christmas – Page 4 – SIMCHA FISHER

Catholics on Etsy, Part 2! Christmas and Advent Gifts for 2016

Yesterday, I shared part one of this year’s list of Catholic-made, handmade goods — jewelry, art, and prints of various kinds. Today, part two: unusual rosaries, knit and fabric goods, and my favorite category of all, miscellaneous.

A few of the sellers have set up a special discount code or deal just for this post, so take note!

UNUSUAL ROSARIES and ROSARY ACCESSORIES

There are ever so many gorgeous rosaries on Etsy. I featured several of them on my Easter gift guide last yaer, including Iron Lace chain mail rosaries; a huge variety of styles from Rosaries by Allison; heirloom-quality rosaries from Athey Rosaries; sweet, affordable chaplets from ChapletsNSuch; a nice variety for various occasions from Snowshoe Rosaries; gemstone rosaries on flexwire from Prayer and Sparkle; and heavy, elegant rosaries from Et Corde.

Today, I thought I’d feature a few rosaries and accessories that are a little off the beaten path:

Two Hearted Ranch: Catholic and custom gifts and jewelry, rosary cases, keychains, including customized floating lockets
Featured item: Monstrance glass-topped steel-plated tin rosary case, $9.95.

You can also add a stamped tin disc to the bottom of the inside to commemorate a sacrament. Many other designs, bold and eye-catching. Keep those rosaries untangled!

Roses for Mary by Becky Arganbright
Featured item: Clay Rose garden three Hail Marys, $7

If you only have time for three Hail Marys, these rose counters are sweet and nostalgic-looking.

The Wallet Rosary, $12.50
Made of string, light, brushed stainless steel, and slim as a credit card, it fits right in your wallet.

Neat idea! Grab it when you need it.
Use coupon code “SimchaChristmas” for free U.S. Shipping on orders of 2+ rosaries through 12/15.

Chews Life – an assortment of rosaries, chaplets, and bracelets and necklaces designed to divert and delight nursing, teething, twiddling babies
Featured item: Chews life decade rosary, $18

Gracefully bow to the inevitable and carry a rosary designed to be gnawed on. Love it.

Apple and Azalea by Theresa Barger – Memory wire rosary bracelets and other elegant jewelry and accessories
I always admired my friend Theresa’s style and elegance when we were in college together, and her original wrap-around rosaries ($24-$28) are exquisite and varied. I had a hard time picking just one to feature, so I picked three.

My own wrap-around bracelet, a southwestern-style one, has held its shape through years of abuse at the hands and mouths of various babies.

KNIT and FABRIC GOODS

The Knot Haus – many fresh and whimsical knitted gifts, including some CUTE cute cute baby hats.
Featured item: Green Celtic knot bracelet, $25

Neat, eh? This knit knot bracelet is made with silver-plated ribbon clamps and a lobster clasp. Say that sentence three times fast!

Blue Ridge Purl Hand-knit hats, scarves, cowls, and gloves by a pair of homeschooling Catholic moms
Featured item: Hand-knit fox hood, $40

Imagine glancing out the kitchen window to see a flock of little foxes prancing by, and knowing that for once, their ears are necks are warm. (Foxes do so come in flocks.) Completely adorable, and so cozy.

Three Jolly Owls by Katie McGinley: Handcrafted Goods and Gifts for the Liturgical Year: peg doll saints, Jesse tree ornaments, and more.
Featured item: Handmade felt Jesse Tree ornaments, $54

Perfect! Simple, bright, and meaningful, and an easy tradition to follow every year. The ornaments have ribbons loops for hanging.
SPECIAL OFFER: Use coupon code PANTS10 to get 10% off! – valid until 12/31

S. Lochet Designs by Stephanie Lochet: Period and Vintage Inspired Creations
Featured item: Set of three tissue holders (tissues included!), $8

I don’t even carry tissues with me, but I want these. So cheery! Many more styles and patterns on the site, as well as retro aprons and more.

Faith and Fabric Design –
Reversible Advent and Christmas Table Runner, $38

I love table runners. Such an easy way to change the look of a room. This one is reversible: When Advent is through, flip it over and see a pretty Christmas design.

I also like this peg doll flower, $12. Keep your peg dolls snug and sorted.

MISCELLANEOUS!

Pottery From Your Roots by Faith Connor
Featured item: Chicory Mortar and Pestle, $40

Ooh, I like the looks of these. Spare and elegant with a soupçon of strangeness. Many more pieces on the site.

