The Feast of the Immaculate Conception & other blessed things...

Yesterday, we celebrated the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, we all went to confession and early morning Mass to start the day. The Mary Mantle was placed over the Christ Candle which will now stay there until Christmas Eve. We had blueberry, flower shaped miniture cakes as a special treat. The day before (7th) we had celebrated the birth of our youngest blessing. He was born on the Eve of the Immaculate Conception at 9pm - he turned 3 this day. In the year he was born, it was the 150th anniversary of the proclaimation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854, so we see this as a great blessing for this boy, indeed.

I had a very devote friend who told us, "Being born on the Eve of a great feast is something special." He then went on to quote Frank Duff the founder of the Legion of Mary own words, as to why, but I can't remember his beautiful words now....Frank Duff had founded the Legion of Mary on the Eve of Our Lady's Birthday.

Happy Birthday, my darling, blessed boy!

We have been using Illuminated Ink's beautiful craft kit for the Jesse Tree but unfortuantely it does not have a mobile for every Jesse Tree image, the very first symbol I had to design and make - The Creation symbol - and until now I have had to make another but there is no craft for day 9 - Canaan, the Promised Land of Blessings - which is represented in The Advent Jesse Tree book as a bunch of grapes.

Yet in Geraldine's book, she does not have a story for this entry into Canaan but a double story for Moses instead, so it can get very confusing....anyway, I have decided to make the grapes and read the section from the book that does recognise this symbol. So I wanted to make a three-dimentional cluster of grapes and here is the step-by step procedure for anyone wanting to do something similar.

I didn't have any green or purple cardboard, if I had of, I could have skipped this more laborious process of covering the white cardboard with coloured paper....

Cuts were made into the grapes so that they could be slipped into each other.

Here is the finished product, I just threaded a needle with green thread and threaded it through the top to create the loop to hang.

The green grape leaves were bent slightly in the middle and slipped either side of the top of the grape.

Here is a better look at how the grape leaves were slipped in with the grapes.

Here it is below with some glitter to enhance it further.

This morning is the feast of St Juan Diego (9th) the visionary who received the visit from Our Lady of Guadalupe who presented him with the image of herself on his tilma, it was this event that brought about the biggest mass conversion in the history of mankind.

I'd love to talk more about this most blessed story but hope to do so more fully on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the 12th.

So naturally, I have nine symbols on our Jesse Tree at present!

Here is a close up shot of the newest editions - Jacob's ladder - Joseph's colourful coat - The burning bush of Moses - The grapes from Canaan. This tree is becoming more and more colourful as the days pass by!