St. Patrick's Day Plan

We've got a little over a week until St. Patrick's Day.  There are so many cute and fun projects all over the web that it's hard not to put them all on the list.  It's a good thing the 17th falls on a Saturday this year so Daddy can help color, cut, and paste.  (Right, Matt?)

First on the list is Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland by Tomie dePaola.  I ordered this a while ago and tucked it away on the shelf, out of sight.  It's a wonderful book and beautifully illustrated.  It gives both a history of St. Patrick and some of the most popular legends about him.  We'll begin our day by reading this so Henry can understand what we're celebrating.

Next up is a St. Patrick coloring page that all of the children can work on.  The whole coloring and laminating a guide is going really well, so I'll do that again here.  I figure we'll wind up with a wall of homemade saint cards that we can take out again and again over the years.  Liz at Holy Family Classical Academy created a great coloring page and kindly put it up as a download.

After that, we've got two cute crafts from Catholic Icing: a St. Patrick paper bag puppet and the easiest pipe cleaner shamrocks out there.  We'll probably use the pipe cleaner shamrocks on the puppet instead of cutting out a paper shamrock, just to tie it all together.

Our final project of the day will be a shamrock Trinity from Karen's Adventures in Mommyland.  I mixed it up a little bit and got foam sheets to use instead of construction paper in the hope that Oliver and Jane would be able to make their own, too.  I figure the foam is a little less destructible, plus they had glitter ones and every project is better with glitter, especially when it's pre-applied.

For the puppet and shamrock Trinity, I'm going to cut out the pieces in advance.  I picked up a few stencil boards and a Fiskars cutter on sale from Joann's last week that will come in handy.  I confess that I looked longingly at the Cricut aisle, but ultimately I can't justify the expense.  I'm not a scrapbooker.  At all.  It's a big deal for me just to stay up to date on all the kids' baby books.  So, manual stencils and cutters come through the cost/benefit analysis much better.

Of course, what's a feast day without a feast?  I saw a lot of cute green pancakes around, but I know that both Henry and Oliver would revolt if I set those down in front of them.  Jane would probably give a big "ooooooo."  Instead, I'm thinking we'll do "Holey Shamrocks," meaning I'm going to use my little shamrock cookie cutter to cut a shamrock hole in the center of each pancake at breakfast.  For dinner, I'm planning on making a shepherd's pie (ground beef, not lamb) and I saw a great shamrock-shaped Irish soda bread recipe on Hungry Happenings. 

Dessert will be plain-old cupcakes, but I'll break out the mini-shamrock cookie cutter again and use that as a stencil to make green sprinkle shamrocks on top of each one.  Oh, and Daddy gets a nice Guinness, which he will probably need after all of the craft time.  I'll settle for an Izze blueberry soda and think of next year when I'll be able to partake of a nice hard cider!