Celebrating St Patricks Day

Hey everyone.... so if you haven't heard- I am guest posting over at Tatertots and Jello today- and it's ALL about St Patricks Day!!! Click here to check out some of the crafty ideas I posted over there-

So now that we have decorations, shirts and pot's of gold covered- lets move onto traditions!!

Traditions-

As I mentioned before, St Patricks Day was a big deal for us and we have a lot of traditions that I would LOVE to share

Morning-

First, when we would wake up in the morning there would be a trail of shamrock confetti from our beds  to our little Leprechauns filled with treats that were somewhere hidden in the house.

During the night, the leprechaun turned many things green- the milk, toilet water, water, bread etc...

We always had fun running around seeing what he turned green.

My wonderful fun aunt also shares the same love as me for this fun holiday and also has some great ideas... seriously, it is her favorite holiday!!!

When my cousins were young, my aunt would sneak into their rooms at night and paint footprints on their faces and arms and hands (She used a q-tip dipped in green food coloring). It was just her way of starting the day off with excitement!

Attire-

We of course loved getting dressed up in our green- this of course is a must-   Green wigs, blinking head gear/ jewelry, googly glasses, arm socks etc

Basically- the tackier, the better!!

 One fun idea is to collect a bunch of outrageous green hats and have everyone wear them for dinner!!

(here are some we have collected)

It is also a must to use an Irish accent whenever possible- a good CD of irish songs would help with this

Movies

Some great movies are the Gnome Mobile & Darby O Gill and the Little People

Food-

An important aspect of any holiday.

 For breakfast, we love having Lucky Charms with our green milk (sorry I know many don't like the idea of green milk.. including my husband- but its fun and hasn't killed me yet) We also like to make heart shaped waffles to form a shamrock or just plain green pancakes. Other ideas used would be french toast used with green bread, bacon with little leprechaun footprints (food coloring), green juice etc....

Dinner we like to have the traditional corned beef and cabbage. My grandma loves cooking corned beef in the crockpot and adding cabbage, potatoes and carrots and a big onion. Very good.

My family also makes a Lime Green Slush and believe me, it's amazing. Also have you tried Pistachio Pudding Salad... also a perfect festive treat.

I have never tried Irish Soda Bread, but am going to this year. Anyone have any good recipes??

I also made these fun shamrock cupcakes this year to give to neighbors and friends. I saw the idea at Family Fun awhile back

What you do is place paper liners in muffin cups and fill each halfway with the batter. Next take some foil and roll three balls per cupcake and insert them evenly around the space between the liner and the tin

Allow the cupcakes to cool, then remove them from the tin.

Cover each with green frosting. I used a little piece of green licorice for a stem

or another idea is making rainbow cupcakes I made my son a rainbow cake for his birthday last year and it was so fun- sure would be cute for St Patricks Day

SO have I convinced any of you to celebrate St Patricks Day??? Or have I scared you all off by my crazy amount of love for the holiday??? How do you celebrate St Patricks Day??  I would really love to know