Inspired by Jessica and Charlotte we have an Easter tradition in our home of celebrating the entire Easter season with the Garden of the Good Shepherd. The program consists of a daily prayer time in which you add a scripture inspired sticker to your garden. By the end of Easter season your scene is filled with reminders of Jesus, the good shepherd, and heaven.
This is our 3rd year having a weekly garden party at the end of each themed week. For dinner on Saturday we incorporate each sticker into our meal and talk about what we've learned from our nightly prayer time. It's a favorite tradition in our home and one that keeps the season of Easter alive.
Week 5: The Gardner Plants Paradise
For week five I made an Italian dinner with pasta, bread, salad, fruit, and dessert. If I'm being honest, I was so excited about how this all came together as a complete meal!
Day 29: The Tree of Life's Leaves
A mixed greens salad, which represented the leaves, started out our meal. And before you think I'm able to get my kids to eat salad, let me state that this was only served to mom and dad.
Day 30: The Tree of Life's Flowers
Our main dish was a simple flower shaped pasta with red sauce. The pasta is technically called Fiori (flowery in Italian) and is made by Barilla. I had to buy it in bulk on Amazon, so now we have 11 more boxes to eat. Between the 20% off on-line coupon, free shipping, and no tax, it didn't cost any more than a box at the store, so we'll be having lots of flower pasta this summer!
I also had some flower straws from an after Easter sale, so used those as well.
Day 31: The Tree of Life's Fruit
Yes, I've already used this photo, but the mandarine oranges on the salad represent the fruit! The fruit depicted on this day's sticker is oranges. I love mandarine oranges on salads, so it was meant to be.
Day 32: The Owl
For dessert I made mini owl fruit pizzas. It's a graham cracker base covered with frosting and topped with kiwi and blueberry eyes, strawberry eyebrows, and mandarine orange beaks. They were almost too cute to eat.
Day 33: The Olive Tree
Our olive tree was represented with olive oil, which we used to dip rosemary bread in... more on the bread later.
Day 34: The Palm Tree
A side dish of fruit palm trees made from bananas, apples, and blueberries were served for the palm tree. You could use the apple palm leaves to represent the tree of life's leaves and the blueberry coconuts to represent the tree of life's fruit, and then omit the salad.
Day 35: Roses and Lilies
