Last minute ideas for St. Patrick’s Day

pull out all your sprinkles!

It’s almost Spring!!  Pull out some rainbows and bright green clover!  Here are a few last minute ideas to do today.  As I’m working on these photos, I’m listening to a dramatization of the life of St. Patrick here (link only good for this week! Or you can buy the 2 episodes about St. Patrick here, so worth it!)  Celebrating a man with a Heart Afire, a slave boy who changed an entire nation!

To do a bit of fun decorating/eating, I just pulled out some things I had around here, green jello, green tea, green towel, mixed up a batch of lemon buttermilk pound cake and tinted it green,  we’ll eat some “Irish” food, Irish soda bread and a few treats (chocolates!) while we listen to the story of St. Patrick.  Check out my other St. Paddy’s Day posts! 😉

make some green cake….

I found a 5 leaf clover pressed in my cookbook yesterday!!!! funny….

hang a green kitchen towel

a green box of Belgian chocolates, available at Costco right now.

FAIR TRADE chocolates! yay Costco.

whip up some green jello (jello fruit salad?)

pull out the green scrapbook paper (mostly from Christmas), punch a few hearts and make them into shamrocks…

brew some fruity minty flavored tea….

how about some green tea iced tea? (add a few drops of green food coloring!) I think I’ll go for the mint….

some green lemon/lime pound cake….using my new mini bundts!

gotta love that green cake batter!!

green mini bundt cake molds

green mini bundt cakes for St. Patrick’s Day, add a little rainbow and a chocolate coin!

quickly decorate the mini green bundt cake with some white candy melts, rainbow sprinkles and shamrock sprinkles (and a chocolate coin!)

I love to look at another sign of spring, the kids’ snow pea seedlings!

So, here’s wishing the top o’ the morning to ya!  I’ll leave you with an old Irish blessing:  “May the road rise to meet you, may the wind be always at your back, may the sun shine warm upon your face, and rains fall soft upon your fields.  And until we meet again, may God hold you in the hollow of His hand.”

A Gingerbread House for Spring!

Gingerbread in Spring?  Does that sound strange to you?  Oh, wait, it’s not even Spring yet.  For sure not around here, we are officially still in winter for awhile yet.  But it seems like February is when I usually do end up making gingerbread houses, for one reason or another.  This year I didn’t make one at Christmas time (happens more often than not).  So sometimes I think I need one for my birthday.  (oops, I just realized we’re in March, duh!!!)  This year I made and ate some Spring-like gingerbread in honor of my sister and nieces’ birthdays!!!  (and had a lot of fun doing it!)  But this house really looks like it would be cute for Easter (so that’s what I wrote the on the picture!)  Here’s what I did:

Made gingerbread dough.  Rolled out and cut out pattern.  For this house I quickly printed off a great free pattern to use by Tikkido.  Great for those times you don’t feel like coming up with a gingerbread house pattern of your own.  And it turns out really cute!The kids did some gingerbread cutting and building of their own…For a tiled roof, I pressed a pattern into the roof pieces before baking, and used a clean drinking straw to poke some holes in the roof.Two color Royal icing decorating before assembling….Assembled and then added fondant flowers, leaves and strawberries and a little girl out front in her garden.The roof idea was something new I saw on Pinterest, so my little house was inspired in part by the beautiful house I saw here.Just a tiny bit trickier than a regular roof, but I love how it turned out!And now this little house is gone!  Tasted just as yummy as it looked!!  Maybe I should make another one for Easter….Easter is a great time for gingerbread!!!  (I think that could be a European thing?! anyone??)