes in it with these add-on sleeves. And you can, like I did, cram all your internet liturgical year recipe print outs in there, helpfully sorted by liturgical season.

Get one here. It’s got my favorite liturgical calendar-themed quote on the cover.

The feasts! What precious memories these simple words bring to me. I loved them; and my sisters knew so well how to explain the mysteries hidden in each one. Those days of earth became days of Heaven. –St. Therese of Lisieux

And that’s what’s new around here this week. I hope it will be helpful!

One more thing to add:

Babies and Dreams

*I didn’t realize at the time how meaningful it would be to have done the launches THIS week. Emily, with whom I started the subscription boxes, pointed out on IG that this has really been a #babiesanddreams moment for us. A week ago, the behind the scenes tech stuff for the memberships and subscriptions was finished on Friday afternoon. Saturday was the anniversary of the Roe v Wade decision, and the day of prayer, so we decided to wait until Sunday to launch everything.

The launch was a success beyond what we had hoped for, and beyond what we can really even handle. But that means we are hiring more help, which is such a cool thing to be able to do. I’ve got three women on this team helping me right now: Emily, Grace, and Ashley, and all three of them are pregnant! #theresacatholicjokeintheresomewhere We are pushing hard to get things set up now, before everyone takes some well-deserved time off, but other friends and family members are stepping in to help as needed, and it’s really just such a cool thing to be in a position where we can not only provide a product that people are very excited about, but also help provide for our families, and do it with our babies and because of our babies. So, thanks for making that possible for us.

The post I Learned some Stuff from this Product Launch Week: Books and Boxes and Binders and Babies and Dreams appeared first on Catholic All Year.

Subscription Boxes

Limited-Edition Catholic All Year Subscription Boxes are here.

Note: I shared about the subscription boxes on social media this morning and I couldn’t believe the response! We sold five times what we were hoping to do on our first day. I kept almost closing down the subscriptions, but I wanted to make sure that people who aren’t on social media had a chance to subscribe as well, so here we are! But if you’re interested, please do subscribe today, because we are a two-woman operation and these boxes are a limited-edition offering and I’ll be closing subscriptions soon.

My goal has always been to make liturgical living in the home fun and meaningful and accessible and doable for busy Catholics. I want to bring the rich history and traditions of the Church to people in a way that fits into modern life. I love sharing the fun, simple ways that we observe and reinvent decor, foods, and feast day traditions. But I know that it can still feel intimidating, and reading through a chapter in The Catholic All Year Compendium might leave someone wondering how to even begin to collect the resources I’ve spent nearly two decades putting together for liturgical living with my family.

So when Emily Tate of the gift box company Pillar and Pearl contacted me about creating a liturgical year box subscription, saying yes was, for me, the work of a moment. These boxes are a real passion project for the both of us, with high-quality, carefully-selected items sourced from Catholic makers, discovered in unlikely places, and handmade by us.

The first box is for Lent. Others will follow for the Triduum, Easter, Ordinary Time after Pentecost, Advent, Christmas, and Ordinary Time after the Baptism of the Lord. They include things like home decor, textiles, art, jewelry, beauty items, devotional items, plants, simple crafts and DIY items, recipe cards, and more. They are designed to be useful to women of all ages and for those with and without children.

I just can’t tell you how excited I am that we can deliver these amazing faith resources to your home, so you can be prepared to celebrate the beauty of each liturgical season with your family and friends.

The Lent Box includes:
A Memento Mori Print, Lent Countdown Sheet & Stickers, an Alleluia Sign to Bury, Burlap & Purple Fabric, a Crucifix with Purple Covering, DIY Succulent Planting, Crown of Thorns & Nails, a Shamrock Bracelet, Litany of St. Joseph, Cream Puffs Recipe Card, Shepherd’s Pie Recipe Card, and an Angelus Prayer Cling

Get all the details and sign up here.

Catholic Mom Bundle Lent 2021

It’s that time again! I’ve been participating in these twice-yearly Catholic Mom Bundle sales for four years now. I really see them as an opportunity for me to get to discover and share new Catholic resources, Catholic makers, and Catholic small businesses with you guys. You get to try out digital products from 22 different creators, for 93% off the list prices. It’s pretty great all around.

The bundle is available for 5 days only, through Friday, Jan. 29. Every year, I get emails from people disappointed that they missed it. Don’t let that be you!

