St. Patrick's Day Part II

Two posts in one day?! And on a Saturday?! What the...???

The funniest part about this is that we don't usually do much to celebrate St. Patrick's Day (being that we are not Irish) except maybe wear green.  Today, we did all kinds of celebratory things, but none of us actually wore green!  Ha ha!

First thing you should know for this post -- we were not wearing green because we were instead wearing ORANGE to cheer on our Syracuse Orange Men's basketball team in the NCAA Tournament.  Go 'Cuse!  (we won-- on to the 'Sweet 16'! Hooray!!)

Secondly-- green food coloring makes EVERYTHING look completely un-appealing. That and the fact that food photography is hard and I don't have any REAL photography skills so all the pictures of food below look gross, but I promise you everything tasted just fine. :)

So, as you saw earlier today, we had an overnight visit from a leprechaun.  I love finding new traditions-- I can't wait to do this EVERY St. Patrick's Day!

Does anyone else throw all "rules" out the window on holidays and special occasions?  Cole ate 2 chocolate coins before BREAKFAST-- awesome mom or bad mom?  I guess it probably depends on who you ask.  :)

Then we had breakfast.  Green shamrock shaped pancakes and sausage for Cole and I.  And Tom had what I'm calling 'eggs-a-la-pinterest'.  (seriously if you're not on pinterest yet, what are you waiting for?  It's so awesome! Need an invite, leave me your e-mail address and I'll invite you!)

source

I had the table set in green and white.  

plastic table cloth:  Big Lots $1 (ps-- I LOVE it!  Its cheap, but it was pretty)

12" white paper doily:  Dollar Tree $1 for 18

green paper plates:  iparty  $3.79 for 24 -- makes clean up easy :)

and just our regular white paper napkins for everyday use.

I also put out my new milk glass footed bowl that I got at Goodwill for $1.  I LOVE it!  

I put some green apples in it (unfortunately the apples had seen better days at this point) and a couple of oranges since our day was going to be about both green AND orange!  

We played outside for a while because it was a gorgeous day!  And we got a package from my parents.

which promptly turned into this...

note: the addresses have been blurred for privacy reasons

 For dinner we had meatloaf with green mashed potatoes and green beans:

(warning-- I probably shouldn't even have put this picture up because it looks so unappetizing, but it really was delicious)

And for dessert (the best part of today in my opinion)-- Shamrock Shakes (using a recipe I had saved on pinterest!)

FYI-- we just used mint chocolate chip ice cream and milk and it was sooo good!

And to top it all off, there was a fireworks display in our neighborhood that we watched from Cole's bedroom window-- he was VERY excited about it.

All in all, a pretty good holiday (that we don't usually celebrate)! 

Hope you all had a great St. Patty's Day too!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I'm just going to pretend that it hasn't been more than a MONTH since my last post and just carry on as if I've been blogging right along.  If I just pretend I haven't been ignoring my blog then maybe its not true.  Right? :)

Aaaannnyyyy waaayyy....


Look who came to our house last night!

This little guy snuck in last night and left Cole a pot o' gold!!

He left 5 clues around the house that led Cole to his surprise.

Thanks to a last minute decision to use these awesome FREE printables from One Charming Party and a late night hunt for supplies, we had a lot of fun this morning.  Cole was SO excited about the whole thing.  Thanks One Charming Party for ANOTHER great idea!

 Hopefully I'll be back later today with MORE St. Patrick's Day fun!

ps-- those stinkin' Gold coins were hard to track down at this time of year!

source list:
Chocolate Gold Coins:  iparty   If you're thinking of doing this next year, I would consider buying them  
                                                   around Christmas when they seem to be in abundance (and cheaper)
                                                   -- $4.83
Ice Cream Cups:  I couldn't find these anywhere so I bought a small white tin at Michael's (with a 40%        
                            off coupon of course!) -- $1.20
Paper Easter Grass:  Five Below -- $1.00
Free Printable:     from One Charming Party-- FREE
LEGO minifigure:  LEGO  these are "luck of the draw" surprise packets so you don't know which one
                               you've gotten until you open the package but it can CERTAINLY be done without
                               the minifigure guy $2.00