House Art Journal

A grown-up retreat for parents is difficult on Good Friday. But there are still things you can do with your children, small and large, to make Good Friday into a real retreat day for them, a quiet day to think of what Christ has done for you and for them. Here is what you can do. First off, prepare yourself interiorly. 1. Surrender your expectations. A family retreat may not necessarily involve long stretches of silence, uninterrupted meditations, or even a great degree of solemnity. Children are children, after all. A family retreat will look different and feel different from a retreat for adults. 2. Serve the weakest members. Anticipate that the smallest children (and older ones) will be hungry, grumpy, irate by an unexpected routine, or hyperactive. Bring along bottles of water and a bag of pretzels for snacking. Figure out a way to accommodate naps for smaller and older kids. Realize that you might also be grumpy from fasting. Scale down large expectations: settle for less....

Enjoy this lovely image of St. Nicholas from artist Susan Seals, and purchase a print here . A friend of mine posted on a message board wondering what I've heard many Christians (Protestant and Catholic) wonder: how a person can encourage his or her children to believe in Santa Claus, as opposed to St. Nicholas, the Catholic saint. Are they really the same person? First, it must be pointed out that Santa Claus IS St. Nick, at least literally. Santa means "Saint" and "Claus" is an abbreviated form of Nicholas (as in Ni-KLAUS). In our house, Baby Jesus gives the gifts (and hence all requests for toys are addressed to him). We tell our kids the gifts come from Baby Jesus but St. Nicholas delivers them, and St. Nicholas lives in heaven, which is a lot nicer than the North Pole. We let them think what they want about reindeer and elves. With our own children, we don't really encourage them to watch movies that propose to explain the Saint as a secular phenomenon,...

Many of you know I'm big fans of the Nova Natural Evi dolls . Two years ago, Nova released their popular all-natural fair-trade dolls in "dressable" form : and I lost no time in buying the "mother" doll (who can pass for a fairy-tale princess in my book!) and outfitting her with a wardrobe. Some of you asked for the patterns I used. It's taken me two years, but at last (Merry Christmas!) I'm posting the patterns I made. If you would like to download the PDF of the pattern book I made of clothes to fit that doll, click here . I believe the clothes would also fit the flower fairy dolls and some of the fairy tale dolls (they would have to go over the existing clothes those dolls wear unless you, like my daughters, cut the clothes off the doll). The six-page book can be printed onto letter-sized paper in black and white. The patterns presuppose a knowledge of sewing and dress construction. So I didn't really include any directions, just the pattern pi...

The other day we were surprised by an early snowfall two days before Halloween. Activities were cancelled, electric currents flickered, and the family stayed home by the fire instead of rushing about in a frenzy of fall activity. My herbs and snapdragons, the first I've succesfully gardened, were caught unawares but bloomed bravely on. The unseasonal chill seems to have strengthened them: they are flourishing even more fiercely now.

I've been so busy in my life for these past few months (as my hiatus from journaling shows) that I feel I'm always looking down - down at my keyboard, down at my checkbook, down at the mess of the house and the chores needing to be done. How often do I look up? Not very often, I realize. Even when I take a walk, I find myself looking at my feet, anxious not to make a false step and stumble - instead of looking at the beauty all around me. I found this picture my daughter took, while lying beneath one of the trees in our front yard. She was looking up - and I'm posting this as a reminder to myself. I want to be looking up more - looking up at the sky, at the fall leaves and colors, and at our Heavenly Father looking down at us. He may just be smiling at me, but I'll never know if I don't look up.

He is Risen! Alleluia! My daughters colored these eggs and created a nest for them of colored paper, two colors of green photocopy paper run through my husband's office shredder. The result was as vibrantly colored as the Easter eggs, a true match and a nice change from the pale pastels such papers usually come in.

One of our sheep gave birth to twin lambs but rejected one. So, much to our children's delight, we have a temporary house pet named Oreo, who drinks from a bottle and wears a diaper at night time (we only allow him on the wood floors). He has gladly adopted us as his flock and baas most disapprovingly when we go away in the car. The other party delighted with the addition of a sheep is our youngest cat, Hotaru, who takes every opportunity to play with him--whether or not the lamb is interested in playing with him . For me, one of the highlights of owning farm animals is the opportunity to observe their beauty, and Oreo and Hotaru are both rewarding in that respect.

I've been meaning for a while to blog about two newer products I've discovered that have made home improvement projects so much easier. If you refinish furniture or do woodworking, you want to check these two concoctions out. It used to be that stripping paint meant donning heavy-duty gloves, a breathing mask, and seting up shop far away from any inquisitive children. With Safest Stripper from 3M , those days are over. This paint remover looks deceptively like Elmer's glue, and feels just as safe: it causes little or no skin irritation (gloves still recommended, but I speak from experience!). Spread on a thick coat, let it sit according to the directions, and the paint begins to gel and crack, and can be easily scraped up with a plastic or metal putty knife. I've had to search hard to find it: our local Lowes doesn't carry it, but our small-town hardware store was willing to order it for me. It works easiest on latex paint and varnish, but with hard work and plastic...

The depths of winter are the poor man's butchering season. For those of us without walk-in freezers in our homes, it is a far easier chore to butcher your own hogs when your garage has acquired the temperature of a cold refridgerator. So these January weekends we are butchering, with lots of help from family and friends. Some aspects of pork butchering are easy to learn: after the men have done the messy work of gutting and hanging, what remains of the pig roughly resembles what one finds in the store. Cutting a ham is simply, if not gracefully, done, and with a pair of sturdy sterilized tree pruners in hand, chops and spare ribs are easily cut. But sausage making is not such a simple proposition, as we have discovered over the course of two years of pig butchering. Combining cubes of fat and odd bits of meat with an array of spices is truly an art, and not one that can be swiftly mastered. Since sausage remains our family's favorite dish, we are striving hard to be careful a...

