Our Lenten Plans

First is my "Journey Through the Desert with Jesus" Lenten Calendar. I found this idea here, but I tried my best to make it a little different by adding my own drawings for the special Saint days that I plan to celebrate with the kids (St. Patrick and St. Joseph), pictures of the desert and Sunday Oasis, and adding a family pic to move throughout our journey along our path.

See the desert pictures and our family photo.

Here are my Holy Week pictures.

Here is the stone that will be placed over the tomb on the night of Good Friday and then "rolled away" on Saturday night to surprise the girls on Sunday morning with a resurrected Christ.

Here is my bowl of earth that, God-willing, will bring forth grass (to symbolize life on Easter Sunday) after sowing the seeds during Holy Week. This replaced my winter wreath. I found this idea here.

Then I decorated the house with purple. I found this idea here. I tied purple ribbons and pieces of purple cloth on all our religious art or statues. Here I covered up my Scrapbooks and photo albums with the cloth and put my Russian Nesting Eggs hand-painted with Jesus' life on display where my Nativity scene usually resides during Advent and Christmas. I purchased this over here at a bizarre from a Russian shop.

Isn't it beautiful!

I also plan to make an Alleluia banner to hang during Easter and hide for the next Lent, but in case I don't find the materials or the time, I am at least going to put an Alleluia on my Lenten Calendar beneath the tomb and risen Christ on Easter morning. I am sure I can manage that!

The only other little thing that I hope to include is to get pretzels from the bakery on Friday mornings. You can read about the pretzel tradition here. Here's to making it a good Lent for our hearts and souls!