Never Too Late to Be Irish

We've been celebrating St. Patrick's Day ever since we moved to Chicago 35 years ago because let's face it, everybody in Chicago seems to be Irish.  In our family, my sister-in-law, Nancy and my son, Jon's Sarah is Irish.  

We were going to have our St. Patrick's Day party last week, but Diane was very ill so we postponed it to this past Saturday.  Diane and Joanne are my childhood to college buddies.

Our favorite corned beef is Cook's.  We were so happy to find it at the Commissary.  We'd originally bought John Morrell because we couldn't find Cook's earlier.  We'll be having another St. Patrick's Day party with my brother and his family.  It'll probably be Easter by the time we can find a time convenient for everybody in their family.

We also bought two kinds of Guinness beer.  Mom can drink all of us under the table and still walk a straight line.

I bought three packages of corned beef which gave us enough left overs to send home with everybody and for our dinner on Sunday.  I guess I didn't need two cabbages.  We had way too much left over.

Joanne and Rich brought over the Chinese chicken salad and boiled peanuts which were scrumptious.

Diane and Dave brought over these amazing cupcakes from Sugarlina Bake Shop in Aiea.

Apparently they had green ones last week, but they had these this week.

They were decadent!

Do you know I actually went out last week to buy that green blouse because I left my other green blouse in Chicago?  I'll be ready for next year in both places now.

And speaking of Chicago, here's the St. Patrick's Day card I made for my granddaughter.


I'm wishing you all a lucky day everyday, everybody!

We're All Irish Today!

We're having a St. Patrick's Day Party today! We used to always celebrate St. Patrick's Day with our favorite Irishman, Murphy in Illinois. We do have our favorite Irish people here in Hawaii (my sister-in-law and nephews who are half Irish) but they're not feeling well right now.

Art's old buddies from Bradley University located him on-line and asked if they could all get together. A whole bunch of them will be coming over tonight for a St. Patrick's Day pot luck party. We will be providing the corned beef and everybody else will be bringing their favorite pot luck goodie. I've got the green laid out and I start simmering the corned beef in a couple of hours. Art hasn't seen these guys since college! This will be a lot of fun. I wonder if I'll find out anything new about him.



BED Update:



OK... we've got the stripping, the cleaning, the polishing and the lacquering done. However... and there's always a however, we found that the side rails were bowed down. There isn't enough support. You guessed it! Back to Home Depot for plumbing supplies for Art's innovative idea of using pipes and pipe flanges to create additional supports for the bed. We also got more wooden slats since it only came with three.



I have to say Art can be awfully ingenious. The supports looked like they belonged to the bed and really fixed the bowing.



We put the mattress and box spring on and found that the bed was pretty high. We'd need bed skirts. But guess what? Finding an 18 inch high bed skirt is pretty darn impossible unless you've already found that pot of gold.

I checked Overstock.com and found a nice bed skirt for a reasonable price and would have jumped up and down with joy except that when I tried to order it, it said (except Alaska and Hawaii). Arrrrghhhhh!

So I had them send it to my daughter in Chicago who will stick it in a flat rate box and mail it to us. Poor Tif, she's had to do this several times now. When I told her today, she chuckled and said, "Aha... another effort to save money, eh?"

I promised to make it up to her.



This is NOT the Finished Bed photo. When I get that bed skirt on, I'll post a really, really FINISHED Bed photo. We're almost there!

Happy St. Patrick's Day, Everybody!