St. Patty's Day Party (with Pinterest Flair!)

We will be on the road this weekend, flying out to Detroit to meet up with our youngest son and his girlfriend (more to come on this soon...wink wink!). So we won't be hosting a St. Patrick's Day party for our family, like we did last year.  No, on the 17th my husband and I will go to Sunday morning Mass in Michigan and then we'll get on a plane back to DC, so we'll be drinking our green beer in the air.  (We really won't be doing that, but I thought it sounded good.)   I don't even know if we'll be home in time for dinner, so the traditional corned beef and cabbage feast will have to wait.  (And actually, it'll have to wait a while...because we'll only be home for a day, and then, it's off to Rome for a week!  Not that we're jet-setters these days or anything...)

I am actually writing this post ahead of time and leaving it in my "drafts" file, so I can just hit the "publish" button two days from now.  I have suddenly rediscovered my interest in keeping up with this blog.  (You're welcome, sweet husband and baby sister of mine!)

I just thought I'd post some pictures of last year's St. Patty's Day festivities chez Pearl.  I can't believe I never wrote a blog post about it, because I went on Pinterest to find some creative ideas for making our family celebration extra-special, and faith and begorrah, I was pretty proud of myself, dontcha know.

Okay, here's the photo dump.

I used photos of son #5 (the only one not there, stationed in Germany at the time) wearing his second grade saints parade

costume, and my husband's Irish grandfather, who was born in County Cork and came to the US at 19, in the décor.

My oldest son was teasing me about this fruit tray, which I kept filling as people ate from it so it would stay pretty.

  I was definitely not the Pinterest-mom type when he was growing up, knowing that boys care more about 

taste and volume when it comes to food than they do about presentation!

The Irish flag!

I knew I would have trouble finding a tablecloth like this...so I made it myself!

We did not have green beer--but we did have green punch.

I always love to have a good excuse to make a cake.

Some very ugly Irish soda bread (without raisins or seeds or any of that other icky stuff my boys

won't eat in their baked goods!).  It tasted better than it looked (not a hard feat to pull off).

There he is: my favorite Irishman!

This adorable little leprechaun even had gold coins in his pocket! 

Oh my goodness...those shoes. Hats off to son #2 and Ginger for their costume-making prowess!

The triple threat!  

Not to be outdone by my little leprechaun grandson, here are the shoes I wore for our family "hooley" (as Kendra Tierney would call it).

And on that note, good bye!  May the road rise to meet you...and you know the rest!