Friday, May 9, 2014

Aye, It's St. Patty's Day!

I sure hope you read that title in an Irish accent. If not, go back and do so now. It makes it so much better. Anyway, I know I'm really late with this post but if I'm being honest, I just finished these projects yesterday. In my defense, I was gone most of March so I didn't have time for the crafts. But things have slowed down and I finally did it. But before the crafts, let's talk food.

We were traveling on actual St. Patrick's Day so I didn't do anything special other then put me and the girls in green. Love them.

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But a week later when my parents came for a visit, we went all out. I made green eggs and green shamrock blueberry muffins for breakfast. The muffins are easy. I used a box mix and just followed all the directions. The only change was that I added some green food dye. Pour mix in your baking cups and now comes the cool part. Place 3 marbles around the baking cup to make a shamrock shape.

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Then bake in the oven like you normally would. So easy and you're done!

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That night for dinner I made Corned Beef and Cabbage for the first time and it was super easy and yummy. I found a crock pot recipe on Pinterest (where else?) and just stuck to it. Well I did make one change and that was I used baby carrots instead of large carrots. Click HERE for the link to the recipe.

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And for dessert I made pudding cups. I made way too much and could never finish it but it was yummy. Here's how to make them. You'll need a box of instant vanilla pudding, a box of instant chocolate pudding, green food coloring, mint extract, Cool Whip, a Hershey's chocolate bar, and crushed Oreos (I used Mint flavored to stick with my mint theme).

Make the two puddings according to the box directions. Dye the vanilla pudding green and add the mint extract, as much or as little as you want. Split each pudding in half, so you'll have two bowls of vanilla and two bowls of chocolate. Now split the Cool Whip into thirds. Place one third in one of the chocolate bowls and mix, and one third in one of the vanilla bowls and mix. Save the last of the Cool Whip for assembly. So now you should have a dark chocolate bowl, a light chocolate bowl, a dark green bowl, and a light green bowl. Now you are ready to assemble. (In the picture below, the other two bowls are the crushed Oreos and the Cool Whip.)

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It's better to use a clear cup so you can see how pretty it looks but really any cup will work. So first, place some of the crushed Oreo at the bottom. Then I layered the pudding like this: dark chocolate, dark green, light chocolate, light green. I then sprinkled some more crushed Oreos on top, placed a dollop of Cool Whip on that and then shaved some of the Hershey's chocolate bar on the very top. Voila!

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As mentioned, there was way too much so I would use the small boxes of pudding mix, not the large.

So now for the crafts. I made a rag wreath. I won't go into the process making because my sister already blogged about how to make one and I just followed her instructions. See HERE. The only thing I did differently was use an actual foam wreath instead of a wire hanger. The only problem was I bought some material that were in scrap sizes so they were only 9 inches long. I was still able to tie them around the wreath but they were short. I did buy some regular sized material too that was 12 inches long so those worked fine. But I actually like how the wreathed turned out with the different sizes. I had 9 different patterns and I think I used 11 strips of each.

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Last, is my LUCKY sign. It's like my Valentine's Day sign I made HERE. Just scroll to the bottom of that post.  So, I followed all the same steps. Paint your 12" x 12" canvas with black stripes.

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Then cut out a shamrock shape onto green felt. I printed a shape off the computer and then traced it onto the felt. Hot glue gun the felt to the canvas.

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Then start gluing the buttons onto the felt. I did it section by section but made sure that I ended on an edge so there wouldn't be any empty spaces in the middle.

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Tada!

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But see those big empty spaces that aren't quite big enough for another button. Well I just glued buttons on top of those empty spaces which gives it a 3-D effect. At the bottom of the canvas, I used my stickers to spell out LUCKY and you're done! I'm still trying to decide if I want to add a stem but for now, it's finished.

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