Jill's St. Patrick's Day crafts recap

In case you missed these posts last year, I wanted to provide you with some pictures and links to things I made last year.  I have a crocheted shamrock hair clip tutorial to show you in a couple of days too.

I created two different shamrock patterns, one is a 4 leaf clover and the other is a 3 leaf clover.  You can chain these together for a beautiful garland.

Shamrock Crochet Patterns

I also made a cute crocheted Leprechaun hat that can be hung as decoration.  I've provided the updated links so you can get the pattern for yourself.

Leprechaun Hat Decoration

Check back later this week to see the Crocheted Leprechaun Hair Clip Tutorial.

Update from Jill

Hello again to all our wonderful followers!  I appreciate you following our blog so very much!

You might be wondering why I have been so absent from the blog lately.  Well, I want to give you an update on myself and my family.

The last couple of months have been both overwhelming and exciting.  For those of you who don't know, my husband is an Associate Minister here at a church just outside Atlanta.  Before Christmas we were contacted to consider a new ministry position in Dayton, Ohio.  We began to pray for God's direction and leading.

After the New Year, we were contacted again to see if we would be interested in considering the new Associate Ministry position.  Dayton is only an hour away from a majority of our family.  This would be the closest we have ever been to family as we are currently 8 hours away.  We were also very excited about the potential of this new job as my husband would be working directly with the Senior Minister.  The Senior Minister was our Children's Minister growing up and my husband interned under him after college.  Our families have remained close throughout the years.

In February, we traveled up to the Dayton area, looked around the community and formally interviewed for the position.  We were offered the job and are now preparing to move.

We will miss Georgia, our friends and church family here, so very much.  It truly is a bittersweet move for us.  Thankfully, we have many ways these days to stay connected and we can visit when we need some warmer weather!

As you can imagine, caring for three kids, keeping up the duties of a SAHM, organizing, packing, and figuring out what to do with our house has left little time left for both crafting and blogging.  We will be moving at the end of the school year so I have some time to get it all done, but it just seems like an unsurmountable task.

There are many big decisions for us to make before we move and trips back and forth until then.  Thankfully, I have some great projects to share with you over the next couple of months.  Please be patient with me as I navigate this big transition.  I may not be able to reply as quickly as I like to comments or emails, but I promise I will get to them.  I hope to be settled and back to some semblance of myself by the end of summer.  Until then, I will still be around and sharing a couple crafts a week.

Thank you all so much for your support of all we do and Our Seven Dwarfs!

The Leprechaun Came!

  St. Patrick's Day 2011

John and the girls made a Leprechaun trap.  They know he loves green so they added some green grass and kiwi served in a green bowl.

While they were preparing the trap, the Leprechaun sent me shopping.  I got a green movie, 2 packs of M&Ms, green Andes, and mint 3 Musketeers.

The Leprechaun came and skattered Shamrocks all over the carpet.

He made a mess with the Easter grass.  He loved the kiwi. After he ate that, he filled the bowl with Andes candies and 3 Musketeer bars.  He neatly arranged everything under the trap.

Here's a close up.

He rode Mariella's plasma car and left a Shamrock sticker as proof.

This is what the trap looks like now. The girls will think they've captured the Leprechaun.

Mariella seeing the mess the Leprechaun made.  Notice, she's chomping on some chocolate already.

Sisters!

Happy girls!

GraciAnn's funny face!

Mariella

This is the beginnings of our green jello surprise.

The recipe can be found here: http://www.oursevendwarfs.com/search/label/St.%20Patrick%27s%20Day

The next layer of the jello surprise.

The finished Jello Surprise minus pecans.  I left those out.  The girls LOVED it and so did my husband!

John's St. Patty's Day dinner!

*I didn't take a picture of this, but, when the Leprechaun was here, he went potty.  Because he's such a little guy, he couldn't reach to flush.  It's amazing, but I guess all the green things he eats causes his urine to be green.  Our potty was full of green! (Thanks to the food coloring!)

I hope you had a wonderful St. Patrick's Day too!

The Leprechaun Visits: Our St. Patrick's Day Traditions

The Leprechaun Visits:
Since my oldest daughter was one, we've had an annual visit from the Leprechaun.  He's a funny guy.  He comes to our house, leaves Shamrock stickers all over, and even uses our potty and forgets to flush!  Did you know a Leprechaun pees green? (Thanks to some green food coloring!) The Leprechaun also leaves green treats, gold coins, and a present (or a couple of small gifts) wrapped in green.  It's great fun to have the Leprechaun visit.

