November | 2018 | Revolution of Love

Happy Friday, friends! I’m glad you could join me! Here are this week’s favorites.

Since I have seven faves, I’m also linking up with Kelly for 7 Quick Takes.

(Note: Revolution of Love is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.)

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This Week’s Fave Activity

Decorating the House & Prepping for Advent

Yesterday, I spent the day decorating the house and setting up our Advent activities. (This extra week between Thanksgiving and Advent really gave me a boost, since I’m usually really behind!)

I shared the process on Instastories and many of you asked for the links to various items I used. You can find them all here – https://revolutionoflove.com/favorite-advent-traditions-2017/. What are your favorite Advent activities?

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This Week’s Fave Advent Activity with the Kids

Revolution of Love Blog - A letter to Baby Jesus (Instead of Santa) - letter_baby_jesusW

Letter to Baby Jesus

This remains not only a fun activity for my boys, but one of the most popular posts on my blog. Instead of having the boys write the traditional letters to Santa, I put together a simple form letter that I could print off and give everyone in the family to fill out. We decide on a spiritual we’ll work on during Advent as a gift to Jesus, who we will especially pray for and what presents we hope to get to celebrate Jesus’ birthday. When they were done, they folded up their letters and put them in their shoes for St. Nicholas to deliver to Baby Jesus.

If you’d like to print of a copy of the Letter to Baby Jesus for your little ones, I posted the PDF here. Also, I made a second version for those who don’t want the Santa aspect. It can be found here. 🙂 For the full post, click here – A Favorite Advent Tradition: A Christmas Letter to Baby Jesus (Instead of Santa)

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This Week’s Fave App

The Christmas List App

Now that my Advent items are ready and my house is almost decorated, I am ready to tackle the Christmas shopping. For the last few years I’ve been using The Christmas List App.

I keep track of my gifts and categorize them by groups – family, friends, school, etc. I have shopping lists organized by store. I set a budget and keep track of my progress. I am usually always about the paper and pencil, but in this case, I love this app!

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This Week’s Fave Movies with my Kids

The Grinch and Ralph Breaks the Internet

The popcorn has been flowing with two movies in two weeks. I was dragging my feet with The Grinch, but it was cute and funny. The Grinch was more grouchy than down-right mean, but it still worked. We all enjoyed it. Besides, it has Benedict Cumberbatch and Christmas. What more could you want? 😉

I was not a huge fan of the first Ralph movie. There was nothing wrong, it just didn’t grab me as something I’d watch twice. However, I did enjoy the sequel Ralph Breaks the Internet a lot more. Maybe it was all the funny social media references or it could have been the show stealing Disney princesses, but I actually had fun and enjoyed it as much as my kids. Thumbs up on both movies.

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This Week’s Fave Online Shopping Destination

Etsy.com

I am a huge fan of Amazon, but this year I bought a number of unique gifts from Etsy shops. If you are looking for some new shops to browse, check out Blessed Is She’s Catholic Holiday Gift Guide. Many of my favorite shops are listed in there! Here are some of the gifts I bought this year:

Marian Journal Set and Stickers by Be A Heart

Mother of Our Savior by Brass & Mint Co

Punch the Devil in the Face Mug by Just Love Prints

Verso L’alto Embroidered Baseball Cap by Just Love Prints

FOREVER ONE BLESSINGS for Mr. & Mrs. by My Saint My Hero

Adore Him Red Beaded Bracelet by Pink Salt Riot

God Walks Among the Pots and Pans by Rose Harrington

Sacred Heart & Immaculate Heart Pouch by Someday Saints Designs

Sacred Heart Pin and Print Bundle by Wild Hope Co

There are so many other great gifts to choose from! Check it out.

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This Week’s Fave Christmas Album by a Male Artist

The Advent of Christmas by Matt Maher

We love listening to Matt Maher and were excite to see that he came out with a new Christmas album. It is already a family fave. My favorite song on the album? The catchy rendition of Hark the Herald Angel Sing.

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This Week’s Fave Christmas Album by a Female Artist

Behold by Lauren Daigle

There are two new amazing Christmas albums this year! I love Lauren Daigle’s voice and her new Christmas album is a welcome addition to our collection. My fave song on the album? The toe tapping Jingle Bells.

Okay, all this talk about Christmas albums makes me wonder, what are your favorite Christmas albums? Mine include the above two and…

The Best of Bing Crosby – The Christmas Collection: 20th Century Masters
The Christmas Song by Nat King Cole
Christmas by Michael Buble
Christmas Offerings by Third Day
Let It Snow Baby, Let It Reindeer by Relient
Dawn of Grace by Sixpence None the Richer

Those are my favorites of the week! What have you been enjoying?

Have a great weekend!

PS – You can follow RoL on Bloglovin, Feedly or another news feed. If you are a social media fan like me, we can stay in touch through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, GoodReads, Letterboxd, or Spotify. 😉

Are you ready to link up?? Here are the rules.

