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Today is the second week of Lent. How has it been going? Are you making progress? Or were you too ambitious? Or maybe you still haven’t gotten your act together. The latter was probably closest to me. I was a little late in getting the kids Lenten projects together and barely finished our Lenten altar this week. (We have a regular family altar in the entry way of our home that stays the same year round but in the family room/eating area is our seasonal altar/shelf.)

Here are a few things we are doing this year.

I love putting wreaths and welcome signs on our door. For Lent, I made a simple Lenten wreath to mark the season.

We printed off Catholic Icing’s Lenten Calendar and I placed it in an inexpensive frame from Ikea. I use a dry erase pen to mark a cross on each day as it passes. The kids love using it to countdown the days even though Andrew says it will take “fooooooooooorever” to get to Easter. 😉

I adopted some of the ideas my sister posted in her  Lenten Ideas for Kids.  I particularly loved the jar idea so we made ones of our own. Each day we pick out one prayer intention and one act of love/ sacrifice we will work on that day. (ie. Share a toy with your sibling or be extra nice to someone at school or do an extra chore.)

I also loved her Lent wreath idea but I didn’t have a wreath so I used a rectangular candle tray I had instead. I purchase a pack of small dinner candles from Target and tiny wreaths from Michael’s that fit around the candle. We add a wreath to a candle on each Sunday of Lent.

Lastly we added our Stations of the Cross pictures and talk about one station each night. Our Lenten altar is right next to the table where we eat so we light our candles and say our prayers before dinner, when we’re guaranteed to all be together.

For our alms giving we are still supporting our sponsored child Abi from Mexico through CFCA but I’ll save that for another post. 🙂

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If you are part of the procrastinator club or just need to pump up your Lent a little bit, here are some links for inspiration.

40 Ways to Get the Most out of Lent – CatholicMom.com

Your Handy-Dandy List to Lenten Sacrifices – CatholicSistas.com

For the kiddos in your life, check out these links:

40 Simple Lenten Activities for Kids – CallHerHappy.com

Lenten Activities for Children – CatholicIcing.com

I hope you continue to have a blessed Lent!