Giveaway

We have winners! And happy feast of Bl. Solanus Casey!

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Congratulations to the winners of the St. Anne giveaway: Kristen, Samantha, Anna, Thalita, and Anne!! I emailed you all — please let me know if you didn’t get it!

Thank you to all who entered! If you’d still like one of these beautiful prints (available in a variety of sizes), you can purchase one at Delphina Rose Art. And don’t forget that Rebecca has generously added a $2.00 off coupon code for any order over $2.00 for all Sancta Nomina readers, which you can use for any coloring page of your choosing (they’re $2.00 each) — they’re all gorgeous! Lots of our favorite Saints, including one of the Immaculate Conception (St. Anne and the child Mary)! The coupon code is sanctanomina, and it’s valid through August 7. (Rebecca is also running a Summer Coloring Contest for all ages, starting today! Go check it out!)

Today is my mom’s birthday AND the feast of Bl. Solanus Casey — it would be such a gift if you would say a prayer for my mom, and if you could invoke Bl. Solanus’ intercession for her, all the better! This is what I wrote on Instagram at the end of the several photos I posted during Bl. Solanus’ beatification Mass, which was attended by my parents and my sister (and my sister was part of the procession):

“Today was all about #BlessedSolanusCasey, and for my family it was also about my sister, but a shout-out to my mom @irishnannie is a must: she painstakingly compiled all the information pertaining to the miracle of my sister’s life, gathering materials from thirty three years ago from her own notes and hospital records; she tracked down the neonatologist who cared for my infant sister and got him on board (it didn’t take much convincing! And he’s not even Catholic!); she secured the enthusiastic support of our bishop; she kept up continuous communications with the vice postulator; and most of all, she has never ever wavered in her conviction that her baby’s life was given back through Fr. Solanus’ intercession. So I was so happy for her that this beautiful Irish music was played during the Mass, as a nod to Fr. Solanus’ Irish heritage (my mom’s a first generation Irish-American and prouder than proud of it!) AND that his feast day has been set as July 30 — which just happens to be Mom’s birthday. #MollyandFrSolanus #FrSolanusCasey @albanydiocese“

I was amazed at God’s generosity in allowing Mom’s birthday to be chosen as Bl. Solanus’ feast, after all her unwavering faith and focused hard work in pulling together the necessary materials to submit my sister’s story to his cause for beatification. (A different miracle was accepted as the required miracle for Fr. Solanus’ to be beatified, but my sister was invited to be part of the procession because of her special connection to this special priest. I recently read this biography of him, which I highly recommend.) (Fr. Solanus died on July 31, so it’s a truly unexpected gift that his feast day was set for the day before.)

So many things to celebrate today! I hope you all have a great day!!

My book, Catholic Baby Names for Girls and Boys: Over 250 Ways to Honor Our Lady (Marian Press, 2018), is available to order from ShopMercy.org and Amazon — perfect for expectant parents, name enthusiasts, and lovers of Our Lady!

St. Anne giveaway ends tonight! Don’t forget to enter!

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Be sure to head on over to Rafflecopter to enter! The giveaway closes tonight at midnight Eastern time, so you have about twelve more hours! A refresher on the details:

That’s it! And don’t forget that Rebecca has generously added a $2.00 off coupon code for any order over $2.00 for all Sancta Nomina readers, which you can use for any coloring page of your choosing (they’re $2.00 each) — they’re all gorgeous! Lots of our favorite Saints, including one of the Immaculate Conception (St. Anne and the child Mary)! The coupon code is sanctanomina, and it’s valid through August 7. (Rebecca is also running a Summer Coloring Contest for all ages, starting today! Go check it out!)

My book, Catholic Baby Names for Girls and Boys: Over 250 Ways to Honor Our Lady (Marian Press, 2018), is available to order from ShopMercy.org and Amazon — perfect for expectant parents, name enthusiasts, and lovers of Our Lady!

Happy feast of Sts. Anne and Joachim! And a giveaway for you!

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Today is the feast of the wonderful St. Anne, patroness of Sancta Nomina, and her husband St. Joachim — grandparents of Jesus! As I’ve noted before, not only do they have amazing names themselves, but they named Mother Mary. That’s some serious business for a Catholic name blog!

Two St. Anne tidbits: I read in an obituary recently that the deceased was “Born Anne MiddleName LastName on July 26, 1936, the Feast Day of St. Anne, her mother, being extremely religious, named her after the Saint,” though she went by her middle name her whole life. You know I loved reading that! (May she rest in peace.) And my mom sent me this funny piece today written by a friend of hers that has to do with a St. Anne pilgrimage he went on with his family when he was a little boy. Hilarious! (Maybe my boys will write about their St. Anne pilgrimages when they grow up!)

