Cycles of Grace: Nativity Fast through Theophany

Well, September has come to a close, and as I mentioned in my previous post, I have turned my focus to preparing for the fast of the Nativity.
Taking a cue from Mary, I have been working on a series of binders to help me remain organized and focused on the church throughout the year. I am excited about this binder, since this tends to be a more chaotic time of year, and I think it will be helpful in so many ways. So, what is in this binder? Well, really right now it is a collection of all the items I have accumulated over the years but never had a proper place to put them. I used to have files in a cabinet to store reference materials for various feast days, but unless I thought about it, then went to the cabinet and pulled it out, I more often than not forgot about the many resources I have. So, I began by pulling out all of the resources I could find that fell into the period from November 15 through the feast of Theophany.

This included everything from sheet music for troparia, and programs for feast day celebrations of years past, to my ridiculously extensive collection of church bulletins with icons on the cover.

For at least 8 years I have compulsively saved multiple copies of the Sunday bulletin. I am finding they come in very handy in so many ways. Laminated, they allow for a far wider range of icons for my kids to see than we could ever afford mounted on wood. Un-laminated, they have been cut up and used for various projects (can't wait to share with you all my Holy Week Project where a number of those icons were extremely useful). I also had several files full of icon line drawings for coloring. I often forgot about them - but now they are all neatly slipped into page protectors and filed by the date of the feast in this binder. I am also trying to list all of the children's books I have for each saint, and individual stories that pertain to that saint from such books as Grandma's Stories.

Finally, I tucked all of the Teaching Pics that pertained to this time period into the back pocket of this binder.

While I have not yet added the tabs (got to get to the office supply store this week!), here is a look at the labels I will be adding. This does not cover every item in the binder, just the highlights so I can find what I need quickly.

Cover

(have included all the covers for each binder in this one download)

Spine

Fasting Menu

Presentation of the Theotokos (notes for the Presentation Tea Party)

St. Andrew

St. Barbara (plans for the bonfire - including checklist of supplies needed)

St. Nicholas (plans for the St. Nicholas play - along with a collection of crafts and ideas from past years St. Nicholas Celebrations)

St. Herman

Nativity

St. Stephen

St. Basil (recipe for vasilopita)

Theophany (including menu ideas and plans for my Theophany party which we do instead of a Christmas party)

St. Anthony

St. Xenia

3 Holy Hierarchs

St. Brigid (crafts and ideas printed from festal celebrations)

I have not linked to all of these resources because it would take forever, and I will be posting about most of them slowly throughout the fast. Rather than try to collect all of those links now, I will add them gradually as I post about each event.