Good Shepherd/Our Lady of Fatima Garden Party

~Our Garden Party centerpiece was Our Lady of Fatima~

~I tried to make it look like a spinning sun with a gold scarf and lighted candles~

Our Lady of Fatima, please pray for us!

The Heavens Tell God's Glory!

We were finally able to have a Good Shepherd's Garden Party!  After playing a bit of catch-up after our First Communion and other festivities, we were able to pull it together.  I bought the Good Shepherd calendar last year with good intentions to participate this year...I can't believe it's the 3rd week of Easter already!  We are joining in late and it sure makes me appreciate Jessica and Charlotte's lovely devotion all the more.

We ended up combining our Garden Party with the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima.  The symbols of the sun and rainbow worked out perfectly for our dessert...
Miracle of the "Sun"-daes!

Our Menu
Lighting Bolt Quesadillas topped with Swirling Wind Sour Cream
Shining Sun Fruit Platter
Shortbread Sun Cookies
Blue Rain Gatorade
(Also blue for Our Lady)
Miracle of the Sun-daes with Garden of Good Shepherd toppings:
*(We used vanilla frozen yogurt instead of ice cream)*
Yogurt covered Hail raisins
Mini marshmallow Clouds
Rainbow M&M's
Rainbow Lucky Charms
Rainbow cookie crumbles

Lightning Quesadillas with Swirling Wind Sour Cream

~I put sour cream in a ziplock bag, sealed it, clipped the corner and squeezed it like frosting to get the swirling effect~

Shining Sun Fruit Platter

Diced pears and mandarin oranges...Favorites at our house!  I ended up adding a second layer to make sure we had enough for everyone but I think this one looks less like a Sun.

Shortbread Sun Cookies

These were store bought from Pepperidge Farms, found at Target.

Blue Rain Gatorade

(And blue for Our Lady too)

The kids loved the whole thing!  It's always fun to bring out the fancy dishes... 

(What better way to honor Our Lady)

and tea cups too!

Incorporated into our dessert:
Yogurt covered Hail raisins and mini marshmallow Clouds

Rainbow M&M's
Rainbow Lucky Charms
Rainbow cookie crumbles

These were fun toppings for our frozen yogurt
Miracle of the "Sun"-daes!

After we added the toppings...

We found that we got a better rainbow if we took out the brown M&M's!

It was fun to stir things up to make that spinning sun.

The fun part about these "Sun"-daes was the result of the melted M&M's at the bottom of the bowl.  They left the effect of the spinning sun with rainbow colored rays!

Isn't that an amazing bonus to the dessert?
If you would like to read more about this miracle at Fatima, Catholic Fire has a nice article.  Please visit JOYfilled Family for some wonderful Our Lady of Fatima resources too.

I also wanted to share a link to a printable Good Shepherd that I found in google images.  If you click on the full size image, you should be able to print to the perfect size for these clear glass candles, found at the Dollar Tree (and many other places too).

I printed it out and used this product to seal it to the candle.

This is something I found that does not cause printed color copies to bleed.  It worked perfectly!  Good old Mod Podge will work too, though you may get a little color bleeding.
~The Good Shepherd candle worked great along side our Paschal Candle~

This is our updated calendar, next to our Easter Cross.  We also started the Easter Cross countdown last year!

From the theme of this week: "With our eyes to the skies we will open wide our senses to the wonders of nature, and we will praise the Lord who is the maker of all."

We are all looking forward to next week!