In anticipation of today’s feast, I prayed a St. Anne Novena for the past nine days, finishing last night, which I offered for all of you and your intentions. And I have a giveaway for you! 🎉🎉🎉

I know many of you follow the so-talented Rebecca Górzyńska on Instagram (@delphinaroseart) — her artwork is absolutely stunning, and I’ve learned so much about her process and techniques through her posts. And she has a book coming out! She illustrated the book Marian Consecration for Families With Young Children by Colleen Pressprich, available now for preorder, and each illustration is simply perfection.

How excited was I to discover that Rebecca painted this folk art style print of St. Anne and the child Mary as the Immaculate Conception?! I knew immediately that this would be the perfect item for the giveaway I wanted to do for all of you, in honor of the feast of our dear St. Anne!

I’m thrilled to be able to give away five (5) 5×7 prints! Here are the details:

  • Head on over to Rafflecopter to enter
  • The giveaway is live from now until midnight on Thursday, July 30
  • On Thursday I’ll have Rafflecopter randomly select five (5) winners, whom I’ll notify by email

That’s it! As always, please know how grateful I am to all of you for your presence in our lovely little community! Thanks to you all, thanks to Rebecca, and happy feast of St. Anne and St. Joachim! 💕💙💕💙💕💙💕💙

My book, Catholic Baby Names for Girls and Boys: Over 250 Ways to Honor Our Lady (Marian Press, 2018), is available to order from ShopMercy.org and Amazon — perfect for expectant parents, name enthusiasts, and lovers of Our Lady!

Giveaway winners!!

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Happy Memorial Day! It is so appropriate that we have a day to remember those who gave their lives for our country and our freedom. 🗽🇺🇸 I discovered this beautiful prayer for our fallen soldiers, loving Lord, bless them forever in Your eternal peace. ❤ ❤ ❤

The Catholic Working Mom’s Guide to Life giveaway has ended, and two winners have been randomly selected from all those who left comments on the blog post, the Instagram post, and the Facebook post! Congratulations to Lauren and Luisa!! And thanks to all who entered! If you can swing buying your own copy, I highly recommend it! Chapter 2 tells about the Working Mom saints, wonderful models for us!

My book, Catholic Baby Names for Girls and Boys: Over 250 Ways to Honor Our Lady (Marian Press, 2018), is available to order from ShopMercy.org and Amazon — perfect for the expectant parents, name enthusiasts, and lovers of Our Lady in your life!

Newwww giveawayyyyy!!

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I hope you’re all enjoying this month of celebrating with me! It’s the month of Our Lady, which includes Mother’s Day and the feasts of some of my faves: St. Joseph the Worker, Rita of Cascia, and Bernadine of Siena (among others), as well as the birthday of JP2! It’s also the one-year anniversary of the publication of my book after working on it for nearly ten years (!), and next month is my fifth blogiversary! There’s so much to celebrate, and so much to be grateful for!

Continuing in this theme, because it’s still May!, I have another giveaway for you all! I’ve blogged about JoAnna and her beautiful family before, and I had the great honor of receiving an awesome endorsement from her for my book, and when I found out she was writing a book of her own, I couldn’t wait to read it!

I’m pleased to share that The Catholic Working Mom’s Guide to Life (Our Sunday Visitor) is being released one week from today (!!!! 🎉🎉🎉) and is available for pre-order now! I thought it was so well done that I gave it the following endorsement (which can be found on page 2 of the book, along with the other great endorsements JoAnna received from some pretty great people!):

“The Catholic Working Mom’s Guide to Life is a gift for every mama who has wrestled with contributing to the family income while bringing up her children. Its practical and authentically Catholic guidance and advice — beginning and ending with the reminder to pray, pray, pray to discern God’s will, and including the teachings of the Church and the examples set by saints who were working mothers — make it an essential resource for all women who have both babies and bosses.“

To celebrate JoAnna’s wonderful accomplishment and to continue in the celebration theme of May, I’m giving away two of her books!! And not just her books, but two of mine as well!! Two lucky winners will each receive one of JoAnna’s books and one of mine! Woo!!! 💃💃💃

To enter, please comment on this post, or on Instagram (post coming later today!), or on Facebook, or on Twitter with your favorite Working Mother Saint(s). If you don’t know any, don’t despair! Just comment, “Tell me more!” which will count as an entry! (And if you don’t win this giveaway, I highly recommend buying JoAnna’s book when you can and checking out chapter 2!)

The giveaway will run until Sunday (May 26) at midnight! Then I’ll tally up all the comments on this post plus those on Instagram plus those on Facebook and have my hubby or one of the kids randomly pick two names, which I will announce on Monday. Happy Tuesday!!