During the Christmas season, our cats discovered that the apple-crate stable we were using for our Willow Tree nativity figurines was the perfect napping place. Hotaru, our calico, had no qualms about knocking over St. Joseph and displacing Mary, baby Jesus, and the various stable animals from their shelter in order to take a relaxing sleep. Or perhaps he just wanted to be a part of the scene?

One of the highlights of every Christmas morning is brunch, cooked by my husband. After returning from Mass, he slices potatoes into tiny chunks and fries them to a delectable golden brown, then serves them with thickly-sliced mushrooms and onions, a dish we term "Narnian Home Fries" because it reminds us of Shasta's breakfast with the dwarves in The Horse and His Boy . Sausage and Portugese salilio bread completed the brunch, along with the necessity of tea. My eldest daughter cooked a Yule log cake and garnished it with meringue mushrooms, a confection she's been perfecting, aided by our family's recent acquisition of a stand-up Kitchen Aid mixer. My Christmas breakfast duty is setting the table, which I always do the night before. This year I decorated our large wooden lazy susan with boxwood branches, silk white roses, wooden hearts, and red ribbon to make a impromtu Christmas tree as the centerpiece. A stroke of luck gifted us with two red-and-white checked t...

Here's the centerpiece my daughter made for this year's St. Lucy's Day celebration. The little doll is from Magic Cabin Dolls , and the little trees I got at clearance at WalMart. Our children love this celebration, which we celebrate with monkey cake , whose little chunks my daughter observed, could look like eyeballs.

I realized that in the scuffle of the past two months, I never posted a photo of our latest one, Benedict (nicknamed Bene). Born on Oct. 21, 2010, a very wonderful baby. God is good indeed!

My oldest daughter continues to be creative with her cakes. Here is the cake she made and decorated for our newest baby's baptism, complete with blue lollipop on top.

This past year, our family began raising American Blackbelly Hair Sheep for meat. A few weeks ago, we butchered our two oldest males, one ram and one who, because of his youth, we dubbed the "ramb." Unlike our pig butchering, where we had experienced help, Andrew and I tackled this task ourselves, armed with the help of the The Homesteader's Handbook to Raising Small Livestock and Cutting Up In the Kitchen . It was much less intimidating than the pig, and we managed to do both in two days. But from the pig butchering, we learned that some unconventional tools such as tree pruning sheers and a reciprocating saw are more useful in some cases than butchering knives and cleavers. After watching their dad carve up loins and chops, the older children wanted to help. So Andrew set them to work cutting up some of the smaller bits for stew. That evening I tossed some of the chunks with seasoned flour and roasted them 325 degrees in the oven. The family concluded that "ra...

One of the nicest parts of collecting everyday china is that your acquisitions break so frequently that clutter is not a lasting problem, particularly when you have children. Since our last teapot was chipped on the spout, I purchased this new one at a flea market which looks so appropriate to the fall. Also I wanted to show off my latest addition to my restaurantware collection of red and white: this floral pattern is so unusual! I've claimed it as my morning teacup.

My husband arranged with his brother that he would raise a pig for him in exchange for a new dining room table, and my brother-in-law agreed. The table was delivered today, and what a massive table it is! Made of reclaimed poplar with antique barn beams, it's an original design of my brother-in-law's. Some of you are familiar with his etsy store, Strong Oaks Woodshop , which also makes Waldorf playstands . Since we're expecting our eighth child in October, this large table is a timely addition to our house: we were really starting to crowd one another at the supper table. And my husband, like many men, couldn't stand it when all the dishes "jumped" whenever someone bumped our old table. But this slab-and-beam is truly more to his masculine taste: it won't be so easily shifted. I don't know what my brother-in-law will name this design, but something along the lines of "A Man's Table" might be appropriate. If you're interested in a ta...

Last weekend, we had two neighbor families over on Sunday afternoon for a little ceremony in honor of Our Lady. Since the Queenship of Mary is my feast day, and it seems that family processions are becoming more regular in our lives, I finally decided to buckle down and make some banners (from Dharmatrading.com ) in honor of Our Lady. My children drew large Marian symbols on scrap paper with black permanent marker: a lilly, a crown with stars, the Holy Spirit, the Immaculate Heart. Then I placed each one under a banner and traced the design with silver fabric paint. Next I carefully dropped diluted fabric dye onto the banners, which spreads until (hopefully) it meets the resistance of the paint, creating an almost stained-glass look. We hung our banners on branches for the children to carry. Others carried flowers, and one little girl carried a small crown of flowers on a sofa pillow. Our hymn to the Queen might have been off-key, but the procession was lovely. We trailed our way to o...

Our neighbor's house is like ours used to be: a rambling old house with multiple shed additions. It's not in the best shape. But I love their ample garden. It looks to me like the garden Peter Rabbit might have stolen into.

We decided to deliver a basket of fresh peaches to our neighbors, the Hatkes, so the little girls got into the jogging stroller, and their older brother chivalrously volunteered to be their chauffer. We live on a relatively quiet gravel road near rarely-used railroad tracks, so it was a peaceful walk. Thank God for the beauty of a quiet evening.