23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time - reflecting on love while at Mass with spirited children, and fall crafts...

Aren't they precious? :0 Anne helping her daddy mow the lawn yesterday afternoon following Mass. Anyway, happy Monday, everyone! I'm back from a beautiful fall weekend, filled with both challenging children and lovely free time. Let's discuss. :)

It was a beautiful Mass yesterday, late in our season of Ordinary Time leading up to Advent, with the readings focused on loving our neighbor. At our parish, the music ensemble was back from summer hiatus, the bulletin was filled with information on the parish groups and events starting back up, and fall was definitely in the air. Anne was *very* climby - on the pew, down the pew, down on the kneeler, under the pew, swinging from the end of the pew (!). I restrained and distracted her as best as I could. There were a lot of other children there, which helped, since she spent a lot of time clandestinely spying on them.

Henry was very quiet and good, as he always is, but now that he's a bit older and receiving communion, I've been working to instill more reverence into his routine at church. Genuflecting before the tabernacle, praying after receiving the Eucharist, things like that. I can tell that he doesn't like it when I point these things out to him, which makes him not want to do them all the more, so I try and restrain myself when possible and lead by example.

But I'm Type A, so it's not easy. ;-) And I take my promise and desire to raise my children in the faith very seriously. Keeping with our theme from the readings for this Sunday, teaching my children the faith is a duty, but it is a duty that I truly love. I love my faith, and I hope that that love shines through to my children and makes them want to emulate it.

Both children really love the seasonal Catholic traditions that we practice in the home, so I was thinking that Advent may be a good opportunity to light a fire under Henry without his really knowing it. :) In addition to the fan favorite activities of Advent calendars and the Advent wreath, we could start a small prayer tradition. Perhaps I could take Henry with me to Adoration for Advent? I'm toying with some ideas, but a major liturgical season is always the perfect opportunity to introduce a new routine and tradition. I will keep you apprised of my ideas on that front as the season draws closer.

In crafty news, with the NFL season also starting yesterday (I don't count that ridiculous Thursday situation the NFL insists upon :0) I was feeling very much in an autumn mood. While Anne napped, I worked on some seasonal jewelry. I just love seasonal items, the craft store is one of my favorite places to be in the spring and fall. This, of course, from the woman who made Easter egg earrings, after all. ;-) And so, as a sister to the infamous egg earrings, come ta DA! Acorn earrings:

I love them. :) I wore them the whole day yesterday. I also made an autumn-hued rosary bracelet:

I need a cross charm to hang from it, that's enroute, but the Ave beads are a Swarovski pearl mix called "Maple" and I paired it with tiny copper crystals and an olive crystal Pater bead. I love how it turned out.

How was your weekend, everyone? Leave me a comment. It's Monday, and I could use a pick-me-up. ;-)

Of crafting & running wildly through mattress stores - The Catholic Librarian's weekend...

Afternoon everyone! I hope that you all had a lovely and enjoyable August weekend. I did. Mostly. Well, my kids did a lot of whining this weekend which cut into the enjoyment a bit :) but other than that it was productive and good. We had crafts. We had mattress shopping. We had injuries. Oh. I guess that wasn't so good, but it did have a happy ending. Let's start with Friday...

(1) Anne's encounter with the coffee table - Our coffee table is a bit on the evil side. It seems to reach out and grab ones leg at regular intervals producing angry-looking bruises. When Anne first became mobile, I dutifully bought these foam triangles to stick onto the corners, and Mike looked *extremely* amused by this:

"Do you really think one of the kids isn't going to RIP these things off the first opportunity they get?" #Reasonable #Realistic #Intelligent

"Well, they're stuck on pretty good. I'll tell them not to touch them. I'm going to hope for the best." #HopeSpringsEternal #Optimist #Naive

Yeeeaaaaahhhh. This is another instance in which my husband, always very level-headed and logical, was right. You'll see another instance of this in a moment. :0

Well, the inevitable happened, which is that each kid bumped their leg on the corner, didn't like it, and steered clear of the coffee table. Problem solved.

But on Friday, the kids decided to roughhouse near the coffee table. Mike and I were cleaning up after dinner when we hear a loud bang, followed by hysterical crying. I turn to see Anne running into the kitchen, half of her face covered in blood. My first reaction is to:

(a) Panic
(b) Start crying too. #TotallyNotHelpful

Mike grabs a napkin, clears the blood away, and ascertains that Anne has a cut above her eye. He assures me that it's small, but it's an area that will bleed a lot, making it look a lot worse than it actually is. He firmly held a new napkin to the wound to get it to stop bleeding while I comforted Anne. Oh man. I am SO bad at dealing with stuff like that. I'm a soother and a nurturer, but the blood stuff? Thank God for Mike.