My book, Catholic Baby Names for Girls and Boys: Over 250 Ways to Honor Our Lady (Marian Press, 2018), is available to order from ShopMercy.org and Amazon — perfect for the expectant parents, name enthusiasts, and lovers of Our Lady in your life!

Congratulations to our winners!!

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The winner of the joint Sancta Nomina-Catholic All Year giveaway from the blog is JMV!! Congratulations!! Check your email JMV!!

I’ll post the Instagram winner over on Instagram! Happy Saturday y’all, day of Our Lady!!

My book, Catholic Baby Names for Girls and Boys: Over 250 Ways to Honor Our Lady (Marian Press, 2018), is available to order from ShopMercy.org and Amazon — perfect for the expectant parents, name enthusiasts, and lovers of Our Lady in your life!

New giveaway items (!), and Timmarie

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I have so enjoyed reading all your suggestions for Kendra’s baby, both here on the blog and on Instagram (and even a few on Facebook!)! If you haven’t commented yet, you still have until Friday at midnight! I’ll announce the two winners (one from the blog, one from Instagram) on Saturday.

Speaking of the giveaway — I have more news! Kendra has so generously added her My Superhero Prayer Book: Traditional Catholic Prayers for Awesome Catholic Kids and her brand new Catholic All June companion to The Catholic All Year Compendium (read about the other months here) to the giveaway! That means that EACH winner will receive:

–> A copy of Kendra’s book The Catholic All Year Compendium: Liturgical Living for Real Life (Ignatius Press, 2018)

AND

–> A copy of my book Catholic Baby Names for Girls and Boys: Over 250 Ways to Honor Our Lady (Marian Press, 2018)

AND

–> A copy of Kendra’s My Superhero Prayer Book: Traditional Catholic Prayers for Awesome Catholic Kids

AND

–> A copy of Kendra’s Catholic All June companion to The Catholic All Year Compendium

You lucky winners will be SET with great reading material for a while!! 😀

I also wanted to ask you all about the name Timmarie. I’ve seen it from time to time here and there — only on older women — and again today, the members of my parish who died on this date were remembered by name, and one was Timmarie (she died in the early 80s). Every time I see Timmarie, I think it’s so similar to Emery in rhythm and sound, and I wonder why parents today aren’t using it? Is it because it’s an obvious mashup of Tim and Marie, which is a little out of step with today’s naming? I searched through the SSA database and it didn’t make the top 1000 in any year, and I searched the 2018 births and the 1910 births and it didn’t appear there (or as the spelling Timarie). Do you any of you know any Timmaries? What do you think of the name?

Happy Thursday!

My book, Catholic Baby Names for Girls and Boys: Over 250 Ways to Honor Our Lady (Marian Press, 2018), is available to order from ShopMercy.org and Amazon — perfect for the expectant parents, name enthusiasts, and lovers of Our Lady in your life!

We have a winner!! And Happy Mother’s Day!!

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Congratulations to JODI who won the Massive Mother’s Day Giveaway!! 🎉🎉🎉

Thank you to all of you who entered! I have a couple more goodies for you this month, so keep your eyes peeled! (Check in tomorrow! 😉 )

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you!! The Church teaches us that all women are called to motherhood, whether spiritual or physical, whether biological or through foster and adoption, so today is for all the ladies! 🌹🌹🌹 I know, too, that today is hard for some of you — please know that my prayers are with you in a special way, may Our Lady hold you all close. ❤ ❤ ❤

I’m so grateful for all of you!! Thank you for being your wonderful selves!!

My book, Catholic Baby Names for Girls and Boys: Over 250 Ways to Honor Our Lady (Marian Press, 2018), is available to order from ShopMercy.org and Amazon — perfect for the expectant parents, name enthusiasts, and lovers of Our Lady in your life!

A big week for names!

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Happy Mother’s Day weekend!! Don’t forget to enter the Massive Mother’s Day Giveaway — it ends tonight at midnight! I’ll email the winner tomorrow!

Also, if you could help Charlotte, please do — she’s in a desperate state with her health and being unable to afford proper medical care, she just can’t get ahead of it and is really suffering.

Did you all see the 2018 name stats that were released yesterday by the Social Security Administration? Were you surprised by any in the top ten?