1. Create a post with your Friday Favorites.

2. Add a link back here so others can play along.

3. If you want to add the logo to your post, here is the html.

4. Make sure you’re sending us to your actual post, and not to your general blog address. The link-up will be open for two weeks. Have fun!

An InLinkz Link-up

Happy Friday, friends! I’m glad you could join me! Here are this week’s favorites.

Since I have seven faves, I’m also linking up with Kelly for 7 Quick Takes.

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This Week’s Fave Liturgical Print

All Souls Day Prayer & Family Photos

For All Souls Day, I made a print using PicMonkey to display the photos of relatives who have recently died, along with The Faithful Departed prayer. We placed the photo on our little prayer table in the family room (next to where we eat) and we recite the prayer during our nightly family prayer. We’ll continue to do so for the month of November.

A couple people asked me about the print when I showed it on Instagram, so I downloaded the photo to Google Drive. You could download the photo template and use PicMonkey to make your own version, like I did, or you can simply print out a copy and write in the name of your loved ones or even tape their photo(s) to it. You can do it now and use it for the remainder of November or save it for next year.

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This Week’s Fave Photo Challenge

#rolgratitudechallenge

This month I’m focusing on being grateful, especially when I’m tempted to complain or focus on the negative. I’m doing a photo challenge for the month of November with no prompts, simply take a photo of something you’re grateful for and tag it #rolgratitudechallenge.

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This Week’s Fave Journal

Photo credit: CultivateWhatMatters.com

Lara Casey’s Write the Word Journal (Cultivate Gratitude)

I have long been a fan of Lara Casey’s Goal Planning and Powersheets, but she also has lovely Write the Word Scripture Journals.

Each day there is a Scripture verse for you to write. Writing it out helps to to not only remember it, but ponder it as you are writing. There is also space to journal or be creative. There are a number of different subjects for each journal (Hope, Joy, Prayer, Forgiveness, etc) but I chose to use the Gratitude Journal during November.

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This Week’s Fave Subscription Box

Feast Day Box

Subscription boxes are big these days and you can pretty much find ones in any subject matter. In our house, we’ve purchased boxes for planner addicts (me), Disney lovers (me and Bella), and football fans (Packers – Brian & Chargers – Andrew). I’ve seen some really nice Catholic boxes, but they would have suited our family when the kids were younger.

The Feast Day box is both fun and spiritually uplifting. Each monthly box contains food items to help you celebrate a liturgical feast and a spiritual item to help you prayerfully celebrate the feast. It’s the best of both worlds and I love it. You can find the box that fits your price range and family size. We subscribe to the Memorial Boxes.

Here is the October Memorial Box.

Here is the November Memorial Box.

The food treats were eaten and enjoyed. The book is being read and the candle is lit during our night prayers.

The Thanksgiving Cornucopia box just arrived int he mail so we’ll be doing a box opening on Instagram this weekend. 🙂

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This Week’s Fave Spiritual Tool

Every Sacred Sunday Mass Journal

Of all the journals I have ever owned in my life, the Every Sacred Sunday Mass Journal has been the most life changing. I kid you not. I am the type of person who always absorbs information better when I am visually looking at it and not just hearing it audibly, so having the Mass readings is a must for me. Of course, I could have just followed along in the church missal, but with the journal I can underline, write notes in the margins and handletter favorite Psalms. The book also has a notes section, which I use to take notes about the homily. (No more zoning out or dozing off.) 😉 It’s really helps me to focus on the Mass, the homily and what the Holy Spirit is trying to teach me. I have friends who can’t take notes during Mass because they are wrangling babies and toddlers, but they love the Mass Journal because it gives them a chance to go over the Readings before Mass, or after, so they can still be blessed by studying God’s Word. The 2018-2019 Edition is available to pre-order. I bought one for me, and Bella asked for one as an early Christmas gift. Love it.

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This Week’s Fave Non-Journaling Sunday Missal

St. Joseph Sunday Missal 2019

For the man and boys in our family, they don’t want a journaling Sunday missal. They wanted something small with the Mass readings. Brian has been using the St. Joseph Sunday Missal 2018 Edition this year and the boys really wanted to graduate from the Magnificat Magnifikid Missal, which we loved, into one like their father’s so Brian ordered a copy of the 2019 St. Joseph Sunday Missal for each of them. They only coast $1.99 at Amazon, so you can’t beat the price!

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This Week’s Fave Necklace

Jane Eyre Quote Necklace

When I posted a photo on Instagram, a couple of you asked about the necklace I was wearing. It’s from the etsy shop AnnaAzure.

Jane Eyre is one of my favorite books and I love this quote, “Wherever you are is my home – my only home.” They have a lot of many other great book quotes. Check it out.

Okay, that’s it for now!