My contribution to this year’s bundle is something I’ve been trying to make for many years now: a Liturgical Living Weekly Meal Planner. I attempted many different designs and approaches over the years and never felt like I had it right, until now. I’m genuinely so excited about it, and it’s already proved a useful resource in my home. I can’t wait for you guys to try it!

The weekly planner pages include a place to circle the liturgical season, lines for jotting down meals for each day of the week, and a shopping list to cut and take to the store with you. Also, they’re undated. That means having a frozen pizza and leftovers week or going out of town doesn’t mean “wasting” dated pages. Fill out the weeks as you go. Skip when you want to. Zero judgement from the planner.

You’ll also get pages listing all the feast days on the universal liturgical calendar, plus all the saints’ days mentioned in the CAY Compendium. They are included with a bit of information to inspire your meal planning—like a country or foods with which the saint or day is associated. Also included are lines to jot down your family members’ special days (like birthdays, namedays, and baptismal anniversaries) and any other important recipes, holy days, holidays, and anniversaries you want to remember when meal planning.

There are so many other great printable resources included in the bundle: coloring pages for kids and teens, homeschool resources, Lenten traditions for families, health and wellness and prayer programs for moms, embroidery patterns and peg doll wraps, and super cute Valentines. Don’t miss it!

See everything that’s included and get the bundle here.

The Catholic All Year Membership

I’m not sure how many people even know about it, since I did a pretty lousy job of promoting it, and never even got around to putting a link to it on the blog, but for the past eight months, I’ve had an amazing core group of supporters over on Patreon. I’ve been creating monthly printable liturgical year resources for them, and sending them physical copies of my new books and calendars. It’s been lovely, and I’m so grateful for those patrons. But it felt like time to move off of someone else’s platform and reach more of my own people, so I’m happy to announce that all of the monthly resources offered to those first patrons and MORE are now available right here at Catholic All Year.

There are three levels of membership, and they’ll get you access to things like monthly dated clipart calendars and saint summaries, Catholic quote posters, yearly wall calendars, revised monthly prayer booklets, discounts on ALL digital listings in the shop, exclusive all-new liturgically-inspired recipe packets, physical copies of new books, and a super cool bonuses if you sign up before 3/1.

I’ll be closing my Patreon account at the end of February, so if you’ve been a member over there, please cancel that membership and join us here!

See which level is right for you here.

I hope some or all of these resources will be helpful to you, but if you’re not feeling them or it’s just not the right time, please know I am 100% fine with that! Blog posts and my Liturgical Living Heads Up Newsletter (which you can sign up for in the “subscribe for my latest content” box on the homepage) are always free and open to all. And–stop me if you’ve heard this before–but I intend to write some blog posts in the near future!

Best, Kendra

The post Liturgical Year Subscription Boxes, Meal Planner Catholic Mom Bundle, and New CAY Memberships! appeared first on Catholic All Year.

Click here to learn more about the membership options, and here to read why I’m making the switch.

First, some good news! They won’t be open for Pentecost, but Los Angeles churches have a plan for opening in time for Trinity Sunday, praise the Lord! (Trinity Sunday is in fact the absolute “deadline” for receiving communion during the Easter season. It warms the cockles of my heart to think that the powers that be around here might have taken that into consideration.)

From the archives: Pentecost is Bigger Than Christmas

I’m seeing lots of other plans for opening in cities across the world, and creative solutions, and bishops advocating for the faithful when local governments don’t understand Catholic Truths. There’s a lot to be grateful for!

Reader Christine had a fun idea for Pentecost to bring us a bit of togetherness. Whether or not our dioceses have access to the sacraments, whether or not our personal circumstances allow us to participate in the sacraments . . . we are united in faith and spirit. On Pentecost (5/31) let’s show some of that fire ! Light a candle, have a bonfire, on your own, or with a few friends or family members, and share it with the hashtag #pentecostflames and #catholicallyear I’d love to see this shared far and wide! Feel free to share my image or create your own.

Blessing of a Bonfire Booklet of Prayers, Blessings & Bible Readings {Digital Download}

And, second . . . I joined Patreon. But for a pretty good reason, I think. You can let me tell you about it here while Barbara offers you her crackers, or read on below. Or just click through to Patreon now. (CAY Memberships are now available here!)

Anyway, Patreon, is a platform that allows people to sponsor their favorite artists and creators so that those people can spend more time creating and less time hustling. It’s a cool idea. Don’t we all want to imagine ourselves as old timey patrons of the arts, sitting on our ancestral estates, helping out starving artists and bringing beauty into the world?

