Catholic tchotchkes for everyone!

Happy Wednesday everybody! I've been writing book reviews on Wednesdays for the past 3-4 weeks, but sadly this Wednesday I didn't quite complete my current read, so that will debut a week from today instead. In case anybody wants to read along, my current review selection is Finding Grace by Laura Pearl:

This is a lovely coming-of-age story for Catholic young adults, TONS of interesting moral fodder in here plus interwoven inspiration from the saints - excellent! Look for all the details next Wednesday.

This Wednesday I have shopping on my mind, of the online variety, because is there any better way to shop when you're an introvert? I think not, dear reader. Since I am a person of the crafty persuasion (although if you ever saw me wielding glue in any form along with felt and uncooked macaroni or some other such three dimensional object you would doubt the veracity of that statement) I have quite a fascination with Etsy. I absolutely love handmade items, whether they are made by me or someone else. Every year I like to carefully choose some handmade gifts for my kids in crafts that I stink at am not particularly gifted. ;-) I like to tuck these things into their Christmas stockings, and as you know, I am a bit nuts about starting Christmas shopping right around the vernal equinox.

I've been doing lots of browsing and favoriting of new shops and items, and so thought it would be fun to share my ideas with all of you. I'm certain I'll do another one of these posts prior to the holidays, since this is certainly not an exhaustive list of Etsy shops that I find intriguing. But below are a handful that I've either purchased from recently or am plotting a purchase from soon. Perhaps it'll give you some ideas, and you can leave me your own ideas in the comments!

I've written about saint dolls before, because I sort of love them. Henry has a small collection of wooden ones that he displays, and Anne also has a few. I think this is a lovely way of helping children to keep their favorite saints in mind to intercede for them when something is bothering them. The store that I have previously purchased these from is no longer open, so I was looking around for alternatives. Thus began my obsession with St. Luke's Brush:

St. Kateri Tekakwitha

I mean, did you ever? The detail is *exquisite*. And the selection is second to none. Every saint that immediately came to my mind could be found there, including my confirmation patron St. Cecelia, and my favorite guy ever, St. John Paul II. Here is Henry's favorite saint:

St. Dominic Savio

And she has a custom listing for any saint you want. She will paint it. A-mazing. I found several that I want for my desk at work. :0 Including that St. Kateri featured above, she's beautiful!

This store also carries hand painted rosary cases:

...and I fixated on this First Communion one right away for Henry. I haven't ordered yet, and hand painted items can certainly add up in price because of the sheer amount of work and talent that goes into them, but I plan to carefully select a few saints to purchase in the fall, and will report back in. :)

I also found a few store selling soft saint dolls, and I'm interested in these for Anne. My friend Sarah on Twitter brought Saintly Silver to my attention:

Lovely St. Therese of Lisieux

These are made from felt and are very reasonably priced. She has an excellent selection, and will also custom create any doll you like that she doesn't have listed.  These would make wonderful squeezeable additions to a child's bedtime collection. :)

I also found Sanctus Stitches and while a bit more expensive, check out the detail:

We can tell she is one of my favorites: once again, St. Kateri :)

Gorgeous! Anne could create all sorts of adventures for this St. Kateri, just as she would any of her other dolls. I am positively *itching* to order this.

For rosaries, I have recently purchased from the lovely Rosaries by Allison:

Our Lady Star of the Sea

...and she is just the sweetest and does a beautiful job. She has some gorgeous designs which you should zoom right over to go look at :) and she will custom design anything you like. I have a few Christmas gifts tucked away from this store. *shhhhhh...*

Finally, a secular addition that is absolutely adorable. Anne loves the apron that I wear when I bake, so this immediately spurred me into looking for a child's apron for her, because seriously? PRECIOUS! I ended up ordering her one from  Designs by Dragon Lily:

!!!

I mean, SO CUTE. She was having a Christmas in July sale when I ordered, so I picked out an angels and 3 Wise Men design for Anne that I know she'll love. But so many cute patterns and extremely reasonable prices. She also sells makeup bags, which I'm thinking of getting for myself.

So, now it's your turn. Do you have a favorite Etsy shop? Do detail in the comments. :)

Crafts, surly preschoolers, ideas on becoming involved in parish life, and hark...a rosary!

I started off the day kind of down this morning, because I knew that a mountain of work awaited me at the office. Then I logged in and discovered that I had won the rosary giveaway over at A Woman's Place... and all seemed better with the world :) Of course, my husband will ask (ok, he's *already* asked) with arched eyebrows, "do you really need another rosary?" And he asks this not because he disapproves of rosaries, but because I am a bit of a rosary collector :) It's true, I own quite a few rosaries. But I love them, and this one holds special significance because Cam, whom I admire greatly, made it by hand :) I'm super excited.