St. Patrick's Day Decorations:
This is the first year I've decorated our house for St. Patrick's Day.  Being a part of blogland inspires me to decorate for all holidays.  Having two little kids, that seem to appreciate the decorations keeps me going too.  Well, I think most of the decorations are done.

My front door wreath.

A mantle sign.

Another mantle decoration.

The mantle tree branch.

Our welcome mat. 

Another mantle decoration.

St. Patrick's Day Photoboard

A Leprechaun pot by the front door.

St. Patrick's Day Clothing:

We definitely wear green on St. Patrick's Day.  Who wants to be pinched?

This is St. Patrick's Day 2009.  They are so itty bitty!

These are this year's tshirts.



I still have plans to make Shamrock clippies for the girls.  Stay tuned for those.

St. Patrick's Day Food:
We always have the traditional corned beef for St. Patrick's Day.  I go light on the potatoes (we're not huge fans) and heavy on the carrots (we love carrots). We also add cabbage.  Believe it or not, my girls usually eat it. Great drink options are green limeade, adding green food coloring to lemonade, sprite, or water. Dessert options can include mint chocolate chip ice cream, lime sherbert, pistachio pudding, cake made green with food coloring, rainbow cakes http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/catch-a-rainbow-cake-687429/ or cupcakes http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/taste-a-rainbow-cupcakes-842128/.  I think we'll try my mom's recipe for green jello this year.

Here it is.  It's delicious!

JELLO SURPRISE

2 small boxes lime jello

1 #2 can crushed pineapple drained (save juice)

Make jello with the pineapple.  Chill.  When firm:

Prepare 2 envelopes of Dream Whip as directed.  Add 8 ozs cream cheese and spread over thickened jello. 

Pineapple Sauce

pineapple juice, add water to make one cup liquid

1 Tablespoon lemon juice

3/4 cup sugar

2 Tablespoon flour

2 eggs beaten

Mix dry ingredients and then slowly add liquid and eggs.   Cook over low heat until thickened.  Cool.  Spread over cream cheese and sprinkle with pecan pieces. 

St. Patrick's Treats:
If you enjoy giving little gifts on St. Patrick's Day, here's an adorable, inexpensive idea. http://thecraftingchicks.com/2011/02/little-gifts-for-st-patricks-day-free-downloads.html

If you have any great traditions you want to share with us, please do!  We're always open to new ideas.

Shamrock Clippies-A Tutorial

Here's another last year repost!

Happy St. Patrick's Day.  I hope you're enjoying the green around you.  I finally made the hair clips to go with my daughters' St. Patrick's Day shirts.  They were relatively easy to make. Here's a picture of one of the six clips I made.

This one has pink dots on the green ribbon.  I kind of like it.

All you need to make these clips are: a lighter, scissors, grosgrain ribbon, alligator clips, and a glue gun.

First, I cut 6 pieces of ribbon into approx. 2.5" lengths.

Using a lighter, I "melted" each edge of the ribbon, to keep it from fraying. This just takes a second and you can see the ribbon edge get a little shiny, letting you know it's done.

I hot glued 2 pieces of ribbon together making 3 "Ls".

I took the ribbon that was the over piece, and made put it under the other piece of ribbon.

I hot glued it in place.  Now it looks like a lowercase b or a foot.

I took the other piece of ribbon and wove it under, then over the first piece of ribbon.  I hot glued it on top.  It makes a heart shape. Each clippie needs three hearts.  So, repeat.  Repeat.

I then cut a piece of ribbon about 4.5 inches long. I "heated" the edges of the ribbon with the lighter.

I hot glued the ribbon to the back of the clip starting at the top.

I then hot glued the ribbon to the "mouth" of the clip.

I continued to hot glue the ribbon to the top of the clip.

I hot glued the rest of the ribbon to the inside of the clip. Only a back section is left exposed.

So, now I have three hearts, a covered clip, and a little pink bow.  It's almost ready for final assembly.

With the "mouth" of the clip down, I hot glued the first heart to the top part of the clip.

I then hot glued the other two hearts to either side.

Then I attached the bow in the middle.  I think this turned out super cute.  Now I know why my daughter calls shamrocks, "hearts". They do look like they have hearts in them!