A Birthday Cake for Pentecost Sunday 

Today happens to be the "birthday of the Church" or Pentecost Sunday!

 
The Catholic Church celebrates Pentecost 50 days after Easter, so Pentecost is the official ending of the Easter season in the Church calendar.  So NOW you can finally put away those Easter decorations!?! 😉

What is Pentecost? Read more at my new blog at  A Slice of Liturgical Life.

But, I'm so excited about my new blog, I'm getting ahead of myself so before you read more about Pentecost, I need to give you some background information below!  Read on! 

A New Blog is Born!

When I first started this blog in June 2010 (WOW! Was that really 7 years ago!) I was brand new to blogging and had fun creating my own blog as a hobby to document and savor the sweetness of faith, family and homeschooling. This blog's look has changed through the years, as well as my focus and mission of it. I have enjoyed the journey and have met some amazing friends! Some I have met in real life, but there are many others I would love to cross paths with besides in blog land.

In the last few years, I have noticed a trend with my posts.  I realized that I blog a lot about the liturgical year and the Church's feast days. My passion has become to evangelize to my family, friends, the world and anyone who will listen, about the beautiful, rich history and devotions of the Catholic faith, as well as document the fun our family has had focusing on the liturgical Church year with prayers, activities, crafts, and creative foods.

With that being said, this little corner of blog land will be quieter and posts will be less frequent because my heart is now into creating a new blog A Slice of Liturgical Life.  This is definitely a work in progress and will be for a long time, but I hope you will come along for the ride and learn about living the treasures of the Church with family, friends, joy and simplicity alongside me!  My new blog is in it's infancy (do you hear what I did there? :)  ) and it will take much time to grow, but I look forward to the journey ahead and I'm excited to share ideas, resources, and organization tips with you regarding living liturgically with family, friends, joy and simplicity!

For more information about A Slice of Liturgical Life, visit my About page.

Here is my blog's new header/logo:


THANK YOU to all those that have followed A Slice of Smith Life through the years....I hope you will follow my new blog as well!

Please check out the "birth" of my new blog and if you would like receive updates on A Slice of Liturgical Life posts be sure to subscribe via email below.

You can also follow me on social media on Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter and  A Slice of Liturgical Life's Facebook page by "Liking" the Facebook page, . 

I would love to hear your thoughts and/or questions about A Slice of Liturgical Life!
What feast day would you like to know more about?
Please comment below or over at A Slice of Liturgical Life. I would love to hear from you! 








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I'm taking a break from planning an All Saints' Day party that I'm hosting this Sunday, Nov. 1 with some of our homeschool families to update the blog on some of the Fall fun we've had in the past few weeks.

On Thursday, October 22, (St. John Paul II's feast day) some of our homeschool families met at Hubb's Corn Maze, which is about an hour and a half away from where we live.  This has become an annual tradition and it was so nice that my husband could join in on the fun.  It was a beautiful, fun day!


On Friday, October 23, we celebrated my son's 14th birthday with a camp out in our backyard with a few of his friends.  After playing football and soccer in the backyard, they roasted hot dogs, grilled cheeseburgers and made S'mores in our firepit. And here's the cake my son insisted I make.  I didn't complain about the simplicity of his request compared to the other cakes I've made in the past and  this gets the easiest cake I've "made" award.  :)

Since our backyard campsite was already set up for my son's Friday night camp out, my husband and 2 of my daughters camped out in our backyard on Saturday night.  They enjoyed this special time with their Dad.

If celebrating a birthday and camping out wasn't festive enough, we also celebrated and enjoyed meeting the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia from Nashville, TN that came to visit our parish from Friday, Oct. 23-25.  My family met the two visiting nuns on Friday morning after morning Mass and then my oldest daughter and I were able to chat with them again on Saturday and Sunday as they chatted with the youth and their families about their life and vocation.  It was so wonderful to meet them and be in their presence.  They are so joyful and peaceful and I was really drawn to them.  I could have chatted with them for hours! :)


One of the many questions they answered was about their habit and the significance and beautiful symbolism of each part of the their habit.  Here's a video I took of Sister Peter Marie explaining the Dominican habit:  (I'm having trouble uploading the video to this blog post, but click on the link below to my blog's Facebook page where I have the video)

https://www.facebook.com/tracy.b.smith.14/videos/10206637346630398/

Recently at TAN Homeschool, I was a guest blogger where I wrote a post about some ways our family lives our Catholic faith during our homeschool days.

"I hesitate to write posts regarding our family’s prayer life.  It’s not that I’m ashamed of our Catholic faith or that I don’t want to share the richness and beauty of our faith with others.  Rather, I would not want to make the impression that my family’s prayer life (and my personal prayer life) is as consistent and steadfast as my blog post may portray.
However, I thought I would share 5 ways our family strives to live our faith during our homeschool days in hopes to encourage, support and inspire other families in their faith journeys."..... Read more on my post titled 5 Ways We Live Our Faith.

 Hoping your week is a blessed one!

  

We just celebrated the 11th birthday of my daughter on June 10th and with my busy week this week with leading a group of 1st graders in Catholic Kidz Camp (a.k.a. "VBS"), I just remembered I didn't blog about the "cake" my daughter requested and had for her birthday.  Of course, I did post pictures on my blog's Facebook page, but I always enjoy blogging about the birthday cakes for my children too.

My daughter was looking through Pinterest and found these adorable and creative hamburger cupcakes so she wanted to have these for her birthday instead of a cake.   We clicked through the pin on Pinterest and found the directions to make them (minus the creative fries),  though I tweaked the process a little to save time.  


First, I made a box of yellow cake mix as mentioned in the original directions.   Traditionally, I don't use box mixes because I have found some good recipes to make cake/cupcake batter from scratch, but I wanted to get the right "color" for the hamburger "buns".  I then made some homemade brownie mix because they are just yummy and easy to make, though a box mix is easy too.
So far we have the "hamburger bun and patty."


So I was going to dye vanilla frosting with green, red, and yellow food coloring, but decided buying these (rather expensive) decorating cupcake icing cans was a much needed and welcomed time saver. 

I found out that not only are cans of decorating icing pricey, but a jar of sesame seeds was not cheap either, but it was all worth the cost, especially since my son mentioned he wanted these cupcakes for his next birthday!  That works for me! :)

My girls enjoyed brushing a little water on the top of each cupcake and then they sprinkled the sesame seeds on top that stuck because of the damp cupcake.





The cupcakes were a hit and quite delicious and the party guests enjoyed them alot, including the birthday girl!


Have a blessed week and I look forward to blogging about our Catholic Kidz Camp going on now as we "Set Sail with the Holy Spirit!" using another Growing with the Saints program! 


  

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So my last post was last week when I posted about my 10 year old daughter turning 10 on June 10th!  Before that post I was busy blogging about our memories during our Disney Days. So reason #1 why I haven't posted in 7 days??  I'm just now getting over "blogger burnout", meaning after my Disney posts and my daughter's birthday post tribute, I felt compelled to take a breather from updating my little corner in blog land. :)
A few days before the birthday celebrations, I was able to attend my first priest ordination Mass for a young man who was ordained at our church.  It was a beautiful Mass!  The picture above shows how the line of priests goes up to the newly ordained priests and exchanges a hug of congratulations and welcoming into the priesthood.