In other handmade items news, I've been busy with my crocheting lately. I finally finished the shawl I was knitting for my sister Shauna'h:



This baby took me quite a while to create. You can't really see any detail in this picture, but the pattern creates a striped effect, and its quite long. I knitted my brains out for several weeks. I didn't realize when I took up knitting that it takes quite a bit longer than crocheting. This is hard on those of us who are attention span challenged. I am afflicted with GBE Syncrome- Gets Bored Easily. You heard it coined here first. But the nice thing about knitting is how solid the texture turns out. This shawl is *warm*, it's almost like a coat.

Anyway, I've also been obsessed with dish cloths lately. I made this one:



and this one:



as well as this one:



for my mother-in-law for Mother's Day. I secretly covet the middle one, the knitted buttercream multi-color. I'm going to make one for us too :)

I did make this green/white one for us because it matches the accent colors in our kitchen:



but I didn't love the pattern. It was one of those wherein the directions are so complicated that you have to keep looking back at them time and time again, you can't ever get into a rhythm. The others I included above are from a pattern book entitled "2 Hour Dishcloths." 2 hours is about all the time I want to spend on a dish cloth. The attention span thing again.

I have a bunch of projects in the works, including a summer set of placemats and a table runner for our dining room, a spring/summer shawl, and some queued up afghans.

It's not exactly craft related, but I figured it fit here to mention that I test drove the Jessie Steele apron that my good friend Irena gave me at Easter:



There I am, making Aloha Chicken in my new apron. I was thrilled :)

So, for my 'Catholic Stuff' segment I thought I'd relate my struggle with trying to find a way to get more involved in my parish. When we first moved to our house, I switched my membership from the city parish we were attending near our apartment (and that I loved), to one of the nearby parishes. 2 were within easy walking/driving distance. They were about equidistant from our house, so I felt free to select the one that best suited our needs. At the time, Hank was just over a year old, and I can feel the sympathy vibes now, those of you with children at (or just past) that age all want to hug me. That's a tough age to expect children to remain quiet for an hour. And many Sundays, Mike does not attend Mass with me, so I'm kid-wrangling solo. Of course, Mike is happy to watch Hank at home should I feel that it's best to leave him behind, but I tried (and try) to limit that as much as possible. I feel that children belong at Mass as much as practicable.

To make a long story (*snorts*) short, I chose the parish with a cry room. I figured, oh great! This way I can attend Mass without worrying about Hank causing a disruption. Well.

I think cry rooms can be useful. But here's the thing: inevitably, people without a raucous toddler in tow will sit in the cry room, for reasons that I simply cannot begin to explain. And the cry room at this parish was *tiny*. TINY. You get two families in there, and oxygen is running in short supply. As well, I think oftentimes, when parishes have a cry room any parent that chooses not to use them are often made to feel bad. And that shouldn't be. They are there to fulfill a need, but they should not be mandatory for anyone. I was quickly realizing that despite not having to worry about Henry disrupting Mass, I loathed being behind a wall from the rest of the congregation.

And so it went. After a few months, I noticed that I was getting depressed when thinking about going to Mass. I finally admitted to myself that I found that little cry room stifling and isolating. I wanted out.

So I went back to my old parish, in the city. It's a spectacularly beautiful old church, with wonderful priests. And no cry room. But the pews have that little divider in the middle - voila! Instant toddler gate. My depression lifted immediately. I was back in the congregation! I felt part of a community again! It was wonderful.

Last year, the pastor changed the Mass times, and since I had to drive longer in order to get to that church, the changed morning Mass time wasn't working in our morning routine with a 3 year old in tow. So I decided to re-explore the 2 local parishes. I figured as well that with Hank soon to start CCD, it would be nice for him to attend with children from our local neighborhood.

I tried the other parish, the one I didn't select last time because of its lack of a cry room. And I found that I loved it. It's an old parish, with long, established ties in our village. A beautiful church building with all the traditional Catholic elements that I love. I quickly felt at home.

So here I am, a year and a half later, and I still love the parish. But I'm beginning to feel that I'd like to be more involved than simply attending Sunday Mass. I keep scouring the weekly bulletin, looking for something to catch my eye. There is a parish woman's group, but it meets on an evening that Mike teaches, so I can never attend their meetings. I kept wondering what to do, when finally the answer came to me: I should stop worrying about it and just pray that God lead me wherever he wants me to go. So, now I feel better.

Yesterday, I arrived at Mass with a cranky Henry in tow. I scoured the bulletin again, and nothing caught my eye, so I figured I'd try again next week. One of these days, something will present itself, and I'll know that it's the right opportunity. In the mean time, I had to deal with Henry, who grumpily declared that he didn't want to attend the Children's Liturgy of the Word this week, he wanted to stay in the pew with Mommy. Sigh.

Spring cleaning...

This time of year always brings out the busy bee part of my Type A personality. The snow melts, and I'm itchin' to plow through my basement. Before we went to New Jersey, I managed to have my way with the refrigerator, so that's one seasonal chore done. But many to go.

