Happy St. Patrick's Day

I am a little Irish through my paternal grandmother.  It is always fun to be Irish on St. Patrick's Day.  In grade school I always made sure to wear green so I wouldn't get pinched.  Not that many people had the guts to pinch me.  There weren't many kids bigger than I.  Comes in handy on days like St. Patrick's.  Imagine my surprise when I learned that St. Patrick had nothing to do with shamrocks and leprechauns!  


In all truth the man known as St. Patrick was born in Britain to wealthy parents near the end of the fourth century.  At the age of 16 he was taken captive by Irish raiders.  For 6 years he was held in captivity working as a shepherd at which time he became a Christian.  He escaped back to Britain only to feel God's call to return to Ireland as a missionary.  Patrick's great success in converting Ireland from a pagan to Christian land and the legends that developed around his work have helped to ensure we celebrate him on the day of his death, March 17th.  


I have visited Ireland and have first hand insight into why it is associated with the color green. It is all green.  Lots of green.  Green as far as you can see, until it turns to blue on the horizon.  That suits me just fine.  My favorite color is green.  I like all shades of green, although lime is a particular fancy of mine.  So decorations for St. Patrick day are right in my wheelhouse.  Here is what my second littlest helper and I put together last week.  I got the idea here icandyhandmade.blogspot.com, but I changed it a bit.  I didn't really like the sentiment of "Luck", but it seemed green so I went with it and added "blessing" to salve my ruffled feelings.  Also, I needed a longer board to hold all my blessings!

We went to the shop and found some scrap wood.
We painted the wood green-blue let it dry then painted  it green.
After the second coat was dry we sanded the boards to make them look
worn a bit and to show the two colors.  

I found a font I liked and printed my phrase  from the computer.  Next I used a carbon sheet from Breadwinner's  old chemistry lab book and traced it onto the board and painted the words white.
 To seal the whole bit I modge podged it with matte finish.
I collected all the green ribbons we had and decorated the little boards.
I then hot glued mini clothes pins to them as well and stapled ribbon loops to the back of the little boards and screwed hooks on the big board from which to hang them.  

Lucky me, more green decorations for my home.  You can bet your soda bread this isn't coming down the 18th of March!