Tuesday, March 15, 2011

How I Celebrate St. Patrick's Day

Suddenly, I love St. Patrick's Day. I guess it comes from having kids. It's kind of like Halloween--an excuse to dress up and eat junk food. And you know how much I love Halloween. So here are my Top 10 Ideas for celebrating St. Patrick's Day!
1. The hat. A few years ago, I bought a hat from the dollar area of Target and it has become a favorite. It's basically a green Dr. Seuss hat. Love it! Sadly the hat is currently missing--I only have 2 days left to search my cluttered house to find it. Better hurry!

2. peppermint bark. This is a new idea I had this year. I'm going to make my usual Christmas treat of peppermint bark but color the white chocolate layer green. Basically, I melt semisweet chocolate chips in the microwave and spread it on a cookie sheet, and let it cool in the fridge at least half an hour. Then I melt white chocolate chips in the microwave, stir in a smidgen of peppermint extract (half teaspoon?) and in this case green food coloring, then spread that on top of the semisweet layer. Refrigerate to cool, then break it into pieces.

3. giant shamrock cookie. I made this last year and I'm going to do it again this week. So easy and yummy, see my full instructions here.
4. banner. You'll have to bear with me on this. It's a super easy craft but we didn't do it till yesterday so you'll have to check out my Valentine's version instead. I bought a baby blanket from Dollar Tree (light green for St. Pat's) and trimmed it so it would fit over a dry-cleaning-hanger (the type that's like a thin tube), gluing it with fabric glue. I cut a bunch of clover shapes out of dark green felt as well as the word "LUCK." Then L glued the clovers and word onto the blanket with fabric glue and we hang it on our front door.
5. wear green. This is pretty self-explanatory. The kids and I always dress in green for the occasion. A couple years back I bought this tee at Target and I break it out for St. Paddy's Day. High-quality photography brought to you by my son.
6. lime jello. Yeah, you could cook authentic Irish food, but where's the fun in that? ;-) We like green food, and lime jello is a perennial favorite.

7. pistachio cake. I've been told this cake doesn't look appetizing but I don't care--it's delicious. I love pistachio flavor. This recipe is from the Cake Mix Doctor, basically you add pistachio pudding mix to yellow cake mix--and don't forget the chocolate chips and chocolate frosting. {Here's a similar recipe.} So good! Sadly, we avoid feeding any nuts to L, so this will not be on our menu this year.
8. pistachio cookies. Again, love pistachio (and not on our menu this year). These are really yummy cookies but a huge batch. Use this pudding cookie recipe, substituting pistachio pudding for the vanilla. With chocolate chips, of course. And add some food coloring to make them extra green.

9. window clings. I love seasonal window clings, I have them for nearly every holiday. I buy them at Dollar Tree for $1. For St. Pat's we have a bunch of leprechauns and clovers.

10. mantle. This is the first year, I think, that I've decorated my mantle for St. Patrick's Day. It took me till February to put Christmas away but it was too soon for Easter stuff. I found a green and yellow cross at Ross for $4, then gathered some other green stuff from around my house. In the end, I went back to Ross and bought a leprechaun figure for $6. Cute stuff I'll use year after year.
Of course, this list is linked to Oh Amanda's Top Ten Tuesday!
How do you celebrate St. Patrick's Day?

3 comments:

Sarah @ Loved Like the Church said...

That banner is so cute! What an easy and fun project!

Shelly said...

I am so psyched to try the pistachio cake and cookies!!!! We don't have any St Pattys traditions....yet! :)

Zion said...

Wow, you are amazing. All I had was a shamrock dress for my baby girl and I didn't think that we would be anywhere on st. patrick's day so she wore it the day before. Then when we did end up at the park the next day we were the only one's not in green. Oops.