Need a fun and easy game for St. Patrick’s Day?

“Don’t Eat Lucky” can be played in school groups or as a family!

You will need:

1 Bag of Candy and the Printed Game Cards

Instructions to play the game are included in the packet.

 Don’t Eat Lucky Game Packet

Have FUN and ENJOY spending TIME with YOUR FAMILY!

Since today is an organizing tip.  I wanted to share one of my favorites with you.  I LOVE our Holiday Organizer.  Not only does it come with fantastic pages to help you organize your holidays better, there is a place for everything you have related to your holidays.  Not including your decorations of course.  But there is a place to help you organize your decorations as well in our Holiday Organizer.  I am talking about all those Bingo games, Tom the Turkeys, Halloween Scavenger Hunts, Valentine’s Love Notes, St. Patrick’s day Neighborhood Lucky Leprechaun game, and the list goes on with our products.  Then if you have additional stuff besides that, you have a lot to keep track of.  I found a way to utilize our Holiday Organizer even better by keeping everything together.  Doesn’t that sound familiar?  After dividing my organizer into two binders, January through June and July through December, I have taken ordinary photo holders, page protectors and page pockets and turned them into my storage of holiday ideas and games.  I then placed each of my holiday games and ideas in front of the cooresponding month folder for that particular holiday.  It’s the perfect way to keep everything organized and keep it handy in one place.  I love being able to go to that month and see all my fun games and ideas without having to search endlessly for where I put them last.  Even they can get lost or even forgotten in a tote full of decorations.  To give you a better idea, I took some pictures of how I put mine together.  However, make it work for you and your personality.  Feel free to comment about what has worked for you or you are always welcome to ask questions in the comment section and we will answer them for you.

This is my mom’s bread recipe (Becky Ovard – YOU ROCK!)  It’s the so easy and it tastes soooo good!   With a generous amount of green food coloring, added to the water you will get LUCKY BREAD!  You can make green french toast for breakfast, a green sandwich for lunch, and with some of the dough, you can make green rolls for dinner!  It’s the one time it’s ok to eat green bread.  Have a great St. Patrick’s Day!

Note:  Easter is coming soon and green isn’t the only color you can use.  Try some of the other colors.  You can actually make egg-shaped rolls with all the fun colors.  Pink and Blue breads are fun for new babies, blue or red bread for the 4th of July, orange bread for Halloween and the list goes on.

St. Patrick’s Day is not just about the green food.  Leprechauns are famous for making their presence known on the lucky day.  Add a little more holiday spirit this coming Tuesday by turning some sneaky leprechauns loose in your own home.

On the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, once your kid’s are tucked in their beds with visions of green men dancing in their heads, then it’s time for those silly leprechauns to work. Tip over a kitchen chair or two, toss a few couch cushions on the floor, turn pictures hanging on the wall upside down, jumble up toys in your kids room and whatever else you can think of to showcase the leprechauns behavior.    Don’t forget to add a few drops of green food coloring to turn your toilet water green on the night before St. Patrick’s Day. When your kids wake in the morning, they will be excited to discover that the leprechauns have turned the water green in celebration of the holiday.   (It won’t stain the toilet bowl.)  Don’t forget to leave a trail of chocolate coins for your child to discover wherever the leprechauns have caused a stir.

Place a few coloring tablets in the screen of the kitchen faucet. The Fizzy Tints tablets are small coloring tablets used to color the water at bath time. Don’t use Easter egg dye tablets because they stain!  Go to the following website for complete details:

http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/content/

experiment/leprechauns-st-patricks.

It also has great ideas for further tricks and even instructions on how to make a trap for those pesky green men.

Create footprints out of green construction paper, to leave all over your house where Lucky the Leprechaun has been spreading his mischief.  You can use gold coins, chocolate coins, gold glitter or sparkle, or even green shamrocks for laying trails as to where Lucky has struck next.  HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY!!!!

