St Patrick Day Celebrations 2013

St Patrick celebrations in our home are ones we really enjoy.
We celebrated early due to the fact we had our Autumn home for the weekend and so wanted her to be a part of our family celebrations.

I tried to find green colour clothes for everyone , but it seemed we were a little lacking this year. However I love the little Irish girl above, truly she is so adorable in temperament and so sweet too.
She has missed having her big sister home and so spent a lot of time with her 'buddy'

We decided we needed some new decorations and it was lovely setting up the decorations in this new home which is so much more, well, 'homey' feeling than the old place!

Autumn was very involved in the decorating phase this year and this was a double blessing as I loved seeing her still part of our family celebrations. Paper chains are always a very popular choice and so we made some from crepe paper this year.
I was a little disappointed when I went to Spotlight and discovered that the only choices for decorating involved green beer images. So we just used the paper chains and set up things a little differently.

 The other item we bought was pipe cleaners, they really are a versatile decorating item. Autumn is making them into little shamrocks for the dinner table as well as one for everyone to keep to put in our memory boxes.

 While we were still organising decorations Arwen and Trahaearn decided that they really were ready for lunch.
As we were having a simple lunch of shamrock leaves on sourdough bread and an Irish Flag consisting of celery, cheese and carrot sticks, this was quickly done.
Arwen insisted on using the Irish Flag as a place mat!

 The shamrock leaves were made from both gherkins...............

 and cucumbers. There are very popular in our family.

There are some in our family who still love Vegemite, and so  we rarely have sourdough bread said person felt the need for  a vegemite shamrock because she deemed it essential to the feasting.

 Rogan was so engrossed in the book he was reading that he could not put it down even for lunch!!

 So our decorating was a major part of how we celebrated. Don't you love the  shamrock tower?

 We have this huge area in the family room of doors that made the perfect setting for our wall decorations.

 I love this little shamrock with pictures. We tend to reuse some decorations and this is one we use each year.

 I was able to set up our St Patrick or Irish Fable books on the wood stove along with our Painted St Patrick as it was not cold enough to light yet.

 These two are probably my favourite books each year.

This is another decorative to celebrate this day. We have the Irish Girls I made last year along with the Leprechauns from the year before with the rainbow and gnome  well Leprechaun house all siting on a green silk with a river running through. We do have Father Pine with his purple vestments on as we are still in Lent. I also made this banner from here Part 1 and Part2

 Table centerpiece all ready and waiting for the meal.

Each person is given a shamrock and a printed laminated card to be kept or used as a book mark each feast day.

I was trying to get a few pictures from our table looking in all directions to the other decorated areas.

In our family it goes without saying that we have Irish Stew for dinner.

For Sweets we had gluten free chocolate cupcakes with  lolly leaves for shamrocks on top of slightly green coloured cream, very popular.

As a special treat, well for the grown ups, I did make my version of Bailey's Irish Cream.. I tried to buy the chocolates for the children but couldn't find any in the shops.

The recipe says it will last up to 2 months, but I seriously have my doubts. It is so much better than the bought version and a little glass is enough. Believe me I tried a larger glass and it was way more than I could ever drink, where as the bought stuff I can easily do a wine glass full.

We did not manage to have our Soaked Irish Soda bread till the next day. Confession time- it really was like a flat bread as someone, no names mentioned forgot to put in the key ingredient for SODA bread.
Still it was very very good and none was left on the plate.

Well after this our Autumn went back to Uni where she is really settling in and enjoying all that is on offer there. We miss her still but were so glad she was here for this special feast day.

Praying you all enjoyed your own celebrations of this most special saint, well in our opinion at least.

ST PATRICK PRAY FOR US!!

By the way we did do some formal lesson work with the word searches, crossword puzzles and colouring pages, but we put them in their note books before I took photos this year.

Blessings to you and your homes,