St. Patrick's Day

We love St. Patrick's Day at our house. It's the one time of year that I pretend that food coloring isn't horrible for you and it's the perfect excuse to use glitter for almost everything.

This year, Grandma O. helped me make a green table cloth for the table. I think it turned out fabulously! Thanks, Mom!

Who knew there was such thing as rainbow Twizzlers? The other monstrosity is Jello. I had this idea to make rainbow Jello thinking it would be fun and pretty. I didn't give it much thought as to how huge it would be if I made it in a trifle bowl! The girls LOVED it! So did the neighbors ;)




I completely pretend to forget how bad food coloring is on St. Patrick's Day. I have made natural rainbow treats in the past, but I couldn't pass up making rainbow pancakes at least once! Besides, I knew it'd be much easier to convince the kids to eat rainbow pancakes vs the corned beef and fontina paninis I wanted.




Since I had to have the rainbow Twizzlers, I figured I better do something fun with them. Beth Proudfoot of "It is what it is" blog had a wonderful idea along with a free printable!



The Jello, again, just so you could see how gigantic it really was!



The table, equipped with beautiful green tablecloth!



Green food is critical on St. Patrick's Day, of course. Aside from the rainbow pancakes, we had peas, green apples, green grapes, and leek soup.



I volunteered to make treats for Stella's class and also to run the party for Eva's class. I sent Stella to school with green shamrock rice crispy treats. I brought organic chocolate gluten-free cupcakes with green butter cream frosting and gold sprinkles.



The girls and I sat outside working on our leprechaun trap before Eva had to leave for swim practice. When Eva left for practice, Stella and I went inside to find leprechaun shenanigans. They turned over our furniture and made a mess in the house. As you can see from the photo, Stella wasn't quite sure what to make of it all!



The leprechaun trap...this is always our favorite part. We gathered pretty much everything that we could find that was green, gold and glittery. It was a fairly simple design this year. We took a tissue box, covered it in tacky gold and green paper (cut to fit the sides of the box) and placed it on a glittery paper. We glued green feathers to the top of the box, careful not to cover the hole with feathers. We then put up the sign for "gold" to attract the leprechaun. Everyone knows how greedy those little buggers are. Then we twisted pipe cleaners to create a ladder. The last step was to cover the hole in the top of the box with loose feathers. We are pretty sure that the leprechaun climbed up the ladder and stuck his foot on the top edge of the box to test for stability. Once he determined it was stable, he climbed on top and well, we caught him. He turned into a pot of gold which made for some happy leprechaun hunters.






All the leprechaun hunting wore this little lady out. She passed out for a nice late afternoon nap!

Grilled Corned Beef and Fontina Sandwiches
Bon Apetit Magazine
Recipe by Bruce Aidells
Adapted by me!

Makes 4 sandwiches
Ingredients
8 slices Jewish-style rye bread, divided
Dijon mustard
1 pound thinly sliced corned beef (cheated and picked it up from Whole Foods deli)
8 ounces Fontina cheese (I shredded it)
1/2 sweet onion (such as Maui or Vidalia), thinly sliced

Preparation
Place 4 bread slices on work surface. Spread mustard on 1 side of each. Divide corned beef among bread slices. Top with cheese and onion. Cover with remaining 4 bread slices, pressing slightly to adhere.

Spray both sides with olive oil, place on George Foreman Grill for 3-4 minutes. Transfer sandwiches to plates, cut in half, and serve.