St. Patrick’s Day has always been one of my favorite holidays when it comes to food.  Sure, Thanksgiving is great with the turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, and the pies, and Christmas is wonderful with all the chocolate, sweets, and ham, but you can’t beat having a whole day where you eat nothing but GREEN FOOD!  Over the years I have found a lot of ways to make even the toughest colored foods turn green.  It’s always enjoyable to see my children’s reaction when I present the next St. Patrick’s Day Menu.  They have come to love the day as much as me, I think.  So grab your paper and pencil, add green food coloring to your shopping list, and enjoy a few tips to make your day a little more exciting and fun.

Breakfast:     Cereal is always a child’s favorite choice in the morning.  Lucky Charms is good to have but green Lucky Charms is better.  Add a few drops of green to the milk, the cereal will absorb the color and turn the whole cereal green.  This will work with any kind you choose, except for chocolate flavored.  Pancakes are great to color, as well as eggs, french toast, cream cheese, milk, orange juice, yogurt, oatmeal, any kind of fruit, butter, bacon (although it doesn’t look so great), and even syrup.  (Watch our blog for the recipe to make your own lime green syrup.)  The fruit is a little trickier to do.  For this, use a small clean, sterile, spray bottle with a little water and lots of green food drops.  Have the fruit on wax paper and spray the water mixture on the fruit.  This is best to do ahead of time so they don’t see it.

Lunch:     A great idea to do a day ahead of time or even that morning is to make homemade bread.  By adding a few drops of green to your mix before you add the flour, it will turn your whole loaf green.  Imagine the surprise of your family as you cut into the loaf and inside is a neon green bread instead!  For quite a number of years I never realized that you could turn peanut butter green.  But with enough green food coloring it turns a nice army color.  (See the picture below.)  Making a little macaroni and cheese for lunch?  Add some color to the water you cook the macaroni in for a total transformation.  If you want just a hint, add the food coloring to the milk before you add it to the mixture.  Not as dramatic, but still a favorite.  Ramen noodles work the same way as well as all noodles you cook.

Dinner:     This is my personal favorite because my husband gets to participate is the wonderful fun filled day.  I like to make something that really turns everyone’s heads.  Green ham is always a gross but yummy meat to have.  Have some green mashed potatoes, green corn, homemade green rolls or bread, with some lime green drink and your dinner is complete.  You can boil chicken to shred and add green to the water so the chicken absorbs the color.  Use this in fajitas, casseroles, soups, or top off a green salad with your chicken.  Anything that uses a liquid to cook it can be altered with food coloring.  A very sneaky, but really great idea is to make Chicken Cordon Green (bleu).  You can add a little excitement to your meal by adding green drops directly to the side of the chicken that you can’t see, when the chicken is rolled up.  This gives the chicken the appearance of having been left it’s natural color, until they cut into it, of course!  Let your imagination do the walking and you can come up with some one of a kind meals to make this a day to remember.

Watch for a post this weekend to read about some great ideas for those sneaky leprechauns that like to pull tricks on your children.

Surprise your neighbors or friends with a visit from Lucky the Leprechaun this St. Patrick’s Day. Attach our fun poem to their front door, sprinkle the ground with “gold dust”, and leave a few gold coins or other fun treats on their doorstep. (Make sure you don’t get caught!)  They will feel “lucky” to have you as a neighbor and friend!  Our kit includes enough “luck” for 3 neighbors, friends, or family members.   Don’t forget that it’s on sale this month!  How LUCKY are you?

I love every holiday!  In fact, I think I’ve made up a few of my own, just to keep things exciting!  For St. Patrick’s Day one year, I put together a wall featuring “My Greatest Treasures”, which of course is my family.  I filled a little sack with a few items to bring them LUCK.  It was filled with green boxers (I have all boys!), a lucky shamrock, one gold dollar, a green frosted sugar cookie, and a “Lucky to have YOU” note.  Written on the note, I included just a few of the reasons why I feel lucky to have each of my children and my husband.  They were so excited to wake up and find their lucky surprise.  I had my own surprise, when they let me know that their favorite part was the notes I had written them!

If you would like to have a copy of your own note to your children and spouse, click on the link below.

Lucky To Have You

Lucky Words

Be sure and check back for some fun St. Patrick’s Day Menu Items, and don’t forget to pick up some green food coloring and lime jell-o the next time you go shopping!