Door Number 9 by Elisa Low
Featured item: Hamilton Gimmel Rings, $25. You remember Elisa from when we chatted about holy cards as fan art, and the intersection of faith and geekdom. Well, those interlocking Alexander and Elizabeth Hamilton wedding rings she was working on are on their way! The first run sold out immediately, but you can pre-order, $25.

Elisa also offers a wide variety of unusual handmade goods, from saint wine charms to portable oratories to Cyberman tea wallets.

Sweet Soft Skin Handmade Soaps by Margaret Grimm
Featured item: Limited edition “Gifts of the Magi” soaps scented with frankincense and myrrh, $4.50

So luxe! I love how the natural shape of the soap is incorporated into the design, like a little landscape. Get several as little gifts or stocking stuffers, or keep them for yourself and enjoy that once-a- year scent.

Wild Things Adventures by Sarah Antonio
Featured item: Adventure bags, $85 Handmade leather satchels stocked with a hand stitched, leather bound journal with 24 watercolor pages, a Prang watercolor set with small water jar (not pictured), branch pencil, compass, binoculars, and a folding magnifying glass!

Eh? Eh? You can almost smell the outdoors calling.

Ashcraft Creative hand-tooled leather by Mark and Christina Ashcraft
Featured item: Stained glass leather wallet, $65

Not gonna lie: this is probably my favorite item this year. Just stunning. Many more splendid, original, hand-tooled leather items on the site.

Art 4 the Soul – devotional art and retabolos
Featured item: Sacred Heart Leather keychain/bag tag, personalized, $25+

Sacred Heart, you come with me! I love this. Many more original designs and combos on the site, great for bag tags, key chains, or zipper pulls.

Saong Jai – an assortment of Catholic and vintage goods
Featured item: Set of 3 vintage Catholic ornaments, $25

Yes! Catholic up your Christmas tree. Aren’t these spectacular?

Don’t forget to check out part one of the Advent and Christmas Catholic Etsy list. That’s it for handmade gifts this year. I’ll be doing my annual “gift ideas for kids” post in the next week.

Are you a Catholic who sells handmade or hand-designed goods? Feel free to leave a link to your shop in the comments.

Maite Roche Advent Calendar giveaway! Introducing Sister|Sinjin! and a little punching.

Advent begins in less than a week! This year’s Advent is the longest that Advent can possibly be, but it surely came up quickly, didn’t itly? I have three lovely things to share with you.

One is Incarnation, a new Christmas album by Sister|Sinjin, a musical group made up of Elizabeth Duffy (a fellow Patheos alum) and two of her friends, one Catholic and one Lutheran.

From one of the blog posts giving some background about the project:

Once we realized we were a band and began thinking of a name, we knew we would feel inclined to self-identify more as mothers than musicians. Our various experiences of motherhood certainly bear down on these songs.

When I’ve been pregnant (I have six children) I almost always fall into a depression, inability to pray, distance from God, and a heavy darkness that lifts almost immediately once I’ve given birth. In the midst of those pregnancies, I’ve thought more than once that I should name my child for the author of The Dark Night of the Soul, St. John of the Cross.

As Kaitlyn notes, creativity often springs from this sometimes painful, always holy duty to bear and support the lives of others.

We hope you enjoy these songs, which both extend from, and are an homage to the darkening season of waiting for new life in our Beloved Savior.

Very beautiful stuff. You can hear a sample of two of the tracks here, and you can pre-order the album, which comes out December 2.

***

Second is a GIVEAWAY of this splendid Gospel Advent calendar by Maïte Roche, one of my all-time favorite Catholic illustrators. The artwork is just luminous (the cell phone photo below doesn’t do it justice), and the calendar opens into a scene that includes all of Bethlehem, with a window to open each day. You can hang it on the wall from a little grommet, or it will stand on its own on a tabletop.

Even better, it comes with a little illustrated companion booklet that provides prayers, short readings, meditations, and suggestions for each day. So much better than the usual routine, where the kids fight over whose turn it is, then mom gets mad and opens it herself, and then you just stand there staring at the little picture of a star or something. It will appeal to children, but would be helpful for adults, as well.

(As you can see, Corrie liked it so much, she took a bite of it, and then threw it in the dog’s water dish. At least I hope it was in that order. If your booklet is not wet, you can even color in the illustrations.)

Thanks to the publisher, Ignatius, I have one calendar to give away! Same rules as last time:

To enter, leave a comment on the blog, and that’s one entry. To get additional entries, share this post on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ or elsewhere on social media, AND . . . IMPORTANT: Please leave a separate comment for each additional entry you would like to earn.

