Garden of the Good Shepherd

Last year, we counted the fifty days of Easter using this sticker calendar called the Garden of the Good Shepherd. There is a short passage that goes along with each sticker as well as a relevant Bible verse. It has been a fun way to remember that we are still celebrating Easter!

This year, I found some fun plans for extending this celebration from some other Catholic mom bloggers, Jessica and Charlotte. They have come up with "Good Shepherd Garden Parties" that go along with the symbols for every week! We used some of their ideas for our dinner to finish up week 4 tonight! Week Four was all about the water... the symbols on the stickers are a boat, a mast, a sail, a fishing net, fish, and a grill (or a barbecue, as they refer to it... clearly it was not made in the South, ha ha!).

So, here is our bowl of nets and fish: pretzels and Goldfish crackers.

Here is our boat (made of a banana and mandarin oranges floating in a sea of blueberries!), which also contains the mast and sail (a little vanilla ice cream at the end holds up the pretzel and fruit leather). These were a big hit! Caroline said, "We're having ICE CREAM for DINNER???" Ha ha... it was maybe two tablespoons of ice cream. It made a yummy twist on fruit salad! Cecilia tried to eat the ice cream by picking up the mast and sail part and eating it off the end, hee hee.

Below are Caroline and Cecilia enjoying their meal. The main course was barbecue pork sandwiches (for the grill... maybe hamburgers would have worked well here too, especially considering that I didn't really grill the pork - we happened to have some left in the deep freeze from Cecilia's birthday party!).

We had this dinner today, May 1st, and so our dining room decor had been changed to reflect the new month: Saint Joseph holy cards on display since today is the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, and our Mary statue, since May is the month dedicated especially to Mary. We will make a little crown of flowers for her and have a May Crowning next weekend! Our paschal candle is also still on the table along with some wildflowers that Caroline picked for a vase on the table!

I hope to add something little by little as the years go by to celebrate the Easter season. These garden parties are one fun way to do this! I am thankful for the other moms out there who share their good ideas with others! :)