Let Love Light the Way

Our December meeting focused on St. Jane de Chantal and the virtue of Love of Neighbor.  What a perfect time of year to be thinking about who our neighbor is and how we can show God's love to them. 

As all of our girls arrived, they began creating a pile of toys to be donated to the local Toys for Tots campaign.  By the time everyone had arrived, we had filled our gathering table with all sorts of wonderful Christmas gifts for our neighbors in need.  Thanks girls, for practicing this beautiful virtue.

As always, the girls began with a coloring page for their binders.

We used the same image on the coloring page to create our holy card:



This is also the image that we use in our Year One binder page.
For our holy card, we added a simple prayer:

O, Sovereign Goodness,
I abandon myself
forever in
Thy arms.

Our craft centered on love and the spreading the light of Christ to others by giving that love away.  So...we made candles.

The girls had the choice of two types.

The first was a simple candle of stacked-hearts.

The other was a little glass votive decorated with jewels.

Both projects were completed nicely, but they didn't hold a candle (pun intended, of course) to the treat Mrs. A brought this week!

The Buds couldn't wait to dig in...

But not if it's hot!

MMMMM...Just a lick?

Or maybe a whole bite!

Keep planting seeds...

Take the Love of God with You as You Go!

Our November meeting focused on St. Agnes and the virtue of "Love of God".  The girls gathered with a coloring page of our saint and made a prayer card to add to their binders.  We used our Year One images of St. Agnes on the prayer card, along with this simple prayer in the saint's own words:

Oh, Lord,
I belong to
You
Whom the angels serve.

Unfortunately, I forgot to snap a picture of a finished prayer card, but I did get the girls coloring their St. Agnes pages.

With our virtue focus of this meeting as "Love of God", we decided that we needed to be able to take the love of God with us everywhere that we go.  We also decided that it would be nice for everyone to see that love of God.  Of course, they should be able to see it reflected in our actions, but what if everyone could actually see it? 

Because we were carrying it like a walking evangelization!

So we made:

 "Take-the-Love-of-God-with-you-as-you-go"

Tote Bags.

The girls really enjoyed decorating the bags with glitz and glam and writing their own "sweet nothings" about their favorite guy...Jesus, of course!

And wasn't it cute when we pulled out the mini-totes to go with the big totes?

What could be hiding inside?

Mrs. A never tells...

But it's always bound to be something YUMMY!

No one was disappointed!

Are they ever?

Keep planting seeds...

Hope in the Heart of Jesus

Our October meeting focused on the virtue of Hope and the beautiful St. Monica.  We began, as we always do, with a coloring page...this one again from Charlotte. 

We also added to our holy card collection by making our own holy card of St. Monica.  It used the original image of St. Monica that we used for our binders...

And we added a special prayer:

Lord,

I offer up my sufferings.

Give them signs of

Hope.

These special little prayer cards are going into our binders this year, along with our new coloring pages.

Our main theme for this meeting was to always put our Hope in the Heart of Jesus.  So what better craft than something with the Sacred Heart.

We decided to make Girls' Group T-Shirts!

They were so much fun...

Each T-shirt had a heart stamped to the front and the girls used fabric markers to add the details to create the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

But the best part?

The center of the heart was blank.  The perfect place for the girls to write their names...right inside Jesus' heart.

They turned out great.

And many of the girls put them right on.

Beautiful!

But, of course, that could not be the end...

Not when we have the famous Mrs. A and her cupcakes!

Amazing!

YUM!

Oh my God,

Because you are all loving, powerful, and faithful,

I have hope to be happy with You in heaven.

Keep planting seeds...

Stand Firm in Faith

Our first meeting of the 2011-2012 was so much fun!  It was wonderful to see all the beautiful faces back for another year with Christ, and we were so pleased to welcome eight new beauties! 

This meeting focused on St. Catherine of Siena and the virtue of faith.  We colored a picture of St. Catherine from Charlotte's blog.  We also began what will be a holy card collection to add to our binders (along with all our new coloring pages this year).  The holy card had our original image of St. Catherine on the front...

and her simple prayer on the back:

Lord,

take me from myself

and

give me to

Yourself.

Then we really had some fun!

The girls each brought a pair of flip flops to the meeting (or Crocs, as the case was with one of our little ladies who does not like the feel of flip flops between her toes!).  We decorated the flip flops with all the glitz and glam that we could get to stick to them, adding the special touch of a cross to the sole, so we can...

"Stand Firm in Faith"

One of the girls even pointed out the connection between having the cross on our sole and our soul.  Wow!

The girls had a blast with the decorating...

although the tying was a challenge!

The finished products were delightful.

And comfortable, too!

But the best part was that we have been blessed again with the kitchen creations of Mrs. A!  She wowed us with flip flop cookies and the girls were thrilled. 

Which color goes best with my outfit?

Do we get two since we have two feet?

What a great way to end the first meeting of the year.

It gives new meaning to "putting your foot in your mouth"!

Keep planting seeds...