So if you want three entries, leave one comment saying “Me please!” [or whatever], one comment saying “I shared your post on FB” and one comment saying “I tweeted this post.” And so on.

NOTE: Don’t be concerned if your comment doesn’t show up right away in the combox. The comment moderator is a little strict at the moment, so I’ll be approving comments in batches as time allows. Thanks for your patience!

This will be a quckie contest, since Advent is right at our throats. Contest closes Tuesday, November 22, at noon, and I’ll notify the winners asap.

You can also find the calendar for sale on Amazon and from Ignatius.

***

One last thing: One of these days, I’m gonna make me an Advent calendar like this. Each day leading up to Christmas, you get to punch something, and you get rewarded for it. Uh, for the kids. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Kids these days.

In addition, I would like to say that when I tagged this post music, WordPress suggested the tags “soul music” and “butt music.” That means my archives have arrived, and they’ve brought their tags. Hooray?

Pretend you’re Starbucks.

So far, I have met zero Christians who are mad at Starbucks. My Facebook feed has, however, been overrun by Christians who don’t care what Starbucks puts on its cups, and are embarrassed by the few noisy meat heads who say they feel persecuted by having to drink their $11 lattes out of a red cup rather than a red cup with a light red reindeer on it.

Which leads me to believe that this is one of those Big Fat Nothing stories, and the more noise we make about denouncing it, the closer to Something the story becomes. Cameramen at ballgames turn away when there’s a streaker on the field, so let’s do the same, eh?

I do wonder, though, what you would do if you were Starbucks, and you really did, for whatever reason, want to make “the holiday season” (Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa/What Have You) more pleasant or meaningful for the world. Let’s say you have tons of money and nothing but good intentions. What gesture would you make, big or small? Could be something commercial, or something for your customers, something for your employees, something secret, something global, or whatever. What would you do?

Best answers will be read on the air this evening at 5 Eastern, as I chat with Mark Shea on his show Connecting the Dots. You can listen to the show live on Breadbox Media here. I’m Mark’s co-host every Monday, and you can hear podcasts of previous shows with me and Marks four other co-hosts (one each weekday) here.

Make homemade vanilla extract now for Christmas gifts!

Last year, we gave a bunch of people homemade vanilla extract for Christmas. Was it appreciated? I have no idea. But we kept a bunch for ourselves, and it is wonderful. Here’s our current personal stash:

It was quite cheap, and you can really taste the difference in recipes over store bought vanilla extract. (The boys also add a bit to their mice’s drinking water a few times a month, to make them stink a bit less. In theory.)

Best of all, it’s SUPER EASY. The only hard part is thinking ahead a bit. It takes a month at the very least, but the longer you let it sit, the nicer it gets. All you have to do is buy some cheap liquor, split or chop a bunch of vanilla beans, throw them in the bottle of alcohol, and wait. (More detailed directions here, but there’s really not much more to it.)

We used Smirnoff Vodka, but you can use rum or bourbon. Buying expensive liquor won’t make it taste any better, so go for cheapski or middleski.

You can make it in individual bottles,

or make it in one big bottle and then decant it into something more decorative when you’re ready to give it to people.

We bought bottles like these (8 oz. each, case of 12 for about $20), but there are many lovely varieties to be found online. If I had time, I’d scout out thrift stores and find some pretty, old fashioned bottles in interesting shapes. Just make sure they have a tight cap or cork!

We chose Madagascar vanilla beans like these (about 30 beans for about $20). I think we may go with Mexican beans this year (they are supposed to have a spicier taste, but are a bit more expensive). Here’s an assortment of different types of beans (40 for about $20)

plus labels like this, so we could personalize the bottles

or you could go with tags. Lots of possibilities here, to make it as cute or elegant or artsy as you like.

I just bought a bunch of cheery red bows and tied them on with jingle bells from the dollar store, and it made cute little packages. This would also work for wedding or party favors, depending on how you decide to dress the bottles up.

***
Just a reminder! My links are to Amazon products. If you buy anything from Amazon after getting to the site through one of my links (even if you buy a completely different product), I get a small cut of the purchase price. This adds up over the month and helps tremendously to support our family. So if you buy from Amazon, I’d consider it a great favor if you’d bookmark this link and use it any time you order. Thank you so much!

Epiphany, you’re on your own.

“Keep that tree up until Epiphany!” they keep saying. “It’s still Christmas, you know! Don’t take down that tree yet!” they keep saying. They are imagining something like this:

(Photo Credit Anthea Sieveking , Wellcome Images)

O, Holy Night!