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A few people over on Instagram expressed surprise over Evelyn being no. 10, which is funny, because it was actually at no. 9 in 2017 — it dropped a spot in 2018 — and I wrote about it in my post on the 2017 data last year:

“From your comments on Instagram, Evelyn also seems to be surprising to some of you. As I mentioned on IG, when my 13yo was three, one of his classmates’ mom had a baby girl whom she named Evelyn, and back then I thought it sounded like such an old lady name. Turns out it entered the top 100 in 2002 for the first time since 1953 and in fact is now, at no. 9, the most popular it’s ever been — its previous highest was no. 10 in 1915. In my mind, it’s part of the Evangeline/Genevieve/Vivian-nicknamed-Evie/Vivi sisters. And in fact Evie increased in 2017 as well!“

I haven’t looked at all the new data yet, but I was perusing the list of names that increased in popularity last night and was so surprised that Genesis was the boy name with the greatest increase in 2018: it went up 608 spots from no. 1592 to 984, entering the top 1000. That’s a big increase! And I don’t know what it was caused by! I did a quick search to see if something happened in 2017 or 2018 to cause such a spike in interest, and did discover that Alicia Keys has a son named Genesis, but he was born in 2014, so I don’t think he was the catalyst.

I was telling my hubs about Genesis last night, which he too was shocked by (he didn’t even know parents were naming their kids Genesis, so he’s not the best gauge), but he also asked a great question: he wanted to know how many births that jump in popularity actually represented. So I looked that up and there were 209 baby boys born in 2018 that were named Genesis, up from 101 in 2017. That’s not a huge amount of babies. Also, Genesis for a girl is vastly more popular — 4068 girls born in 2018 named Genesis, and the spelling Jenesis for girls actually increased 121 spots, from 1087 to 966, entering the top 1000. Quite a year for G/Jenesis!

I was also interested that Meghan was the girl name that increased the most in popularity, up 701 spots from 1404 to 703 and certainly due to Prince Harry’s Mrs. Speaking of Prince Harry and his Mrs. … what about Harry’s and Meghan’s baby boy?? I couldn’t wait to find out what they named him! As I mentioned on Instagram, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor was so unexpected to me, but I expected his name to be unexpected, so I guess Harry and Meghan delivered! I loved Harrison for Harry’s son from the moment I read it, perfection! Archie and similar names are trendy in the UK right now, and turns out Archie entered the top 1000 in the US in 2018, so that makes it a good mix of British and American to me. (I did just read that Archie was the name of Meghan’s childhood cat … I’m not sure what to think of that.)

Back to the SSA data, I’m sure I’ll have more to say after I finish looking through it all, but in the meantime, I loved reading Abby’s take, as always, as well as Laura Wattenberg’s (the Baby Name Wizard, who has a new web site and a new name!) and Nameberry’s.

Also, I have a great consultation to post on Monday for a mama who’s familiar to many of you and who’s expecting baby no. 10 — I know you’ll all love it!

Finally, just a tip for any of you still looking for a present for the moms in your life: my book is a fantastic gift! And though it won’t be delivered by tomorrow if you order today (unless you pay a million dollars in shipping, depending on where you live), you could always order it and then print out a picture of it to put in the Mother’s Day card you give your mom/wife/whoever, with a promise that it’s in the mail! 😉

Have a great rest of the weekend!! ❤ ❤ ❤

My book, Catholic Baby Names for Girls and Boys: Over 250 Ways to Honor Our Lady (Marian Press, 2018), is available to order from ShopMercy.org and Amazon — perfect for the expectant parents, name enthusiasts, and lovers of Our Lady in your life!

 

Massive Mother’s Day giveaway!!❤️

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You guys: It’s the month of Our Lady (to whom this blog/social media is dedicated 💙), and the SSA 2018 baby name stats are coming out Friday, and Mother’s Day is Sunday, and next month is Sancta Nomina’s FIFTH anniversary!! I’m feeling so celebratory and thankful, and I wanted to do something a little bigger than usual for you all this year!

I’m so excited to announce a MASSIVE Mother’s Day giveaway!! I’m thinking of it as a “basket” of items, like what you might be given by all your sisters and best girlfriends for your baby shower or as a new mama gift, or like what you might bid on at a charity ball. I have an AMAZING assortment of items, including from some of my very favorite Catholic artisans, that will all go to ONE very lucky winner!! This Mama Basket contains:

Am I allowed to be jealous of the winner?? SO JEALOUS!!

Hop on over to Rafflecopter to enter — it’ll ask for your email address, which is all I need. One entry per person, please! It runs from now until midnight SATURDAY night, and the winner will be emailed on Sunday. SO EXCITED!! ❤ ❤ ❤

My book, Catholic Baby Names for Girls and Boys: Over 250 Ways to Honor Our Lady (Marian Press, 2018), is available to order from ShopMercy.org and Amazon — perfect for the expectant parents, name enthusiasts, and lovers of Our Lady in your life!