For the rest of the week, blogging will be sparse to none, since Hank has an "option week" at Pre-K, meaning that if we signed him out for any day(s) this week, we don't have to pay for them. So we signed him out for 3 days this week, saving us some money, and allowing me to spend some nice time at home with him. I have vacation time to spare, so bonus. Given this, I plan to enact the Great Spring Cleaning of 2010, with young Henry by my side for the rest of the week. I can't imagine he'll be too happy about this. He'd rather use the week to enact an epic battle between the Planet Heroes and the Rescue Heroes in his play room, but me, I'll be hip deep in clothes to donate to Goodwill.

A lot of my inspiration recently came from an article in Woman's Day about spring cleaning, referencing the book Home Comforts: The Art & Science of Keeping House. Rest assured, I have a copy on reserve for me via the public library, and I'm all excited about it. My good friend Irena gifted me with a Jessie Steele cupcakes apron when I saw her over Easter weekend (THANK YOU!!) and I'm all eager to tie it on and get to work.

I'd like to go through Hank's closet and clear it out of clothes that are too small for him, which are many. *sighs* I need to get those in labeled bags to haul into the storage for use on a potential future baby Catholic Librarian. Hank and will need to subsequently get to Target to get him some spring and summer clothes, which I can't imagine will be cheap. *another sigh* At any rate, that's task number one for tomorrow morning. His dresser drawers, as well, are ridiculous. I don't think Hank needs bibs or drool cloths anymore, yet they still reside in his room.

I also need to go through my clothes to weed out things that I don't wear anymore, and my drawers. I wouldn't mind going through some other closets and drawers throughout the house, especially the 2 *coughs* junk drawers in the kitchen. Shameful.

The only thing is, I know myself, and I hate how I get when I start to do chores like this. I get all manic and rushy rushy, refusing to stop and even take a breath lest I forget to manhandle the pile of crap that I just noticed hiding in the pantry. Hopefully, I'll manage to get a few productive things done and allow myself to relax with Henry a bit. The house always feels so fresh and clean and after a purge like that.

Thus, I likely won't blog tomorrow or Friday, and I never blog on the weekends. If that happens, I assure that I will post on Monday with a full report of my long weekend. Bet you can't wait :)

TGIF

I'm plumb tuckered :) I have 2 classes early next week, and I'm hip deep in lesson planning. After that, I should have a reprieve from teaching, which I desperately need in order to work on other things. One of the classes next week is in my liaison department, American Studies. I'm looking forward to that one, because the students are upper level undergraduates and I can do more complex examples with them. Plus, the subject matter is interesting. I'm incorporating in historical craft examples, as well as a Catholic example, actually :)

At any rate, I'm looking forward to a fairly quiet weekend. I'm having a few friends over, with their kids, tomorrow, and that should be fun for both adults and young'uns. On my way home from work this afternoon, I'm stopping off at Michael's to pick up some cotton yarn that is on sale so that I can crochet us an Easter-inspired table runner and set of placemats. *happy* Mike is picking us up some fish dinners that our parish is selling. Western New York has truly glorious Lenten fish frys.

Oh! I forgot to mention this before. Last week while I was picking us up a few groceries, I ventured into the kitchen section (we have a super nice grocery chain near us, with a very nice seasonal and kitcheny area) and I picked up an apron. I couldn't justify Jessie Steele at $30 a pop just now *sighs* (one is on my Amazon wish list...) but I found a *very* cute apron for half the price. It looks similar to this one:

It has little wine glasses and bottles on it, and fruit. It has a nice around the neck tie with metal rings for easy adjustibility, and the apron hangs up real easy from the rings too. I've been using it when I cook, and I find it so handy to be able to wipe my hands right on the apron instead of always being in search of a dish towel. Plus, it keeps my clothes free of any number of food splashes and wafts. I'm liking :)

Feeling domestic...

In yet another one of my quirks, I squealed with glee this morning when I saw that Cam, at A Woman's Place..., posted about aprons.

"Aprons? Tiffany, maybe you really are getting old..."

But yes, aprons! I started thinking about them a few months ago when, once again, Cam (my favorite blogger :) posted about aprons as spiritual aids. She posted some pictures, and I thought to myself, "goodness gracious, how totally adorable." This piqued my curiosity, and after some moderate Googling, I found that there is this modern apron movement I knew nothing about. Women of all ages are wearing these super cute vintage aprons (see above photo; I mean, did you ever?!). My favorite are put out by Jessie Steele. In fact, Charlotte in the new Sex and the City movie is going to be wearing one of these aprons! I'm coveting one, badly.

See the half apron in the photo, the one with the little Eiffel Towers? How perfect would that be for my sister Shauna'h? :) My current obsession is the pink cupcake apron, which is also Charlotte's choice :) However, I just noticed that Jessie Steele just released their spring/summer line, which includes convertible aprons! So, this would be a full bib apron that you could convert down to a half apron for dinner parties. You know, like Betty Draper on Mad Men. *wants*

So, imagine my delight, when I saw that Cam's post today included the fact that she is having an apron giveaway at A Woman's Place. Enter your name in her comments section for a chance to win :)