St. Patty’s Day 2024

    THE WEARIN’ O’ THE GREEN!

We had our family party yesterday afternoon, in honor of St. Patrick, and I believe a good time was had by all. Nine adults plus 14 kids (ranging in age from 9 months to 9 years) equals lots of chaos—but lots of fun, too (it’s math!).

The kids spent most of their time playing outside, many of them even eating their meals picnic-style on our front stoop.  The weather was glorious—sunny and in the low 70’s—and the food was yummy and plentiful. I have to say, it could not have been a better afternoon.  As his family was leaving, our 8-year-old grandson Junior thanked us for a “wonderful time.”  (He actually used the word “wonderful,” isn’t that the best?)  At the end of the day, I was a very happy—tired, but happy—Grammy!

We got some great pictures, so the rest of this post will be a St. Patty’s photo dump.  ☘️☘️☘️

 

Just as I was about to push the "publish" button on this post earlier, our daughter-in-law Ginger texted to tell us she'd seen a neat idea on Twitter (or X or whatever it's called!): when making the corned beef dinner, one mom said she put aside some cabbage leaves for her family to wear as "hats" on St. Patty's Day. Ginger loved the idea.  So this happened over at their house tonight...

Now that's a clever (and very cute) way to wear green!  

St. Patty’s Party Prep

Tomorrow afternoon, our VA gang (sons #2, 3, and 4, their wives, and their combined 14 kids, plus a good friend of two of our daughters-in-law) are coming to our house for a St. Patty's Day celebration.  We have lots of Irish-themed decor that stays up all year; but I've added a few touches.

Bottom right: pictures of our youngest son at the Cliffs of Moher.

Two small trees stay up in our family room all year and get decorated
according to the season/holiday.

The Irish gnome was an impulse buy, but I don't regret it!

Our youngest son as St. Patrick (All Saints Day parade, 2nd grade). 

We’re going to have green punch (that can be spiked or kid-friendly) and other fun beverages, corned beef and cabbage, pork chops and gravy, mashed potatoes, and an assortment of chips and dips and fruits and veggies.  For the kids, there will be Domino’s pizzas, because they may or may not be interested in the Irish fare.  I’ve made shamrock-shaped sugar cookies and caramel brownies with green sprinkles for dessert, and also Catholic writer Emily Stimpson Chapman’s Bailey’s Irish cream cake. (Yum!)  I’ve got party hats and beads and other favors ready to pass out.  I think I’m ready!

That accent wall in our kitchen was painted this colon by the former owners,
and I love it!  (The shade is literally called “Emerald Isle.”)

Our Aldi's has these every March, and they are magically delicious.

If we can get the kids to dress up in the silly headgear and beads and shamrock glasses and stick-on green mustaches and “tattoos,” I’m hoping I’ll be able to post some cute pictures of them next week.

Until next time--

May God in His wisdom and infinite love,

Look down on you always from Heaven above.

May He send you good fortune, contentment and peace,

And may all your blessings forever increase.

Slainte, dear readers!

A St. Patrick's Day Post (on St. Joseph's Feast Day)

There is almost nothing that makes me happier than having my family gathered at our house, to celebrate a holiday or even for no special reason at all.  But holidays are, of course, especially fun.

St. Patty's Day is a particularly special holiday for the Pearl clan, because there is so much Irish blood flowing through our veins (well, a whole lot more of it on my husband's side than mine, but I've got some of it, too).

Our bishop gave a dispensation, so we had a green light for eating meat on this one Friday during Lent, in honor of the Emerald Isle's patron saint; therefore, I was able to make traditional Irish fare like corned beef and cabbage and beef stew.

Our three VA boys and their families came over for the evening, along with the brother of one of our daughters-in-law and his wife, who were visiting from FL. Food was eaten, drinks were drunk (but not to worry, nobody got drunk!), and a house got very messy. When 13 grandchildren ranging in age from 8 down to almost a year visit your house, there will be sticky spots on the floor afterward, and lots and lots of crumbs to vacuum. (But if you knew how much I love to vacuum, you would realize that this is not a bad problem for me to have.  Ha ha!  No, but really, that wasn't sarcasm: I love to vacuum!)

Cousins make the best friends!

We had an overabundance of food; but too much is definitely better than not enough, right?

Here are the things we had that I would definitely serve again, along with the traditional corned beef and cabbage:

1. Martha Stewart's  Loaded baked potato dip with potato chips.  Delicious.  Practically a meal in itself.

2. Keogh's Sour Cream and Shamrock potato chips, from Ireland.  (Yes, SHAMROCK!  Did you know that shamrocks are edible?! I didn't.)  We discovered them at Aldi's when we were in TN.  My favorite chips ever.

3. Mule Punch--my own invention: dump one can of frozen limeade in a punch bowl, add five bottles of cold ginger beer, stir (and a few drops of green food coloring if it's March 17).  That's it!  Then have a shot glass nearby, with vodka for Moscow Mules, bourbon for Kentucky Mules, and tequila for Mexican Mules.  It's delicious as is for the underage crowd, but spiked it becomes a tasty adult beverage. 

4. These shortbread cookies, from Ina Garten.  (You can dip them in chocolate, but I left them plain.) Mouthwateringly good!

Here's what I would skip next time:

1. The Pinterest-y rainbow of fruit, with clouds (mini marshmallows) at one end and a pot of gold (gold-covered chocolate candies) at the other.  It's cute and all, but not worth the trouble.  Just having a bowl of cut-up fruit makes more sense, in my opinion.  We had both options going and almost no one picked fruit from the rainbow.

