Happy St. Patt(dd)y's Day!

So as some of you may not know, I am married to an Irishman.  And when I say Irishman, I don't just mean his parents are Irish, although they are, and I don't just mean he has some Irish in him, although he does, I mean he truly hails from Ireland.  He has the passport, the accent, and the wit to show for it!

Peter has brought many things to our marriage - humor, laughter and joy, a love for all things Irish and a strong desire for me to love them too, a new vocabulary and new prononciations for words I had been saying for years, and a lovely Irish flag, to name a few.  Please note, the flag hung on the wall of our apartment for nearly TWO years people!  You try making a giant flag look appealing in an apartment - let me tell you, it's hard, but the Irish pride runs deep, and I tried to get him to pull that thing down, but the man wouldn't budge.  And if I'm honest, I kind of miss it now.

It looked a little something like this.

Anyhow, every year, Peter and I have this discussion about how Americans (yes, I fall into this category too!) call March 17th St. Patty's Day.  Oh, it drives the man wild!  And if you are American, you are thinking, well what's wrong with that?  What else would you call it?

Well where my husband comes from March 17th is St. Paddy's Day.  Please note the difference because it's a big one in this house - the saints shortened name is with two D's, not two T's, thus its pronounced differently too.  Remember this if you cross paths with an Irish(wo)man.  You don't want to appear ignorant.  However, in honor of my Americanness and Peter's Irishness, I have taken to combining the two names when I write it, (husband hates this - makes him cringe)  hence the blog post title.

Over the last few years, we have taken to celebrating the day, whether it's with a party at ours that consists of Irish stew, Irish desserts, Irish trivia, and other non-Irish things (here and here), or breakfast at ours consisting of a true (as true as we can get) Irish fry - that's what we did last year.

As this year has brought many changes, it appears our St. Paddy's day celebrations have also changed a bit.  And today, on the day St. Patrick brought Christianity to Ireland, we will be celebrating the day God brought the littlest Irishman (LB aka Jack) into our lives with a meet and greet at my parent's house.  See my mom had a shower all planned to celebrate him while he was still in the womb, and then he decided to exit that womb a week before the shower was to happen.  Thus, the celebration has turned into a meet and greet!

Check out the cute little party favors my sister and I put together!  Thank you Pinterest for the inspiration.  We couldn't have done it without you!

And if you, unlike us, are having a party tonight and are wondering how to decorate, check out some free printable options I found here, here, here, here, and here.

And aren't these party favor ideas cute??  Obviously we either deemed them too time consuming or too difficult and they didn't make the cut, but links are below the pictures if you are interested in the how tos.

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And on this day, take a moment to tell your loved ones that they are the pot of gold at the end of your rainbow! When else can you say such a thing without sounding slightly silly??

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!! 

xoxo, 

The Seattle Drennan's

Irish Fry.

St. Patrick's Day is definitely a day that is celebrated in this Irish home!  Normally we have a party of some sort where we eat Irish treats and other green desserts, while drinking Irish beer.  This year we decided to change things up a bit, and we invited people over for breakfast!  This isn't just any breakfast, but a Full Irish breakfast, also known as an Irish Fry.

So what exactly does an Irish Fry consist of you may ask?

• bacon
• sausages
• black and white pudding 
• fried egg
• tomatoes
• mushrooms
• potato bread
• baked beans

Most of these ingredients you can find at your typical grocery store.  However, we made a special trip to Galway Traders, an Irish shop in Ballard, to buy a few key ingredients - bacon, sausage, and pudding.  You may be thinking ...bacon?? You can buy that at the shop...and I am here to tell you that according to my husband it's different.  It's more like Canadian bacon rather than thin strips of bacon, and yes, the sausages are different too.

This my friends is an Irish Fry (minus a few items).  And this is what we made for breakfast on St. Patrick's Day.  I am NOT a huge fan of mushrooms - so we didn't even buy those, and I am not a huge fan of black pudding - so you will not see that on my plate.

We made potato bread and soda bread from scratch - first time for everything!  I think we just got the recipes on allrecipes.com to be honest.  Nothing too fancy, but they were both good if I do say so myself.

Happy belated St. Patrick's day everyone and if you want a hearty breakfast, consider cooking up an Irish Fry!

xoxo, 

Malia

It's the Little Things.

It truly is the little things that make life lovely isn't it?  I have been absent from the blogging world the past few weeks, but that simply means I have been extremely present in every other aspect of my life.  I have spent ALOT of time in the kitchen, making and baking all sorts of things.  The past few weeks, we have hosted all sorts of family and friends for dinner, breakfast, and dinner again.  But even amidst our time in the kitchen, we somehow found time to do some projects outside!

So my time in the kitchen first began with baked stuffed peppers!  They were delicious and so very easy to make!  We stuffed them with turkey meat, rice, tomato soup and some spices.  You could probably add anything to them!

The second loveliest thing is our yard!  I mean look at that grass - that's Peter's handiwork!  And please note our lovely bird feeder on the right, christmas gift courtesy of my in-laws.  The birds LOVE it!  And look at that patio - goodbye hottub, hello patio and late night fires.  And note the retaining wall with the beautiful flowers - also Peter's doing.  And we planted potatoes - hope they grow!

Shepherd's Pie...yum yum.  So here we have turkey meat, carrots, corn, green beans, onions, and loads of spices.  Guess what the white topping was...looks like potatoes right?  Well it's not!  We actually cooked cauliflower and mashed it like you would potatoes and spread them on top.  And it was delicious!  I was shocked and so pleasantly surprised.

And the lovely things continue...I baked a TON of Shamrock cookies for an event we had this past Sunday.  It took forever to make them and frost them and bag them, but it was so worth it!  I had some girls over for dinner on Friday and put an Irish blessing and a cookie on each plate.

And we had people over for breakfast on Saturday morning to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, and it wouldn't be St. Patrick's Day without a true Irish fry (includes fried egg, potato bread, soda bread, baked beans, black pudding, sausage, bacon, tomatoes, and sometimes mushrooms but we left those out).  Peter made potato bread and I made the soda bread and we had black tea and Peter hung the flag from the house!

Peter creating the potato bread - it was super easy!  Or so it seemed.  

What would St. Patrick's Day be without an Irish flag??  Peter created a gate to hide our bins and our huge stack of wood - and it looks so much better!

So there you have it...our lovely little things from the past few weeks.

xoxo,

Malia

Linking up with Finding Beauty!

Cookies.

So this past week, in honor of St. Patricks Day, I perused countless sugar cookie recipes in order to find the perfect one to suit my shamrock cookie cutters. I must say I found the recipe, but for some strange reason the recipe doesn't ask you to chill the dough, which I did after discovering it was FAR too difficult to roll the dough. So after many mess ups, many eaten cookies, and many laughs we had some finished products! Thank goodness Bekah was around to help me for the hard part (decorating), otherwise the task would have taken up far to much of my time and it would have been pretty boring.