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Every year, around the beginning of the fall, our family has the tradition of decorating, crafting and getting ready for the celebration of Day of the Dead! This is so important because for us, it is really difficult to travel back to our countries of origin, to pay our respects and visit our deceased family members in the cemetery.
Instead, we have a family altar in our home. Creating a family altar to offer homage and to teach my children about our deceased family members, is a wonderful way to bring our family together! Also, it offers us a healthy way to approach the subject of death with our children!
Preparations for el Día de los Muertos always start with setting up our family altar, a wooden shelf that my husband made and that all of us painted and decorated.
Every year we add a few new crafts, for example, last year my dear friend from Mexico brought us a few sugar skulls! I was so excited to know that you can keep them in your freezer all year long! When you are ready to take them out, you can let them chill in your refrigerator and they would be ready for your altar.
We also created paper flowers and papel picado banners. My daughter is an expert by now. We place every flower in the altar for remembrance of our family members.
This year, I ordered new things for our calacas (little figurines of skeletons.) The kids were really happy to set them up in new places!! Aren’t they super cute??
RELATED POST: Day of the Dead Facts in English and Spanish
This year on the day we created our family altar, we decided to make some empanadas in the form of sugar skulls, inspired by Crafty Chica. We used the following ingredients:
- Premade pie crust (you can use gluten-free)
- Filling ingredients (we used our mango preserved from last harvest season, ham and cheese)
- Some egg wash (egg and water) to paint over the empanadas.
- Some handy dandy sugar skulls cookie cuts.
These sugar skull empanadas were the perfect treat for Day of the Dead! My kids gave them two thumbs up!!
My multicultural family is trying to create a healthy family culture with respect and admiration for each tradition, such as creating our family altar for Day of the Dead. Having a family culture and the continuation of our family traditions mean so much to us!
We are so happy for MKB family in which we learn and share every day!
¡Feliz Día de Los Muertos!
Latest posts by Johana Castillo (see all)
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- How To Set Up A Family Altar for Day of the Dead - October 26, 2016
Johana what a great post! The calaca empandas look delish!!!
I meant “skull” empanadas LOL
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