Fun St. Patrick's Day Meal Ideas

Sure, you might be eating the classic corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick's Day every year, but here are some new, fun side dishes to add to the table that your kids will love!

What Irish dinner is complete without POTATOES!? This potato dish is shaped like shamrocks and is so easy to do! Start by washing and peeling your potatoes - you'll probably need at least 4 or 5 medium white baking potatoes, depending on your family's size and appetite. Now cut two long ditches down the length of each potato.  This will create three leaves to your shamrocks.

Next, cut two triangles along the length of the bottom of each potato. This will form the stem. Now slice the potatoes like normal, each slice about 1/4" thick.

Fry your potatoes in a large pan in about 3 or more tablespoons of oil. Be sure to heat the oil first; turn the potatoes half way through cooking; and fry until golden brown. They should be crisp on the outside and soft on the inside - YUM! You can also add in slices of onion to cook with the potatoes- YUM! YUM! To avoid hot oil popping on your stove top, cover the pan while cooking - you can buy a special metal mesh cover just for this purpose but since I don't have one I used a round pizza pan with holes in it. Final tip: I used vegetable oil and blotted the potatoes afterwards with a paper towel to remove access oil before eating. ;O)

(this photo keeps uploading SIDEWAYS! Can't figure out why... )

Another great side dish for kids? Creamy GREEN macaroni and cheese! Here's what you do: start cooking the macaroni as directed on the box (yes - you get to use a box mix!). Meanwhile, peel one medium avocado and mash it up using either a plain ol' fork (like me) or a fancy food processor. Mix in the ingredients you're supposed to mix into the macaroni and cheese, per the directions on the box. It's probably something like 1/4 cup of milk and 1/4 cup of butter. Also mix in the cheese. If desired, add a dash of onion powder. It probably won't quite be bright enough, so stir in a few (5-6) drops of green food coloring. Here's a picture of what it should look like so far:

When the macaroni is finished cooking, drain it like normal and stir in your green cheesy mixture. My daughter (6) loved this creamy (secretly healthy) version of macaroni and cheese!

P.S. A fun addition to any Irish meal is brussel sprouts because they look like mini cabbages! My daughter eats them so well and loves to pretend they are baby cabbages.  I simply toss mine in a tablespoon of olive oil and sea salt and cook in the microwave (in a covered microwave safe dish, of course) on high for about 5 minutes. 

St. Patrick's Day Marshmallow Painting

I just thought one day that it would be fun to paint with marshmallows...and so we did. My daughter had so much fun painting with them - and it was a great way to use up stale marshmallows, too! Here are two projects you can make for St. Patrick's Day with this unusual paint brush!

We used Crayola washable paints, by the way, which are the best.

First I created a pallet of colors for her on a paper plate and provided one marshmallow per color... and a couple fresh ones for snacking! The first project we made was a rainbow, using the marshmallows to dab circles of color along an arched line. 

When your rainbow is finished, add marshmallows clouds with regular glue! We used a heavier card stock for this project to accommodate the weight of the glue and marshmallows.

 

Next, we made a lucky shamrock sign! I wrote "Happy St. Patty's Day!" on another sheet of card stock and had my daughter (6) decorate our sign with marshmallow shamrocks. Just make three green circles together with your marshmallow, then draw a stem with your finger.  Next project... s'mores! :O)

St. Patrick's Day Leprechaun Masks

I came up with a quick craft project for my kids on St. Patrick's Day - Leprechaun masks! I started with a paper plate and cut a circle out of the middle then flattened it out a little. Molly (5) and Ben (2) colored around the whole edge with an orange crayon.

Meanwhile, I cut out a top hat from green construction paper, a black strip, and a yellow buckle. I measured the black strip over each hat and snipped the edges to fit perfect. To make the buckle, I simply cut out a square from yellow construction paper, lightly folded it in half, and cut two parallel slits in it without cutting all the way through the square. I had Molly weave the strip of black paper through it and glue it all to the hat.


To save time, I simply stapled the hat to the kids' paper plates. Be careful to place the staples so the rough edges would be on the front of the mask and not where they could scratch your kids. Finally I taped a craft stick to the bottom and let Molly decorate hers with stickers. This craft was so fun and quick! As my kids get older they could probably do more of it on their own, but for now it was super fun for them to play with! Molly even insisted she saw a little Leprechaun run through our back yard while we worked on the masks!