But that’s actually why I haven’t joined Patreon before now, even though you guys are so sweet and a few of you have suggested it. I just have to assume that the vast majority of you guys don’t have ancestral estates. I’m not starving and I don’t even really consider myself an artist. I’m more of a haver of whims and opinions and a compiler of things and that just doesn’t quite feel the same. I’ve always thought of this as a hobby and an apostolate and something I want to be doing anyway.

But, to be fair, it’s kind of an expensive hobby.

I started blogging back in January of 2013, just after blogs were declared dead. Social media is a great and very cost-effective way to reach people. But I still love longer format blogging and have no plans to abandon it. For many years my blogging expenses on google’s blogger platform held steady at $25 per year. That’s pretty cheap for a hobby.

But then google stopped supporting blogger. You can still have a blog there, but if something goes sideways with the platform they’re just not going to fix it, and all those years of posts could just disappear forever. So I made the decision to migrate to WordPress and invest in a better site there. I have an IT guy now, and a virtual assistant to help me with behind the scenes stuff. I have subscriptions to PicMonkey (for my graphics), Adobe (for formatting printables), and Mailchimp (for the new liturgical living newsletter) all related to the blog. Some of those expenses increase as the number of followers increases. And now that I reach so many more people, I spend over 300 times that original $25 a year to keep my website going and create and share that content. (And that’s not counting expenses related to creating the series of Liturgical living videos from last year.)

So I’ve got the shop and especially the monthly prayer booklets and the sales from those cover the expenses of the blog, but only if I can come up with new things to create that people want to buy every month, because the website upkeep is monthly. And that means I’m hustling to try to create new shop content and spending time on staging and photography and listings and all that gives me less time to work on blog posts and YouTube videos, which is content that I get excited about and I know you guys want.

And still, I didn’t want to pull the trigger on Patreon because this system was working. It was time consuming, but working. The way I’ve sometimes seen it used by YouTubers, patrons get early access to content and get exclusive content that the “regular people” don’t get. And I really wasn’t looking to do that. I want everyone to have the same access to my blog posts and videos and for everyone to be able to get in touch with me.

But then multiple people started asking about if I could provide subscriptions to some of the monthly liturgical living printables, so they wouldn’t have to go to the shop and make purchases each month. It turns out that Patreon seems AWESOME for that.

So, what does all this mean for you? Maybe nothing. All the free blog and video content stays free. The printable posters and booklets in the shop are still available and still priced the same for now. But if you think you could spare as little as $3 a month, I can get you a new liturgical printable poster every month, without having to spend time on staging and photography and listings. For $7 a month, you get a new dated liturgical clipart calendar every month, like the ones I’ve offered for Lent and Advent. And there are higher tiers with other rewards, like signed hard copies of my books (or not signed. That’s up to you) and all the tiers get discounts on all the digital products in the shop.

I usually have 1-2 big public speaking events each month and I had an inventory of all those books which are currently just taking up space in the garage. So hopefully this will be a way to get them into people’s hands.

In case you haven’t seen them before, here is an example of a Catholic quote image, this one is St. John the Baptist for June. They’ll vary each month.

And this is what the clipart calendar looks like. These will vary in color, but the style will be just like this each month. I went ahead and took some photos of the June set, but the benefit of the Patreon subscription model is that in future months, I can just create and share them, without staging, photographing, and listing. These monthly sets will only be available on Patreon.

My hope is that this platform will allow me to eventually offer updated monthly prayer booklets, maybe start workshopping recipes with you guys for the someday-going-to-happen cookbook, and be able to spend more time on writing books and blog posts and creating video content, because I’m spending less time on the hustle.

And in case you’re wondering why I had makeup on on a random quarantine Thursday, it’s because Jim and I were working on our talk for the Catholic Marriage Summit. It’s an amazing online program featuring some really amazing speakers like Scott and Kimberly Hahn, as well as the Darrows, Chapmans, Tomeos, and Fradds! It will be presented for free online June 11-13, but there’s also an all access pass available for purchase if you’d like more workshop-type content and access to the talks for a longer period of time. Anyway, it’s free to sign up. Check it out here.

