Kids make everything more magical in life.

I’ve always been a huge Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and Halloween fan, but other ones like St Patrick’s Day have not been my thing in the past… it’s not that I hate all things Irish — in fact I love a good rousing celtic jig, I was obsessed with riverdance as a kid, and there are all the beautiful fairy tales (or should I say faery tales!) and breathtaking landscapes… but here in the U.S. it often feels like a ridiculous caricature intended mainly for getting slopping drunk and wearing green.

This year though, I got in the spirit of it — minus the flowing ale — and it was a fun holiday to do at home. As our children get older, I look forward to reading real Irish folk tales (a compilation like this would be a great start!) and learning more about the history and culture. For example, this was an interesting article: When America Despised the Irish: The 19th Century’s Refugee Crisis. Plus my husband has relatively recent Irish ancestry so it’s a great chance to look up the family tree with our kids!

Anyway. I love having a little surprise ready for Adelina when she wakes up from her nap on holidays, it’s a fun way to make the day special (and kill some time when afternoons grow long… ha!). We went to pick up rainbow-colored balloons this morning so she had seen them, but after the nap they had disappeared! I told her a leprechaun had probably stolen them and hidden them to play a trick on us… we searched around the house a bit and found his pot o’ gold!

And yes, that’s definitely a Halloween votive… whatever, it was the closest thing I had on hand. Necessity is the mother of invention, they say.

Also, how cute was our little Leprechaun! This boy melts me!

We ended the day with some delicious corned beef and cabbage (apparently, not terribly authentic… still yummy though!) and it was not as tricky as I worried. Meat has always intimidated me some, but I’m starting to get the hang of it. Stores tend to carry corned beef pre-packaged with a little spice packet around St Patrick’s Day, so that made things pretty easy, and then I added red potatoes, onion, carrots and of course cabbage. Drown the whole thing in some beef broth and you have a tasty roast! (Crock pot would have been nice, but in typical fashion I didn’t get it in in time to let it cook long enough — about eight hours on high is the general consensus — so oven it was. Still took four hours, but it was worth it! Here’s an easy recipe) And the Celtic Pandora station made for perfect dinnertime ambiance 😉

I’d love to hear how you celebrate St Patrick’s Day, tell me all about it in the comments!