Lucky Charms

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 in the Time of COVID-19

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Can you believe this is the second time we’ve celebrated this holiday in the time of COVID-19?!? Of course, last year, we really didn’t know what we were in for yet, and this year, we’re all hoping that we can see a light at the end of the tunnel, but either way, our family celebration remained largely unchanged, although this year, we did start celebrating pretty early in the month with Shamrock Shakes (almost impossible to find in our area this year, so when we did pinpoint a location that was offering them, we jumped on it!) and a Green River Soda cheesecake from Eli’s:

We started the day with Lucky Charms and the leprechaun trap…spoilers, we didn’t catch him (again!)!

We read all of our favorite St. Patrick’s Day books, watched all of the Ireland episodes of Rick Steves’ Europe we have on disc, and also watched Aerial Ireland. I really enjoyed “Shamrock Day” in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. While it wasn’t a huge event like some, there were some special items, including what look suspiciously like Shamrock Shakes!

I also enjoyed giving a few of my favorite neighbors a Shamrock Suit to match mine:

The highlight of the day (for me at least) was dinner. I love corned beef and cabbage and all the trimmings!

And of course we had Guinness cake for dessert, which is a family favorite!

We had a nice St. Patrick’s Day, as we always do, but I really hope that next time the holiday rolls around, things in the world are a little more normal!

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!

Magically Delicious!

A St. Patrick’s Day staple in our household…Lucky Charms for breakfast!

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Chickadee had her first taste of Lucky Charms, too…she has already figured out the marshmallows are delicious! I looked at her high chair tray to discover that she had eaten all of those first, and had left the oat pieces for last.