WEBSITE REVIEW: The Rosary Workshop

The Rosary Workshop is a website I found a few years back while surfing around on the net. Back when money was not so tight, I bought two chaplets from the Rosary Workshop for my husband and I to carry as we were welcomed into the Church in April 2003. He carried his, an Irish Penal rosary, in his pocket, but I looped mine around my wrist as I received my first holy communion that Easter Vigil night.

My husband bought me a rosary from the Workshop as a combination Mother's Day/birthday gift a few years ago and I use it every day.

These rosaries and chaplets are all really expensive, but they are one-of-a-kind. And if you'll take a look at the guild's creations by clicking on the pictures, you'll see that they are wonderful works of art. Sometimes I just go to the site to look at the gorgeous photographs and read the scripture passages they use to highlight the names they choose for each piece. It's like a trip through a virtual art gallery. I find it very restful, very moving.

The Rosary Workshop has lightning fast shipping, each set of beads arriving in a beautiful little gift box. When my husband's chaplet got stretched out from being jostled in his pocket every day, I mailed it to the guild in Michigan and they re-strung it for free and paid for the shipping. The ladies of this rosary guild are very nice people indeed.

These rosaries and chaplets would make excellent gifts for confirmations, weddings and other events where an heirloom rosary would be appreciated. There's one at the Rosary Workshop to fit the taste and personality of any person praying this beloved devotion.

WEBSITE REVIEW: The Virtual RosaryTM

The Virtual Rosary is, in my opinion, one of the best downloads you could ever hope to happen across on the internet, and that's exactly what I was blessed enough to do several years ago.

The best thing about the Virtual Rosary is not that it is enhanced with music (which can be shut off if you find it distracting) or that there are wonderful passages from Holy Scripture that accompany each Mystery; the best thing is not even that you can not only download this onto your palm pilot as well as your home computer. The best thing is that this amazing prayer resource is absolutely free.

As in, it costs no money. When you see how nice it is, you'll wonder why. But Mike Monteleone, who founded the Virtual Rosary Project (and whose story you can read here), says that he has three goals for the site:

1: To teach the rosary and make it simple with the program's super-easy operation.

2: To help keep the rosary refreshing and deep for anyone with the aid of scripture, illustrations, and music.

3: To build a worldwide community of people to pray for each other through the PrayerCast network.

To that end, it is cost-free for anyone who'd like to make it a permanent computer file, and it is so worth it. It's easy, too. If you're a little freaked out about downloading and installing software on your computer, don't be. Simple instructions are available by clicking the Tech Support tab on the site.

WEBSITE REVIEW: The Stations of the Cross

This is one of the best online prayer sites I've ever found. There's nothing to download; all you have to do is click the link and you can be praying a beautifully well-done Stations of the Cross right at your computer. It's very easy to do and the artwork and scripture that accompanies each station is just lovely. They even have a button at the upper left part of the page that allows you to make the text bigger. They've thought of everything!

The site is maintained by the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Norwich, England. It is a fascinating website and also offers the Rosary and the Angelus for those who find it convenient and helpful to say their prayers online.

Holy Week, of course, is the crowning time of the year to pray the Stations. I guarantee that this will deepen your faith and lead you to a greater closeness with Jesus. It just will.

So if you can't make it to your parish during this week -- and working folks and the homebound can have a lot of trouble making this happen -- try this.

WEBSITE REVIEW: The Official SAT Question of the Day TM

Disclaimer: Everyone needs to know right up front that I ruthlessly ripped this link off from Kayte's blog, but I love it so much, I had to put it here in my favorites. Sorry, Kayte. You have all the credit for finding it in the first place.

Anyhoo, I love this site. So far, I'm the only one to use it, although I plan to get Meelyn hooked on it, using my crafty Mom powers of teen persuasion. Maybe even Aisling, although the only way I'll be able to get her to visit the site, much less use it, is to pretend that I hate it and think it's dumb.

My own SATs make me laugh to recall them. My high school guidance counselor looked at my math and verbal scores, then looked at me, then looked back at my scores again. "Well, you certainly are...er, right-brained, aren't you?"

Considering that I'd managed to get an almost perfect score on the verbal section of the test and just barely made it into the double digits on the math section, I thought that was a fair assessment. Even now, I agree: I am definitely a right brain type. In fact, I'm not completely certain that my brain has a left side. My brother clearly doesn't think so. And maybe my husband.

WEBSITE REVIEW: 59 Beads.com

Meelyn, Aisling and I went to the public library yesterday so that Mee could do a little research for the fine arts project she's doing for the 4-H Fair in July. While she busied herself, Aisling and I logged onto computer terminals, thinking that we could have some fun visiting one another's Webkinz houses, but the library's servers were being very touchy and we couldn't get it to work.

So I was browsing around on the internet and, having forty minutes of time online at my disposal, thought how nice it would be to Google some different sites for praying the rosary online.

There are many places to pray the rosary online, but the one that caught my eye was one called 59 Beads.com. I clicked on the link and found that it's a new site being promoted by Phatmass, a site I enjoy visiting for the daily Mass readings, the Pope's monthly prayer intentions and the like.

59 Beads is still under construction, so the only Mysteries available so far are the Joyful ones, which I prayed there at the library computer. They're really well done with gorgeous artwork, scripture verses that correspond with the event being meditated upon, and a virtual rosary that you click on to move to the next "bead."

It will be a fantastic prayer tool when the whole thing is up and running, but for now, I hope you'll enjoy those Joyful Mysteries.

WEBSITE REVIEW: AllRecipes.com

AllRecipes.com is one of my favorite websites on the entire internet. Because when they claim "all recipes," they mean ALL RECIPES.

It's nice, when you're thinking of a certain recipes but can't remember which of your ten thousand cookbooks it came from, to click on AllRecipes.com, enter the name of your recipe into the really excellent search feature, and then actually find the recipe you wanted, along with some variations you might never have thought of.

All the recipes are rated by members of the website and one of my favorite things to do is read the reviews and see what other people have suggested to tweak the recipe a tiny bit. It's fun to just read, whether you actually do any cooking at all.

I've found several keeper recipes at AllRecipes.com, including the one for the Italian Wedding Soup I posted here last month. I also found a really excellent Yorkshire Pudding that reminds me of my grandma's and I just looked up a Seven-Layer Salad (Susan, you hush that laughing right now. Not everyone has a husband who deals in fancy foods and you know how we Yankees eat) and found the exact thing I was looking for, rated by 116 site members with a five-star rating. Easy-peasy!

For anyone who loves cookbooks and computers, AllRecipes.com may be addictive.