When I was a child in Catholic elementary school, we always had a May Crowning each year. There was a large Mary statue in our school's courtyard, and we would place a crown made of flowers on her head. So, I found the rough instructions for making a floral wreath using wire and silk flowers - the plan was for Caroline to help make it. But it was much more complicated, so I ended up doing it myself. It was difficult for me, and I had to play with it to make it work. If anyone ever wants to make one, ask me and I will share how I did it so that the flowers would stay in place!
We cut them out and made them stand, and Cecilia tried to crown hers!
We made two crowns. We took the larger one out to our Mary Garden. Our roses are in bloom, so I pulled two of them off. We sung a verse of Immaculate Mary, and then Caroline crowned the outdoor statue.
Cecilia laid a rose at Mary's feet. This is the new statue I mentioned in a previous post.
Then we moved inside...
On our indoor Mary statue, Cecilia got to place the crown on Mary while Caroline laid the rose at her feet. Then we sang the rest of Immaculate Mary.
This was so simple to do, and Caroline really enjoyed it - she had a big smile on her face the whole time!
For dinner, we had a blue theme, blue being Mary's traditional color... we had blueberry pancakes, blueberry punch, and a fruit salad. I also picked up the blue tablecloth for $6 at Big Lots! The blue candle has an image of Our Lady of Fatima on it, whose feast day falls later this month.
This was a fun way to start our month! Hope everyone has a very blessed May!
4 comments:
Erin, What a cute idea! The girls look like they had so much fun. For mother's day the kids got me a Virgin Mary statue for our Mary Garden. This is simple enough that we can do it. So...how difficult was it to make the crowns for Mary?
Sue, when I made the crowns, my first idea was to try to tuck the flowers into gaps left by making two circles with the wire and then wrapping around a third time... but the flowers kept falling out, and then when I used needle-nose pliers to try to crimp the wire so it would hold the stems better, it ended up cutting the stems, or the wire would come loose elsewhere. What ended up working was for me to cut the fake flowers with about a cm of stem on them. I again made two circles of wire (continuous and measured so they were a bit bigger than the circumference of the head of the statue). Then, still with the same piece of wire, I began going around a third time, but wrapping each flower stem tightly in place as I went. I would lay the stem parallel to the two straight wires and then wrap around with the third, maybe 2-3 times on each stem before putting the next one in place. I started each stem underneath the preceding flower on the crown. I hope that makes sense... Oh, and I used either 24 or 26 gauge wire from the craft store... I already had some 20 gauge wire but thought it was a bit too thick and therefore too stiff to bend as easily as I wanted.
Looks like you guys had a great May crowning!
Erin,
It makes perfect sense. Thanks for the tutorial. Now it's off to the craft store for supplies!
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