St. Joseph's Day Celebration / Celebrando el Dia de San Jose

On this lovely Friday, Evann is hosting the first annual St. Joseph's Altar Blog Fest today. (For any non-Catholic visitors, this altar is not for the worship of St. Joseph, but it is a visible dedication to him. The objects and pictures to remind us of him and to ask for him to pray for us to our Lord. We only worship God.♥ )

In honor of Saint Joseph, we set up a little altar for him during March. The upper shelf of our small bookshelf provided a perfect place to put items that remind us of this quiet, strong and faithful example:
I'll go over a few of our special items, if you please ... The San Damiano cross is above the altar, for it is the Lord who reigns supreme. And because it is Lent, there is a purple cloth around him. And because it was on sale and the only purple I could find, the cloth has polka-dots. I have since come up with the idea of the white symbolizing purity and the red symbolizing his most precious blood ... It works.

Beneath the San Damiano cross is a drawing that I made specifically for Saint Joseph's Day. The Holy Family is gathered together having a little something to eat, and a young Jesus is talking to them about marvelous things.
One of my gifts to you on this special day is a printable of my drawing. You can download the PDF of it, if you'd like. Here's a close up of it:

And below it is our little altar. The shoe box craft comes courtesy of Evann. The printable pictures and explanations of them can be found at the St. Joseph's Altar blog. We also have a vase of lilies from our backyard, a children's Bible, and a St. Joseph soft doll.


Here's a close-up of the soft doll. He's a bit rumpled, probably from tossing and turning from all those crazy dreams.

And because I had a little wooden peg, felt and a hot glue gun, I made a small Saint Joseph peg doll to add to the altar. He was easy and fun to make, and I am quite happy with how he looks.

As my second little gift to you, here's a quick tutorial on making the peg doll above:

St. Joseph Doll

Materials:
green felt
brown felt
white felt
beige felt
toothpick
paint
black yarn

1. Paint the face as you would like. Do this first, so as it dries, you can work on the following steps.
2. Cut a half-circle of green felt.
3. Cut a strip of brown felt.
4. Cut two small triangles of green.
5. Cut two beige circles.
6. Warm up the glue gun.
7. Put dots of hot glue on the wooden body of the doll. Quickly, drape the green cloth over it and make sure it covers the body.
8. Put dots of glue on the brown strip then drape it diagonally over the green. (See picture above.)
9. Put a drop of glue on the wide part of the green triangle. (The green is the sleeve. The beige circle is the hand.)
10. Do the same for the other green sleeve and beige hand.
11. Put a drop of glue on the top of the green sleeves and press them against the body.
12. Take a strand of yarn, put glue on it, then drape it under St. Joseph's face to form a beard. (I didn't put it on his face because, in case I made a mistake, I didn't want to have glue bits all over it.)
13. Cut black pieces of yarn in the same length, enough to be hair.
14. Put glue on the wooden head then press the black yarn on it. Be careful not to burn yourself!
15. Trim the "hair" at the length you'd like.
16. To make the lily, just cut a small half-circle of white felt. Glue one edge of the circle to the top of the toothpick. Swirl it around until it looks like a lily. Then put a drop of glue on the toothpick and press it against St. Joseph.

And then, you're done.