The Day of the Dead celebrates dead family members through a series of events that take place on November 1st and 2nd in Mexico and for many cultures around the world. The Day of the Dead in Mexico features two days of celebrations and festivities.Native people in Mexico traditionally marked the Day of the Dead by building shrines or altars to dead family members in their homes. Families would leave gifts for the dead in hopes that the dead would come and visit them. Food, alcohol, and other favorite items of the deceased were left. Parades and special feasts were also organized to celebrate the Mexican Day of the Dead.
For dinner we went to El Pastorero. It’s this cool little place in Provo that serves authentic delicious Mexican food.
Leah loves Brandon.
AND she also loves El Pastro tacos.
Karl got a torta, and I got…a taco.
It looks so sad in the middle of that plate all by it’s self.
I also got this cool fondue with carne asada in it.
After dinner we headed over to Branny and Leah’s place for a day of the dead activities.
Branny got these yummy traditional breads from a Mexican bakery for us.
and dipped our sweet bread into it.
Yum.Then the real work began. Leah learned this technique in an art class. It is kind of like a lithograph, where you create the stamp with linoleum. I am not really sure how to explain it, so I will describe it with pictures.
Step One: Leah the great handed each of us one of these linoleum rectangles.
These are the shaping tools we used. They don’t look like much but they are really sharp.Step Two: We all selected a picture to make from the Internet.
This is the picture that I chose.
Step Three: Trace the picture and press it onto the linoleum.
Step Four: You dig out all of the negative space. Anything that is white.
Here’s Brandon hard at work. His stamp had A LOT of white space. Poor guy was getting pretty grumpy by this point.Step Five: Take a roller and cover it in ink, put a paper on top of the linoleum.
Then you have a stamp. This is print 1/3
Me and my stamp
Karl and his stamp.
Leah’s stamp.
Branny’s stamp. He was really proud that it was done. I think that it was awesome. 
There was a pretty big mess left when we were all done.
We had all of these awesome stamps, we decided that we would make awesome t-shirts with them.
Check em’ out!
Branny’s shirt is probably my favorite, obviously.
I am jealous, as usual. You guys always have so much fun! I want to get a stamped paper from each of your stamps. Did Brandon say that they did any Day of the Dead stuff in Guatemala?
Oh this was so much fun! Thanks for documenting it… And you're right, Brandon's shirt is probably the best shirt EVER. Can we please celebrate this holiday every year now?
Nitsy is jealous of the sweet shirt-making action. Miss you guys!
sweet!