Whereas what hulks in our living room is more along these lines:

Oh, holy crap.

Epiphany, you’re on your own.

Mother and Child: A Christmas Gallery of Original Art

Merry Christmas, everybody! I offered up Midnight Mass for all of you, especially for anyone who is lonely or grieving or in pain today. Thanks for another wonderful year of company.

Over at the Register today, nine artists have graciously shared their lovely Madonna and Child artwork with us. Here is just one, by 16-year-old painter Noyuri Umezaki:

Check out the rest here.

Cheap and Easy Christmas Things that Even You Can Do!

I assume you’re already doing all the religious stuff, and have already bought, made, figured out, or given up on gifts. Here are a bunch of other nice Christmasy things you can do pretty easily, using materials that you may actually have in your house and skills you can probably muster up even at this stage of your life.

SOMETHING SWEET TO EAT:

Fudge recipe that doesn’t require a candy thermometer.

Can be dressed up with various nuts, crushed candies, flavored chips (peanut butter, mint, butterscotch, etc.), but yummy on its own. There are also lots of other great recipes on that page, with clear instructions.

Also more of less foolproof, and without any exotic ingredients or equipment, but messy to make: buckeyes. I let the kids do this one, since it involves a lot of hand-mooshing of dough and unsanitary dipping in chocolate.

SOMETHING SAVORY TO EAT:

Jew-for-a-day potato latkes that are great for Chanukah but don’t require any special Jew ingredients. I didn’t bother with the cheesecloth; I just squeezed out the potato shreds in a colander and added a bit of extra flour. So tasty and tender. Serve with sour cream. Leave time to go lie down afterwards.

SOMETHING TO LISTEN TO:

Christmas music that is free and won’t make you grind your teeth: The Boston Camerata never disappoints.

SOME DECORATIONS TO MAKE:

Neat Christmas decorations that require only some paper, a stapler, and some string.

The dog actually made this one, and he’s an idiot! That’s how easy it is! The dog couldn’t even find the stapler, so he used needle and thread. For a fancier look, try using this basic idea, but with lots of different sizes and shapes (giant to tiny), different cuts (straight, scalloped, etc.), with shiny, patterned, or regular paper, and hang them from string or ribbons or yarn, and add sparkly beads to the string. Instantly dresses up a room if you hang up half a dozen from the ceiling.

We also had fun last year gluing together various kinds of pasta for ornaments. Hot glue worked the best. These can be painted (metallic spray paint is great) or even colored with markers, but you can also get on board the “natural pasta look” train that is not actually a thing. We made wreaths, trees, angels, instruments, and all kinds of stars. We really did! But here are the ones I can actually find, to take a picture of, including the inevitable unfinished Dalek:

Just look on Pinterest for “pasta ornament” and you’ll see all the possibilities. Because it’s Christmas, I didn’t say “pastabilities.”

SOMETHING TO READ OUT LOUD:

Full text of A Christmas Carol by Dickens from Project Gutenberg. I have never actually gotten around to reading this out loud to the kids, but it’s doable. It’s a long short story, not a novel. If you can find a copy of it anywhere, the 1951 movie with Alastair Sim is the best by far.

SOMETHING TO AVOID:

Contentious social media. Seriously, if you are feeling stressed out and overwhelmed, you will not feel more peaceful and generous after spending time arguing about torture, racism, rape culture, or liturgical practices, so just close that tab and go find something nicer to do with your time. It’s not that these things aren’t important, and it’s not that you’re wrong. It’s just arguing about them is not going to help us get ready for Christmas. Save some argy bargy for the New Year! It’ll keep.

Gift-Giving is so Catholic!

We don’t want to convey to our kids that love can be bought on Amazon; but we also shouldn’t try to persuade them that love is some kind of nebulous, moonshiny, spiritual quality that has very little to do with their everyday experiences. Rather than turning Christmas into a story about God vs. Happiness, the trick is to turn love and giving into part of one seamless idea.

Read the rest at the Register.

Loving the adult Jesus

Christmas is the infancy of the Faith, and most people find it pretty easy to be happy about about their Faith at this time of year — at least in the good moments. Even when the season is stressful or exhausting, most of us at least occasionally taste those golden moments where the music is right, the candles are glowing, we’re finally holding a mug of something hot, finally hearing the happy murmurs of the baby in the manger. At the best moments, we love Christmas, baby Jesus loves us, and it is just plain nice. It’s simple to respond as we should, at least on the good days. A simple “Gloria!” and we’re doing it right.

But what about when the liturgical year grows up?

Read the rest at the Register.