Finally: Please do not feel obligated to become a patron! Nothing is going to change here content-wise, and I know not everyone HAS a few extra bucks a month. But, the monthly printable bundles are only going to be available through Patreon right now. So, if that’s something you’re interested in, or you’re not, but you just want to help support my content for other people, please consider subscribing to Catholic All Year (right here) over on Patreon. Thank you so much!

The post Pentecost, Printables, Behind the Scenes, and Maybe Patreon? appeared first on Catholic All Year.

On the current liturgical calendar, Christmas itself is an octave that runs from Evening Prayers on Christmas Eve through the eve of the solemnity of Epiphany, and the Christmas liturgical season runs through the Baptism of the Lord (usually the next Sunday). Then it becomes Ordinary Time. But on the pre-1969 calendar, rather than a period of ordinary time between Christmas and Lent, there was Christmas, then “time after Epiphany,” then “pre-Lent,” then Lent. This time after Epiphany, while technically ordinary time with green vestments, was considered to be part of the Christmas “cycle” before the Lent cycle began. Candlemas on February 2nd marked the transition between the two, and meant that it was the really, no kidding, last day to take down your Christmas decorations and start your pre-game for Lent. Today, some folks leave out just their nativity sets, as a nod to the Christmas cycle of old, until Candlemas. That’s what we like to do.

So, with that rather meager justification, I will go ahead and share the Tierney Family Christmas card with you fine folks now, in case you didn’t get the paper version (which DID go out during the octave!).

Stay tuned after the card for a bit MORE on Candlemas!

Dear Family and Friends,

When it rains, it pours, or so the saying goes. The last couple of months have been rather a downpour, so it seemed perfectly appropriate when the day we scheduled to take this year’s photo was the same! 2019 began with a pretty usual amount of chaos around here, Jim was continuing his work as COO of Exer Urgent Care, as a member of the board of St. Monica Academy, and as a blogger and expert dad podcaster. Kendra was growing a baby, writing and publishing a series of monthly prayer booklets and liturgical living videos, and heading up the Tierney Family Homeschool. 

Baby Barbara Josephine arrived on September 4th, missing by two days the opportunity to be born on her due date AND on Labor Day, which probably bothered her mother more than it should have. But other than that, all was well, and we managed to come home from the hospital the day she was born. She accompanied mom on a little public speaking tour and an appearance on EWTN. Her older siblings had school and sports and theater and time outs and playing outside and bee keeping and chicken wrangling and needing haircuts and not being able to find shoes. Pretty standard stuff. Then came November. <Insert ominous music.> 

Wednesday the 6th, George seemed a bit under the weather. Thursday the 7th, he couldn’t keep anything down, so that afternoon we took him to Exer. They sent us to the ER. The whole way, all his mother could think about was how very inconvenient it was to have to go to the ER when surely they’d just tell us he had a stomach bug and send us home. Instead they admitted him to intensive care and ordered a lumbar puncture. He was determined to have meningitis. Meningitis is really a location, and can be caused by many different infections. George’s infection was bacterial, and the bacteria were Haemophilus influenzae, also known as H. flu. This is NOT what we know as “the flu,” that’s a virus.

The most common strain of H. flu is b. He has been fully vaccinated against that strain with the Hib vaccine. But his was caused by type a. H. flu type a is not uncommon, and it’s likely that any of us have it in our noses at any given time. If it does cause an infection, it’s usually of the ears or sinuses. George had the bad luck to have it cross the blood brain barrier and infect the lining of his brain. He had a full course of IV antibiotics, some serious pain killers, and a very moving anointing, but it was over a week before he was able to eat or talk. After another week he was over the infection, but still weak and suffering from a lack of balance and coordination. He was transferred to another hospital for three weeks of inpatient rehab.

During the course of George’s five week hospital stay we had two sets of grandparents and two aunts come to stay with us to help. We had friends drive big kids to events and home from school, and entertain middle kids at their homes and ours. We had meals delivered and rosaries said for us for 37 days straight. We had priests and godparents and friends visit us in the hospital. We were supported with love and prayers from friends and strangers all over the world. We will always be in the debt of all of you. Thank you so much and may God reward you.

Jack (17) is a senior this year, and was elected student body president with the slogan “Tierney is the best form of government.” He participated in the USNA Summer Seminar, and hopes to attend as a midshipman in the fall. He is on the basketball and baseball teams, sings in the Schola, played Jonathan Brewster/Freddy Kruger in a slightly 80s Arsenic and Old Lace and the title role in Julius Caesar, was recognized as a Coolidge Senator by the Calvin Coolidge Foundation, and can do pushups with four younger siblings on his back. If you’ll allow a moment of sappiness in his last year at home, he is a very good young man, and a credit to his family and community.

