Leprechaun Trap

St. Patrick’s Day, Observed

Happy (early) St. Patrick’s Day!

We decided to celebrate today because it was the best day this week for a family feast. We started by setting the leprechaun trap…at this point, I can only assume that “Lucky” is taunting us!

Of course there were Lucky Charms:

And I made myself my favorite green drink this afternoon…the lavender matcha!

I love baking soda bread:

And we had our traditional corned beef dinner with all the fixin’s:

For dessert I made Guinness mousse to go with the Guinness cake Bunny baked:

This is truly one of my favorite dinners of the whole year!

An Early St. Patrick’s Day

Just like last year, we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day a day early today. We started by trying to trick the leprechaun into falling for our trap, but of course it didn’t work…he did leave some “gold” behind, though!

We had soda bread with tea for an afternoon snack:

And more soda bread with our traditional dinner:

For dessert, I made not only Guinness cake, but Guinness mousse to go with it…I think this might be a permanent addition to our St. Patrick’s Day menu!

Tomorrow we’re celebrating Turkey’s birthday…also early!

St. Patrick’s Day 2024

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! We actually celebrated yesterday, right after we picked Bunny up for spring break. I’m so glad she could be home with us for all of our St. Patrick’s Day traditions.

We still haven’t caught the leprechaun, but this year, for the first time, we did see him!

In addition to a minty treat, he left us with Lucky Charms…this time, with dragon marshmallows!1

In keeping with the theme of the day (green), I made some matcha milk boba tea, and topped it with lavender-lemonade whipped cream:

We had our traditional dinner of corned beef and cabbage, roast carrots and potatoes, and soda bread with Irish butter:

And a Guinness cake for dessert!

Tomorrow, we get to celebrate Turkey’s 21st birthday (also a day early!).

St. Patrick’s Day 2023

Happy St. Paddy’s Day! We started the day as we always do, by setting out our leprechaun trap:

And, as always, we found evidence that Lucky had visited, but no leprechaun himself…he did leave some nice candy, though!

We had our traditional St. Patrick’s Day breakfast of Lucky Charms:

And our standard dinner of corned beef and cabbage, roast potatoes and carrots, and soda bread with Irish butter. Oh, and a local favorite, Ski soda, just because the bottle is green!

Dessert was a little different…Bunny took our recipe for Guinness cake and made mini bundt cakes. Just as delicious, but so much more adorable!

It was a fun day, but only a warm-up to an even bigger day tomorrow…stay tuned!

St. Patrick’s Day 2022

Yesterday was one of my favorite days of the whole year (and one of the most delicious!)…St. Patrick’s Day!

We set our leprechaun trap:

We still didn’t manage to catch Lucky, though he did leave us a treat:

I wore green, glitter, and rainbows on a St. Patrick’s Day trip to the Missouri Botanical Garden. We didn’t find any shamrocks, but we did read a few of our favorite St. Patrick’s Day books while we were there.

I also had fun choosing just the right outfit in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I have a full-on leprechaun suit and a clover dress, but in the end, I decided to go with fusion fashion…a green dirndl!

We had our traditional dinner of corned beef and cabbage, roast carrots and potatoes, and soda bread with Irish butter. This year, I picked Ski soda to go with the meal, mostly because the bottle is green (and it’s nice to support local businesses).

And our favorite Guinness cake for dessert. I don’t know if it was just because I decorated it with chocolate sprinkles, but it looked even more like a donut to me than it usually does!

Up next…a two-day celebration of Turkey’s 19th birthday!

St. Patrick’s Day 2020

St. Patrick’s Day is one of our favorite holidays, and I was determined to celebrate it as we usually do, which honestly wasn’t too difficult, because our observation of the day very rarely takes us out of the house!

I started preparing for the day a few weeks ago, which in retrospect was probably a good thing. New this year: a lot of my supplies were purchased at Aldi!

I was so well-stocked that our celebration began last night, with a dinner of Irish-style ale & onion bangers, plus homemade colcannon:

We set our leprechaun trap as we usually do, and, as always, caught no leprechaun. We did find some nice mint patties, though!

We enjoyed our traditional breakfast of Lucky Charms, and Irish Breakfast tea for those who weren’t interested in coffee:

We had a few special treats with lunch:

Even with nowhere to go, I wore green for St. Patrick’s Day (and Mary Blair March!):

And we enjoyed our traditional dinner of corned beef and cabbage, roast potatoes and carrots, and soda bread with Irish butter (plus leftover colcannon from yesterday):

And for dessert, we had our favorite Guinness cake:

We celebrated as we always do, and it was a fun and delicious day. There was something low-key about it, though…it’s hard to ignore world events, even when we’re having fun at home!

St. Patrick’s Eve

Sometimes, you just have to celebrate a holiday on an alternate day. St. Patrick’s Day is one of those days for us this year, so today, we had a St. Patrick’s Eve celebration!

We started with our traditional breakfast of Lucky Charms…but this time, they were Lucky Charms with Frosted Flakes! They were very popular. We also checked our Leprechaun trap, and discovered that, as always, it was empty. There were some delicious mints for a consolation prize, though!

We had a couple of special treats with lunch…Irish cheddar, and St. Patrick’s Day Cakes:

And our traditional St. Paddy’s dinner…well, mostly traditional. Instead of the roasted potatoes I usually make to go with the corned beef and cabbage, carrots, and soda bread, I made mashed potatoes and colcannon:


And our favorite Guinness cake for dessert!

It was a little weird celebrating a day early, but any family feast is a fun occasion, no matter when it takes place!

A Markel Family St. Patrick’s Day

It’s time for another Markel Family holiday recap! Like all good holidays, the fun really started last night, when we set our leprechaun trap:

We watched every episode of Rick Steves’ Europe featuring Ireland that we could find (I think there were four on Hulu), and then watched Riverdance. And I had a Shamrock Shake, because I have to have one every year!

Early this morning, we went downstairs to discover that as is the case every year, even though it looked like we had caught something in our trap, all we found was a small treat (leprechaun-sized “cobblestones” that were actually Dove mint chocolates):

This year’s breakfast of Lucky Charms was extra special, because we found a limited edition green marshmallows variety!

In between preparing dinner and working on Turkey’s birthday cake for tomorrow, I found some time to bring my St. Patrick’s Day spirit to Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp:

This really was the children’s “lucky” day, because they also got a special treat with lunch…St. Patrick’s Day cakes!

Of course I took a picture of them all in their wildly varying shades of green:

We had our usual dinner of corned beef and cabbage, roast carrots and potatoes, and soda bread with Irish butter. But this year, we had something extra special to go with it…Green River soda, a Chicago favorite that I remember from my childhood. I managed to pick up a few bottles when we were in Chicago in January, and we used every ounce of self-control we have not to open them until today!

And for dessert, Guinness cake, which I think may be our family’s favorite cake!

It was another fun St. Patrick’s Day, and there’s even more fun to come tomorrow on Turkey’s 15th birthday!

Trapped?

Oh dear…

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He got away. And left a mess of confetti on the table, besides. At least he was nice enough to leave us a little surprise, even if we didn’t get his whole pot of gold!

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