St. Patrick's Day Party!

We had a St. Patrick's Day party at our house this weekend! We invited several families from our church with young children as well as our deacon and pastor - unfortunately, most everyone got sick, and it was a busy weekend for the clergy at our church, so it ended up being just us and one family... so we also invited a couple of our neighbors at the last minute to come share some of the food we'd prepared!

We had shamrock mint cupcakes (seen above) with some slight alterations due to my misunderstanding the recipe (they still tasted great!), along with other snacks that had a green or Irish theme. We also celebrated St. Joseph's feast day (a solemnity), which was on Friday - but the food and decorations were definitely a St. Patrick's theme!

Veggie and cheese tray arranged to look like the Irish flag (idea stolen from here!)

Here's our table, with shamrock stickers all over the tablecloth courtesy of Caroline... there is guacamole in a bowl alongside a bowl of tortilla chips, and another bowl of green grapes!

These shamrock toasties were last on the table once they came out of the oven... yummy!

Katelyn, Caroline, and Brianna enjoy their snacks!

We did a craft with the kids a while later. I saw the idea of a shamrock kit from Oriental Trading - it had symbols for the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be glued onto each leaf of a shamrock. So I put together something similar. I bought two colors of green cardstock and found a pattern for a shamrock and traced it onto the darker green cardstock. Then I drew a smaller heart and traced it onto the lighter green cardstock three times. The hearts were then glued onto the leaves of the shamrock to give it some dimension and visual appeal. Then I found this image of the Trinity and resized it and printed off several copies. I cut all this out and put them into individual baggies along with the Irish poem below and a piece of shamrock ribbon. Then all the kids had to do was glue it all together - which is good, because all of them were age 5 and under, so they didn't need something that required cutting and such.

Good St. Patrick traveled far to teach God's Holy Word.

And when he came to Erin's sod, a wondrous thing occurred.

He plucked a shamrock from the earth and held it in his

hand to symbolize the Trinity that all might understand.

The first leaf for the Father, the second for the Son,

the third for the Spirit, three of them in one.

Cecilia and Leah, the two year olds, needed some assistance, but the others were able to do most of it with just a little guidance.

I did call Chris over to help Caroline - she tends to be hesitant about doing some things herself.

Here she is holding up her completed shamrock - the poem is glued to the back. We also had some coloring sheets of St. Joseph out for anyone who wanted to do them.

And here are all the kids just before the party was over - my girls love when their friends come over for snacks and playing!