(2) Let's all oooh and aahh at Tiffany's amateur efforts at being crafty

After our harrowing Friday evening, I was happy to move onto crafts on Saturday, believe me. :) I finished up a pair of green earrings to match one of my dance costumes, and I have to say, these may be my favorite pair that I have made, I kind of love them:

So sparkly

I also knitted a baby hat to match a cardigan that is currently blocking for a soon-to-be-born babe:

Just imagine the precious little head that will squeeze into this :)

I also had my mother-in-law aid me with some alterations to a new costume (chocolate brown, orange and green!) which I'm super excited about. I will include photos in some future installment of Belly Dance Monday. :0

(3) Apparently, laying on every single bed in the store and racing down the aisles is necessary for proper mattress selection

We attended the vigil Mass on Saturday evening, so our Sunday morning was freed up a bit. Thus, we bit the bullet and went mattress shopping for the kids. Henry really needs a new one and Anne is ready for a change in her sleeping quarters.

I've been dreading this because it means that my baby is ready to move out of her crib :( which she IS, regardless of my feelings on the matter. We did some price browsing previously, and had a place in mind we thought would fall into the ideal range. We headed out.

The instant the children got through the door it's like some Mattress Store Force overtook them. They made a beeline to the far corner and proceeded to lay on everything in sight, and why walk between lie-ins when you can run instead?! Several interventions were necessary on the running front, but I will say that they behaved themselves well.

They had precisely what we were looking for, so we ended up buying a small twin set for Anne, and Henry picked out a lovely twin for himself with a pillowtop mattress. So we're all set and the beds will be delivered next week. I have until then to prepare myself for Anne's transition. *sniffle*

That was my weekend. How was yours? Leave me a comment. :)

Wait, what was I supposed to be writing about?!

The summer is quiet on the reference desk, and so I thought to myself as I was preparing to go down for a shift:

"What do I need to bring with me? It's just an hour, maybe I'll have time to get a blog post started if I don't get interrupted too much."

Our office walls around here are pretty thin, so I try to have these conversations with myself as quietly as possible. :0

"Right. I need my glasses. Should I bring my phone? It's fun to keep up on Twitter and texts when I'm down there, but...nah, shouldn't bring it, too much of a distraction. Do I need a pen? I'm not going to bring my planner, so I don't need the pen. MY TEA! Yes, bring the tea cup, check."

I sort of move things around on my desk as I decide what to bring and not bring.

"Good God, my keys. If I lock myself out again I'm going to have to take our facilities manager out to dinner. Keys in pocket, ok whew!!! What else did I need?!"

I see my tea mug. I grab it. I check my pocket again to assure that the keys are in there, and I leave my office and shut the door. It's only halfway down the stairs that I remember: my glasses.

For the love of all that is holy, WHERE HAVE ALL MY BRAIN CELLS GONE?! That sensation of something having been in your mind one moment, and gone the next, is not a comfortable one, my friends. #sendhelp

So, I got down to the reference desk and then gabbed with the other librarian whom I was relieving, then gabbed a bit on gmail chat, then actually answered a patron chat question (international court cases, I certainly earned my keep on that one), and only THEN opened up a new blog post. And do I even need to mention that I couldn't remember what I was going to write about?

It's just one of those days. :0 However, there are a couple fun posts planned for this week, which are Catholic Book Club on Wednesday, and the Church Triumphant on Thursday, so stay tuned for those. It's major festival season this weekend, so a week from today you will be treated (snort!) to a Belly Dance Monday post which will feature me attempting to dance while balancing stuff on my head and hopefully not battling high winds. Here's hoping!

Ah, but before I go, I finished a rosary this weekend, this time for Anne:

Guardian Angel centerpiece, blue bead mix for the Aves, lavender pearls for the Paters

This will go in her Christmas stocking, and Henry will receive this:

This is a St. Dominic Savio chaplet, and I will devote a whole post in the Catholic Nook to it, maybe next week. So I've been busy! I've also been knitting like a very busy bee, working on my fall/winter/Christmas list, because I'm Type A like that.

#BigSurprise

How was everyone's weekend? If you're so inclined, leave me a comment! I always love to read them. :)

Of summer crafts, freezing fireworks, and super sassiness - 4th of July weekend 2014

Morning everyone! It's the Monday following 4th of July weekend and I'm back at work, sigh. It's raining pretty heavily here, which feels appropriate. But I had a lovely weekend interspersed with the usual bumps in the road of toting small children along for the ride. I'm sipping tea, do you have yours? Let's chronicle!

