Happy St. Pat's!

What a full day...spring is certainly in the air!


We made our Bairin Breac this morning.

While I was working on the bread, I heard this in the next room:

Sodie is a wonderful harpist...she dug up sheet music for a few Irish tunes and suddenly our St. Patty's Day had a soundtrack!

Prepping our dinner of corned beef and colcannon came next. Toucie needed to settle in with a contribution of her own, so:

Potato stamp hearts make shamrock window decorations! 

Its not just little kids who imitate big kids around here....look who made off with the potato and the paint:

(Naya and Sodie stamping their windows with shamrock hearts!)



I walked by Sodie's harp again and saw this:

Contagious.

Back to work:

Our version of Colcannon is very simple:


Colcannon

1 head cabbage - chopped
8 potatoes - peeled and diced
salt, pepper and butter to taste

Place potatoes in a stockpot and add enough water (or broth for extra flavor) to barely cover them.
Bring potatoes to a boil and add cabbage .
Reduce heat to a simmer and cook cabbage and potatoes until potatoes are mashable.
Drain away excess liquid and mash the cabbage and potatoes.
Add salt, pepper, and butter to season. (We also add a bit of cream and a dash of caraway).


This is another of those dishes, like the Bairin Breac,  that is surrounded by controversy. Some say use cabbage, some say kale (we like both, by the way...cabbage in the spring and kale in the autumn!), so do look around the interwebs if you want to explore other methods of putting together this simple dish.

By the time I was finished assembling the evening meal for later cooking, I found this in the next room:

Awesome...who needs a radio?


We checked to see if anyone (a leprechaun perhaps?) had taken up residence in our most recent fairy house endeavor:

Mado and Toucie collaborated on this one...it was pretty grand when finished. Ahhh, the Waldorf grad handing down skills to the Waldorf novice :)


Our big project for the day was to make and hide a letterbox. We made this one with an Irish theme and called it "Celtic Not", since we are not Irish but still nuts about many Celtic things (especially music!).

I'll explain a bit more about our letterboxing in another post, but in a nutshell, its where we go out into natural areas and follow clues to find boxes that other people have hidden.

So, off into the woods. We've hunted for many letterboxes...this is the first letterbox that we have hidden for others to find.

Later we enjoyed our St. Patrick's Day feast .

And ended our celebration with some goofing off (as always seems to be the case!). Daddy played his bodhran along with some favorite Irish dance music and we coaxed Sodie and Naya into stepdancing a wee bit for us. Toucie upstaged everyone and had the energy to go on and on long after the rest of us had collapsed into our chairs (as again, always seems to be the case!).

Oh, Toucie wants to make sure everyone knows that her nails are green...rare and exotic treat.

Happy St. Patty's everyone...I hope yours brings bright blessings to you this season!