A Gift of Gracias: Tea & a Craft

As I mentioned earlier, Thursday is a quiet, homey kind of day for us, so I like to plan any craft or liturgical projects for Thursday afternoons. Sometimes a simple tea seems a perfect complement to our activity, so that gets planned into the day, as well.

Now, this is not to say we don't drink tea or do crafts on other days of the week, lol, just that I try to plan for this one at least. I particularly like to revolve our activities around an upcoming feast day, holiday, a loved one's birthday or a special event.

But sometimes, it's all about the book we are reading. Case in point - any one of the titles suggested in Elizabeth's Real Learning lists or Cay's Catholic Mosaic book study.

Books such as these are so treasured and meaningful they just cry out to be celebrated with a tea and a craft. This week's selection was a perfect example - A Gift of Gracias, one of our lovely Catholic Mosaic titles.

In this glorious tale, oranges figure prominently. Well, this is so perfect ~ citrus is at its peak in midwinter! I would love to make marmalade sometime, if only I could find an easy recipe. I may just have to order a jar of this instead - oh, my. Marmalade on toast and a cup of strong Irish tea? I can hardly imagine a more delectable winter breakfast.

But for today's tea, well I had something else in mind. I decided to serve Constant Comment tea (decaffeinated of course) and I baked up a fresh batch of ... not lemon like I made before ... but orange snowballs! I simply replaced the lemon extract and Kool-aid with orange on both counts. The results were equally delicious I am happy to report. :)

Below you see our small table setting - and as you can see, with three boys, I keep it pretty simple. No lace, no finery - not even a tablecloth! - just some child-friendly dishes, a glowing candle and good things to eat. The cookies and tea were a hit, as was the story of little Maria and Our Lady of Altagracia. Each and every title Cay chose for her book study is wonderful, but I think this is my favorite so far. The illustrations are gorgeous - colorful and warm - and the story is so very sweet.

After we ate I showed the boys the Our Lady of Altagracia image I found online. I thought it would be nice to have something to remind us of this lovely story, a quick craft to hang up, and later to store in our family faith notebook. So I printed out the image and found one of our golden doilies ...

We just cut out the image and glued it to the center of the doily which made a frame both simple and ornate.

We hung it in our window and there it will hang through Our Lady's feast day this Sunday.

Thank you for stopping by our little tea today! I hope you had a nice day as well. Do come back tomorrow - we have another simple craft planned and I might just be pursuaded to bake again! :)