Zero Foolproof Gift Ideas for the Man You Claim to Love; or, Simply Having a Wonderful Chickentime

Is it my imagination, or is the Catholic internet just bristling with lists of gift ideas for men this year?

Are there suggestion lists like this for women’s gifts? Is it my silly little lady imagination going all kookie again, or is it actually fairly easy to buy presents for women? Of course it’s possible to go astray, but most women will tell you exactly what they want, if you ask them. Then what you do is you go out and buy or make or get or do that, and then either add an unexpected upgrade, or add something a little extra to show that you like buying stuff for her (which you don’t, but shut up, it’s Christmas). It’s pretty easy.

But buying presents for men is quite another thing.

This may be women’s fault. It’s possible that men will also just tell us what they want, and we should buy or make or get or do that, and then also some beer, and everything would be fine. It’s possible. But women do not like to do things the easy way, because we want to show our husbands that we care. We want to put some deep thought into our gifts. We want it to be a gift that only we, alone in the world, would have the insight and creative intuition to give to him.

Which is what leads us to give our husbands such terrible, terrible gifts.

Now, I tried to do a little research into the fascinating field of “Terrible Gifts My Wife Once Gave Me,” and the results were far from illuminating. 93% of male respondents outright refused to answer, citing the right against self-incrimination, the Geneva convention, the Gettysburg Address, and “HEY, LOOK, A FLYING CHICKEN!” and then they ran away. The other 19% simply smiled mutely, pulled out the combination corkscrew, tire gauge, and boar’s bristle shaving brushes that their wives thought they would want for some reason, and fatally stabbed themselves, whispering through faintly smiling lips as they died, “I didn’t talk . . . “

And one guy said, “Well, ha ha, one time she gave me this stupid little–” and the other 99% screamed “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” and tackled him, giving him the greatest gift of all: a traumatic brain injury that rendered him unconscious until after Epiphany.

So, since all the men are too chicken to talk about it, I’ll tell you what I’ve learned about gifts for men.

1. They do not want a heating pad from the drug store.

Let me explain. This was our first Christmas as a married couple, and we were still learning about each other, and didn’t even yet realize just how radically different were our ideas about — well, a lot of things. Also, we were broke, and I didn’t have a car or a debit card, so I could only shop at places that were within walking distance of our cruddy little city apartment. (To my credit, I never even considered doing my Christmas shopping at the only other nearby store, Jesus Grocery.)

At the time, my husband suffered terribly and repeatedly from crippling sinus headaches caused by bad teeth that we couldn’t afford to get pulled. All I could think about was that I wished his head didn’t hurt so much. Then I saw this awesome device where you bathe your entire head in this chamber of therapeutic, head-clearing steam. It looked great! But it was too expensive. I considered a neti pot, but even I knew enough to realize that he was not a fancy enough man to enjoy tea, or even if it’s, you know, nose tea. Or whatever that neti thing is.

At this point, I was getting confused. I was pregnant, it was a cold and slushy winter, my boots leaked, my nose was running, and I think they were playing “Wonderful Christmastime.” My head was whirling and pounding as I searched the shelves, rejecting one idea after another, getting more and more panicked, feeling less and less certain about life, the universe, nosey pots, and everything. What could I get? What could I possibly get, that would be a good use of our precious spending cash, but would be thoughtful, and a surprise, and would convey love and tenderness, and would make him weep with delight, despite not being a fancy man, when he opened the package?

And then I saw it: a heating pad. Right in my price range, just as good as a sinus steam machine — even better! He could use it on his bad back, too! Absolutely perfect! The gift of a lifetime, and did I mention, right in my price range! Indeed, itwas a wonderful Christmas time!

You see, to me, this present said, “My dear, I wish for you all good things, including health and happiness and ease. I wish I could wave a magic wand and make your troubles disappear; but, in our sweet and simple poverty, all that I can offer is this simple heating pad–and may it bring you some warmth and relief, and its radiant presence reminded you ever of the warmth and love of my womanly heart, which belongs, my dearest dear, to you.”

To him, it said, “Here, stick this on your head, you smelly old cripple.”

So, that was no good.

2. He does not want something you found at the dump.

Not really much else to say about this.

3. I guess you could just ask him what he wants for Christmas, and if it’s not illegal, you could give it to him.

Nah.

4. HEY LOOK, A FLYING CHICKEN!

***
(This post originally ran in the National Catholic Register in 2012.)

UNUSUAL ROSARIES and ROSARY ACCESSORIES

KNIT and FABRIC GOODS

MISCELLANEOUS!

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