I'm so excited to announce Catholic All Year's newest undertaking . . . we made a real no kidding TV show! And it's available exclusively on FORMED. FORMED provides the very best Catholic content to help parishes, families and individuals explore their faith...
What I Did on My Christmas Vacation
Well, I was away from the blog for a couple weeks. And many things happened. This happened, more than would have been my personal preference, but I'm not in charge. But that wasn't the ONLY thing that happened. And I felt LESS horrible in the mornings, and didn't get...
Christmas Wishes from Us to You, plus winners, and hashtags, and printables, oh my
Well, for those of you who are just dying of curiosity over which photo we went with for the Christmas card this year . . . it was the rocks one. In case your card got lost in the mail, here it is in blog form: And in case you couldn't read that, here's the...
Seven Quick Reasons I Don't Have a Problem With "Happy Holidays"
Every year, I see rabble rousing Christian websites trying to get folks to boycott businesses that use Happy Holidays in their advertising. Obviously, I support people's right to do as they please with their own money. But as for me, I'm not a boycotter to begin with,...
12 Days of Family Christmas Movies -mostly- on Netflix Streaming
Keep reading all the way to the bottom for the winners of the two most recent Advent giveaways, and my next to last giveaway of the season, which just might help you enjoy these Netflix recommendations a little more. Speaking of that . . . As I've written about here...
Seven Reasons My Kids Don't Need Toys This Christmas
Don't you just love this song? I do. But naughtiness isn't why there's not going to be much under our tree this year. It's just that there are plenty of reasons my kids don't need any toys. Seven, in fact. Here they are . . . 1. We Have a Lot of Stuff We have a...
Whew! (and that's just day one . . . )
Merry Christmas to you from the gang at Catholic All Year. It's been quite a day. (And we haven't even had dinner or the Nativity Play yet!) Yesterday we chopped down our tree and decorated it, despite the (sunny and 85) weather . . . This morning we awoke early...
Keeping Christmas: How we keep celebrating from the partridge all theway to the drummers
At our house, we've been making a concerted effort to wait to celebrate Christmas, until . . . about now. It gives us at least a chance of keeping up with the kids' enthusiasm for the whole twelve days. (Or however many days of Christmas you like.) So, in case you're...
An at Home Nativity Play for Increased Christmas Awesomeness
Maybe it's the new baby, but Advent has FLOWN by in our house. Christmas is almost here! I just had to re-type this because I'm pretty sure I have to say my favorite part of our Christmas celebration is the Mass. But a VERY close second is our At Home Family Nativity...
Photo Christmas Cards: Why They are Awesome
I've been working on our Christmas cards this week. Every year, sending and receiving Christmas cards is one of my favorite parts of the season. We have friends all over the country and all over the world from the various stages of our lives: childhood, college,...
Keeping Advent: Our Family’s Traditions
Here's a little glimpse at what the first few days of Advent have looked like at our house . . . Journey to Bethlehem (the board game) It's pretty much the best advent-themed board game ever. But it's a very limited edition, since Jack made it when he was in the first...
Our Favorite Christmas Picture Books
Reading this post from Haley at Carrots for Michaelmas and this post from Charlotte at Waltzing Matilda has made me realize that I really, really, really want our family to have 24 Advent/Christmas picture books that we love. Books that are pretty to look at and fun...
Three Reasons I Love Advent
A few weeks ago, I wrote about our family's advent philosophy, but now that advent is actually upon us, I wanted to share a little more about our three favorite advent family traditions. 1. Little People Nativity We have many nativity sets. We've got a big outdoor...
Handmade Jesse Tree Set Tutorial (in expert, intermediate, and novice versions)
There's still time before Thursday at 9pm Pacific to enter to win the giveaway. (To enter by leaving a comment on the original post go here.) The giveaway is over, thanks to everyone who entered! In case you didn't win, some of you wanted to be able to make your...