2. I asked one of my daughters-in-law to make a veggie tray in Irish flag colors.  She used carrots and peppers for the orange part, cauliflower for the white, and broccoli and cucumbers for the green.  It was AWESOME, but I feel bad about all the effort she put into it.  Because...dare I say this?  Veggies aren't always the first thing people go for at our parties.  What does that say about us Pearls?

Anyway, it's usually not really about the menu anyway, is it?  It's about the people.

Especially these people.  (Of the 13 grandchildren who were there, only one is missing from these two photos.)

So that's the recap of our celebration.  One of our young grandsons is studying violin, so maybe someday in the future he can fiddle us some Irish tunes at our St. Patrick's Day party!  Wouldn't that be grand?

I’m hanging up my St. Patty’s apron until next year, and already planning the menu for 3/17/24: maybe it will be an all-potato feast (rather than a famine)!  Keough’s sour cream and shamrock potato chips with that heavenly loaded baked potato dip.  Twice-baked potatoes stuffed with butter, sour cream, cheese, and bacon as a main course, methinks.  ☘️  

Enough of that—I’ve got plenty of time to menu plan.

Slainte, dear readers! ☘️

Saint Patrick, pray for us!  St. Joseph, pray for us!

St. Patty's Day Chez Pearl (2021)

We had our whole VA gang over for an early St. Patrick's Day celebration on Saturday the 13th: altogether, we had 10 adults and 17 children gathered in our cookie-cutter cottage.  It was a bit crazy and chaotic, but in a good way.  And although I am actually more of a fan of rooms with walls and doorways than I am of the whole open floor plan craze, I must admit that it's a good thing this house was built with the latter design in mind.  I don't know that we would be able to have our huge and ever-expanding crew gathered comfortably in our home at one time otherwise.

I love planning for parties.  I love decorating and setting the tables and deciding which dishes and desserts to make.  I love cooking ahead of time, so that I can relax the day of the party (relax being a relative term, when you've got 17 young grandchildren running about the house!).  I always start out with somewhat Pinteresty ideas of what it will all look like and how it will all go.  Then soon after everyone arrives, I realize that Pinterestiness (that’s a word, or it should be!)  is unrealistic and overrated.  But that doesn't stop me from puttering around in happy anticipation, trying to make things look festive and pretty.  

And it doesn’t stop me from making a lovely rainbow of layered fruit (that few will even be tempted to eat; for fruit, I believe, is overrated as a party food--at least at our parties!).

I was hoping we would get family pictures of everyone standing in front of the large green cloth I tacked up on the wall, wearing some of the Irish-themed photo booth props I've collected.  Alas, that did not happen.  We did manage to get a few pictures, but not of everyone in attendance.

I used photos of our youngest son, who could only be with us in spirit, as party decorations--like this one of him dressed up as the Emerald Isle's beloved patron in his second grade All Saints Day parade (at the Catholic school he attended until we pulled him out and homeschooled him from 4th grade through 8th). 

I also froze my electronic photo frame slide show on a picture of him looking quite apropos for a St. Patty's party.  It was originally the serious "tough guy" photo used in the football team's programs his senior year of high school, but his older brothers decided to tease him by doctoring it up on the computer a number of times and turning him into, among other things, a leprechaun.

They did this to him years ago, and posted their doctored pictures on Facebook.  
He wasn't as amused by it then as he is now!  (Sometimes it's tough being the youngest brother!)

Aside from the cooler filled with Guinness and other beers and sodas to drink, I made a big bowl of green citrus punch for the party.  It's my mother-in-law's signature party punch, simple and delicious: one can of frozen lemonade or limeade, one cold 2-liter bottle of ginger ale, and some frozen strawberries floating on top.  (I added green food coloring for St. Patty's Day.) This punch is great for kids, but it also works as a tasty adult beverage, spiked with either whiskey or white wine.  

I wish I'd gotten a "before" picture of the punch bowl. Here's the "after" shot, taken after our 3-year-old grandson, one of son #4's mischievous triplets, quietly added all the missing ingredients I never knew it needed (including small toys, cheese slices, crackers, sun-dried tomatoes, cans, bottles, cups, and other assorted garbage items).

Pinterest fail!  

That photo is not a set-up.  That is really how I found the punch bowl, after the little dickens went unsupervised for just a matter of minutes and used the opportunity to quietly work on his masterpiece. Luckily, this was towards the end of the night and I'd already made a second batch of the punch, the first having been consumed earlier.

If you are curious to know what our house looks like after one of our family shindigs, just imagine the rest of the place in not much better shape than the punch bowl!  Ha ha!

I think that all in all, the party was a success, with plenty to eat and drink.  For dinner, we had corned beef and cabbage (plus Chick Fit A chicken nuggets as a back-up, for the kiddos), with mashed potatoes and Irish soda bread; for dessert, there was Bailey's Irish Cream cake (using a recipe from Emily Stimpson Chapman's "Around the Catholic Table" cookbook), along with shamrock-shaped cookies and my daughter-in-law's famous cinnamon rolls.  There were lots of kids playing together in the basement, and other kids chasing each other around on the first floor; there were big girl cousins holding their little baby cousins...and as for all the grown-up herselves and himselves, there was lots of craic (as in enjoyable conversation, entertainment, and fun).  So yes, I'll count it as a success indeed.

Speaking of craic: here’s a taste of what it's like for the wee folks when we party chez Pearl, in a video taken by my daughter-in-law (the mom of the triplets plus one more).

Good times!

I hope you had a wonderful St. Patrick's Day, too.  Slainte!

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!