A Shamrockin' St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

This is a holiday that, I think, is less frequently celebrated when you are a parent to young children. St. Patrick's Day pre-kids consisted of lots and lots of drinking. Now, the only green beverage we've been gulping in this house is milk! (And it was dyed that way, not rotten or anything). But, I love any excuse to celebrate and do fun things with my kids; and when our van started to make some worrying noises I knew I was going to be spending the day inside with the kids while Mr. Bee took it to his cousin's.

Our St. Patrick's festivities started last night after the kids went to sleep. After the kids were soundly asleep I made a leprechaun made and delivered mini green cupcakes! That same leprechaun also hid some St. Patrick's Day gold around our house with a special pot of gold to be found at the very end. Imagine The Toddler Bees' surprise when they woke up this morning!





After the excitement of a treasure hunt we were able to sit down to a delicious pancake breakfast. But not just any pancakes! We had shamrock shaped pancakes! I attempted a leprechaun hat, too, but it didn't quite turn out. And the batter was dyed green but it was hard to tell when they are cooked. But, hey, a pancake is a pancake and I'm not one to turn down buttery-syrupy-cakey goodness.




Once breakfast was over I pulled out a game of St. Patrick's Lucky Bingo. Bingo is very popular with Toddler Bee and he managed to beat me 5 times (I only won twice!). We used the Leprechaun gold from our hunt as markers for our game so we could play multiple times.

Green coins were found at our dollar store. 

Next came snack time:

Carrot stick beard, raisin eyes, cucumber and celery hat, and an apple slice smile

Shamrocks out of cucumber and a leprechaun man! So my leprechaun is a little beady-eyed and broad-mouthed...we can't all be super models.

We even made some special green dessert for after dinner! It's Oreo cookie crumbs on the bottom, vanilla pudding dyed green, topped with whipped cream, and a mini-cupcake. (Mr. Bee is not a fan of whipped cream, the crazy man.)

Even our lunch today was green! I added green food colouring to a pot of water and made pasta. At first I tried using my neon green dye but that didn't seem to be making any colour changes. So, I went with a darker green (about three/four drops) and it turned out perfectly! We had skewers of pickles and cucumbers, too, and a cold glass of green milk.

We played a few more rounds of Lucky Bingo before Mr. Bee was able to make it home (with a repaired vehicle, I might add). I was even a nice wife and made our roast dinner since I knew Mr. Bee wouldn't be home in time to do it.

It was a great St. Patrick's Day and even though The Toddler Bees didn't really know what was going on it was a fun way to break up the monotony of winter and a great excuse to have fun with the kids!

Fun Cupcakes

Baking is one of my favourite things to do. And I like to find interesting cake and cupcake recipes. These are two of my favourites:

Hamburger Cupcakes

These cupcakes are cute and tasty and perfect for a summer BBQ!

They're easy to make, too! All you need are:
-yellow cupcakes (boxed or your own recipe)
-a chocolate sheet cake
- red icing, orange icing and green icing

1. Make your cupcakes (not in liners) and cut them in half. These will be your buns.
2. Use a small glass or cookie cutter to cut small circles out of your sheet cake. These are your beef patties!
3. Make or buy frosting and separate into three bowls. Dye one red, one yellow, and one orange. The red is ketchup, the orange is cheese, and the green is lettuce (keep a small bit of white icing, too)
4. Put a small dab of icing on the middle of the bottom bun and place the patty on top of that. Then, using piping bags (or ziploc bags with the tip snipped off) pipe on your icing into blobs of ketchups, melted cheese and strips of lettuce.
5. Top with another bun and there you have it! You can secure them with a toothpick for travelling.

Optional: Wet the top bun with a bit of water and then press on some sesame seeds.

Rainbow Cupcakes


You need:

White cupcakes
Vanilla frosting
Food colouring (as many colours as you want)

Instructions:

1. Make your cupcake batter and separate into as many bowls as you have colours.
2. Add 3-5 drops of food colouring to each of your bowls of batter. Mix well.
3. Line your cupcake tray and then, with a spoon, scoop in a bit of one colour of batter. Scoop a blob of the next colour on top; then the next colour and the next. You can do larger amounts and only have four layers of colours; or multiple smaller layers.
4. Bake accordingly and, when cooled, frost with your white icing!

These look very unassuming from the outside but when cut into they look awesome!