St. Patrick's Day Quick and Easy Fun Food Ideas

Sorry it's a day late, but here are a couple more ideas for St. Patrick's Day! We started our day off with green, shamrock-shaped chocolate chip pancakes. I just added green food coloring to our regular batter and poured it in groups of three circles, with a little stem. Some of them were just regular circles too. We never eat plain pancakes - they MUST have chocolate chips in them and I'm a little particular about my chip to bite ratio, so I individually place 5 to 7 morsels per pancake as they cook. If you stir them straight into the batter, there's less likely to be one in every single bite! And there's my friendly, kinda over the top pancake tip. :O)


At lunchtime, Molly (5) reminded me about some lime green Halloween mashed potato snakes I made for dinner one night, and she told me I "had" to make them today! I can't believe she remembered! That just goes to show you that is is definitely worth it to do a little something special for your kids! Here is a link to my old blog about the snakes:

http://www.walkinthesunshineblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/spooky-fast-meal-ideas.html

Meanwhile, I made some instant mashed potatoes a darker green this time and served shamrock mashed potatoes for lunch! I used a plastic baggie with a corner cut off to pipe the mashed potatoes onto our plates. Just be sure to use oven mitts if the potatoes are still too hot to handle!

St. Patrick's Day Handprint Shamrock and More

Since tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, I know I won't have time to blog about everything we'll do between now and then, so I'll make a quick list of simple ideas for you to try with your kids! For breakfast, you can serve green scrambled eggs and shamrock-shaped toast! I have a shamrock cookie cutter but you can always just cut it yourself. Then, instead of plain cinnamon and sugar on your toast, use green sugar sprinkles (like you would put on cookies)! You can always make anything green with food coloring, too! Try banana bread, blueberry muffins, or pancakes for a lucky green breakfast!

One of my favorite treats to make for St. Patrick's Day, starting when I was in college even, is green mint-chocolate chip cookies! Make your traditional chocolate chip cookies like normal, but add green food coloring to your dough, as well as about a teaspoon of peppermint extract. Yum!

Finally, here are two fun and easy keepsake crafts you can make for St. Patrick's Day. If we do more I'll try to post them, but there's no guarantee you'll see it before it's too late!

Here's a cute handprint craft I've done with Molly (5) and Ben (2) each year - handprint shamrocks! I just use green finger paint to cover their whole hand and make three (or four, if you're feeling lucky!) handprints on the paper. I painted in the stems myself to complete the picture.

This year I also came up with the idea to just use their fingerprints to make shamrocks. Molly could make clusters of three or four on her own but I guided Ben's fingers to make his. We made just one shamrock each for a small picture to decorate a St. Patrick's Day card but it would also be neat to make a whole field of shamrocks with lots and lots of fingerprints!

**Remember! If you want to add GREEN glitter, just sprinkle it on before your paint is wet and it will stick as it dries. :O)

Paper Shamrocks

Some of you know that I now babysit 4 month old twins - all day, every day. I have kept up with projects for my kids, but I admit there hasn't been as many and I haven't had the time or energy to post them on my blog. After allowing half a month to pass by without a post, though, I am determined to catch up and keep up!

St. Patrick's Day is right around the corner, so we have decorated our holiday tree accordingly. We have also cut out paper shamrocks from green construction paper. I folded a sheet in half and drew it on the paper for Molly (4) to cut out herself. We also constructed shamrocks by cutting out hearts and gluing three of them together and added a stem to form a shamrock! All of our shamrocks are taped up in our large living room window. After we taped up snowflakes and hearts last month, I really loved how that looked as opposed to smaller window-clings you can buy.

*You can see the three-heart shamrock glued together at the bottom of this picture!

Meanwhile, Molly found a new and clever use for the left-over paper after we cut our heart shapes out of them! She glued the green paper with heart cut-outs onto a sheet of white construction paper. Now the hearts formed frames! Molly had a fun time drawing a picture of each of her family members in the spaces. I love my creative girlie!