Betty (15) is a candy striper at Huntington Hospital, which is especially convenient since we spend so much time there anyway. She was a summer camp counselor, sings in the Schola, was in both plays, and helped found the SMA Yell Crew this year. Upon presenting herself at the DMV to get her learner’s permit, it was determined that she should get glasses instead, but she talked her parents into contacts.

Bobby (14) made the varsity practice squad for basketball and the team for baseball and is the freshman class representative. He was murdered in Julius Caesar (but who wasn’t?). After getting his hunting license, he bagged two pheasants on a hunting trip with Uncle Bryan. He wears prescription pants. As in, the only school approved uniform supply shop doesn’t make pants in 28×34, so dad got a doctor friend to write him a prescription for non-approved pants.

Gus (12) also got his hunting license, but, alas, no pheasants. He headed this summer’s family lemonade stand business, netting over $800. He played flag football and basketball and had solos in two middle school choir performances. He is just charming enough to get himself back out of trouble with his teachers.

Anita (10) is still living the dream as head girl of the Tierney Family School. She will happily wear any visiting baby offered to her, and has an excellent record of getting them to sleep. She performed in two CTK plays, and was slightly disappointed not to have been “discovered” on her trip with mom to the EWTN studios.

Frankie (8) continues to be quite a handful, but is very good with his younger siblings. He really enjoyed his visiting days in the hospital with George, and, when George couldn’t yet sit up, Frankie came up with a knocking toy soldiers over with a ball game that impressed the hospital physical therapists. He made a dozen model St. Francises out of melty beads for this year’s Fiat Conference, then walked around the yard inquiring for attendees with sons named Francis and insinuated that the religious upbringing of said sons would be in danger without one of the models. It was an effective sales technique.

Lulu (6) has to be restrained from sitting down and doing the whole year of math worksheets in one go, which has made getting caught up on school work much easier than it would have been otherwise. She’s dear and sunny and sweet. She’s the family’s best sleeper, unloader of the dishwasher, and team Jack cheerleader.

Mary Jane (4) enjoys “cuddling” by which she means being within one foot of a person. At a Halloween party we attended as a family, she announced, “We’ve had enough candy, and it’s time to go home.” Her favorite schooltime activity is cutting pieces of paper into much smaller pieces of paper.

George (2) was a very good sport about his hospitalization, but also, ya know, was two. Occupational Therapist: Reach forward and get that sticker. George: You can do it. OT: It’s therapy, *you’re* supposed to do it. George: <looking at sticker> It’s not therapy. It’s Spider-Man. He’s made great progress, and is sitting well on his own, and walking well with assistance. We don’t expect him to have long term effects from his illness.

Barbara (3 months) didn’t note the irony of being hustled out of the hospital hours after her birth only to spend over a third of her life in two others. She also wasn’t able to appreciate the kind of compliments that medical professionals give out. Neurologist: What a cute baby. She has such good eye contact. Physical Therapist: What a cute baby. She has such good head control. We all think she’s pretty great too.

Love and Christmas wishes to all of you from the Tierneys,

Jim, Kendra, Jack, Betty, Bobby, Gus, Anita, Frankie, Lulu, Midge, George, and Barbara

P.S. Speaking of Candlemas . . .

Candlemas / the Presentation of the Lord is coming up on Feb 2nd! Here’s a quick look at what we do to celebrate, from a video we made last year. Candlelight makes everything seem fancy.

The Catholic All February prayer booklet is available as a printable here.

And as a paperback here.

I get our 51% beeswax candles here. 51% beeswax is NOT required for religious use in the home, and they’re definitely pricier than standard candles, but they smell lovely and last longer, and I like that they feel special. A box of 36 tapers lasts us through candlelight dinners all year.

Ignatius has been generous enough to sponsor these videos! The Ignatius Press coupon code CAY1219 for 25% off Jesse Box components is good through the end of Feb. Check out this very cool set for a great way to introduce kids to stories from the Bible in an interactive way. More info on the Jesse Box here.

Okay, that’s it for tonight. Fingers crossed for an uneventful home life and more time for blogging in 2020!

The post A Tierney Christmas Card Which is Late by All Metrics but One, aka Praise God for Candlemas appeared first on Catholic All Year.