I took the day off from work on Thursday July 3rd, and we really spent it just puttering around the house. The weather was just beautiful - sunny, but not humid and hot, so I took advantage of it and snuck walks in each day while Anne napped in the afternoons. I did also work on crafting, like I had hoped. Not exactly related specifically to the holiday at hand, but that's never stopped me before. :)

I'm working on a rosary for my nephew Will for his birthday, similar to this one that I made for Andrew, which is this one:

St. Kateri center, with "burnt sugar" pearls for the Aves, and Turquoise Paters

Will's will have a Guardian Angel centerpiece, and teal crystal Paters, but will otherwise be identical. I got the first decade of that assembled this weekend, glory. I also made myself a pair of pink earrings to match my troupe dance costume for all the festivals we have coming up:

I struggled a bit with turning the loops. I had to go back and redo them a few times since the second earring originally turned out WAY longer than the first one. Not exactly a good look. And I'm familiar with this phenomena based upon knitting sweater sleeves that are different lengths from each other. Let's continue to repress those memories, shall we?

I also made these fun additions to my jewelry drawer:

What am I?

The first one I made turned out like yucky poo, so I had to start again. When I finished, I brought it over to Mike and asked him what he thought it looked like, with zero foundational information.

"Um. A bird's next with eggs in it?"

#victoryismine

Easter egg earrings for the 4th of July. I'm nuts.

So that was my beading work this weekend. I also was knitting, and trying to finish this summer dress scarf I'm making for myself:

I'm thinking about stitching the ends together when it's done and having it be a cowl. Thoughts?

I've also been commissioned by a troupemate to crochet her a modesty panel for one of her costume tops, so I got that done too. I just need to sew a crystal onto it and stitch it into her costume. Niche business getting started up right here. ;) I'd like to get that and the turquoise scarf done in the next few days.

Ok, so back to July 3rd. I did happen to be wearing the patriotic rosary bracelet that I made for myself:

Love.

Anyway, we decided to go to the fireworks that our town was hosting on the night of the 3rd. We haven't been to fireworks in years and years, and every year I regret not going. We thought the ones on the 3rd would be a bit less crowded (because the number of people that we have to encounter seems to always be the most important factor in the decisions we make about where we go #introvertfamily). I decided to leave Anne sleeping, my mother-in-law came over to listen for her, and Mike, Henry and I departed.

It *was* crowded, but nothing too terrible. We even got a seat on our own bench. And it was kind of nice to feel a part of the crowd, like we were sharing in a community experience, which of course we were. The only problem was that it was FREEZING. Fireworks don't generally start around here until 10 pm (I'm certain it's similar in other areas) because of how late the sun sets at this latitude in the summer. So the time combined with the fact that the weather in Western New York is just generally unpredictable, plus the fact that we have little fireworks experience, meant that we really weren't dressed warmly enough to be comfortable. We shivered for about 20 minutes before the display started, and I started to lost my fireworks enthusiasm. However, we stuck it out, and I'm glad we did. Once the show started, the distraction made me forget how much my teeth were chattering. And then I regretted leaving Anne behind. She was sound asleep, but next year I'll have her stay up. She would have loved it.

On the 4th itself we didn't do much except take the kids out to lunch at our new Firehouse Subs:

Somebody had a really good time...

We had fun, and both children were really well behaved. Little wolves in lambs' clothing. The rest of the weekend they fought like cats and dogs and made me contemplate listing them on ebay. Anne, in particular, is SO, SO SASSY these days. And she SHOUTS. At her brother. All.the.time.

"Anne! Stop..."

*eardrum piercing scream* "NO!"

"Anne!"

"Stop it, HENRY!"

It's miserable. And if you ask her to stop screaming, she says that she is in fact NOT screaming. She is just "yelling at Henry."

Kill me.

So, we were fielding that for a large portion of the weekend. She's very much in the age 3 end of the Terrible 2's and we're just weathering it as best we can.

How was your weekend? Leave me a comment! :)

Hot off my workbench...

...aka the dining room table. :)

I've been hard at work on my new beading obsession when the kids are asleep. The results are far from perfect, but I'm learning real quick-like, and enjoying it very much. I really like my latest two creations, one of which is an Our Lady of Guadalupe rosary:

You know how I am about orange. :0 So this is a mix of different orange shades, citrine, and red for the Aves, and deep teal for the Paters. I love how it came out.

I also made my very first rosary bracelet, da da DAH! I call it the spring colors rosary bracelet:

I had to use a crimping technique for this, and I struggled a bit. It turned out lovely, as you can see, but this morning on my way into work, the crimping bead on the one end came loose and so I'm going to have to restring everything, sigh. All of the beads and the clasp are fine, but it needs to be restrung and recrimped, such is life. But at any rate, this is made with Swarovski round beads in pink, green, blue, yellow and orange, with an almond pearl for the Pater.

Besides repairing the bracelet, I have more rosaries on the horizon (Our Lady Star of the Sea for myself, and 2 Guardian Angel rosaries, one for Anne and one for my nephew Will), a St. Dominic Savio chaplet for Henry, plus some earrings for myself. Excited!

Speaking of chaplets, I'm planning to write a bit about those tomorrow. Are there any chaplet lovers out there? I love discovering new chaplets devoted to specific saints or needs. We'll delve in tomorrow!