Saint Patrick's Day Fun

Well, Happy Belated Saint Patty's Day everyone!!
Yes, I know, a day late and a dollar short as per usual! :D It can't be helped.
 But I hope that everyone had a wonderful time drinking green beer and celebrating with marvelous foods and parties.
Saint Patrick's Day was crazy, not because I went out for green beer or anything like that but because we through a Saint Patty's Day party at work for all of our students.  We started prepping at around 1 and then the party started at 4:30 and didn't finish until 7. I also did some prep cooking the night before at home so a lot went into our party planning. I put up streamers and we put up shamrocks and rainbows and of course the games needed setting up.  But it looked great at the end.

This picture is the aftermath picture!  It looked a lot prettier before the kids
somehow pulled down two of my streamers.  I'm still not quite sure how
they reached them, but it must have taken a lot of effort! :)

Let me just tell you, it was exhausting with all of the little children running around!  But it was a lot of fun as well!
We had a blast with face paint! I learned how to paint shamrocks and rainbows with pots of gold on

Making Leprechauns!!

the kids faces.  We played games like pin the pot of gold on the rainbow, musical leprechauns (just like musical chairs lol), giant leprechaun memory and leprechaun bingo plus I organized a craft for them. The children had to make their own leprechauns, girl or boy, by gluing different hair, mouths, beards, and hats onto a blank face, all of which I'd drawn and pre-cut out for them.  So much effort but the kids had a blast and then got to color their creations as well.
I spent the party running around chasing after the kids or making them do crafts or just generally entertaining them but I also contributed to the food table.  For the most part, we had chips, popcorn, candy and various desserts but I handled the "adult" food.  I made a St. Patty's Day Spinach Pie. Honestly, it was my normal recipe (found here). Then right before baking I cut off the excess (pre-made) crust, rolled it out and wrote "Happy Saint Patrick's Day!" on the spinach pie. I even made some shamrocks for decoration.  It was gorgeous and my roommates were oohing and aahing over it when it was done.
At the party it was a hit for its decoration and for the adults but as I suspected not so much with the kids. Kids do not love spinach.  They debated eating it, and we tried to convince them to try small slices but to no avail. One of the students did run up to me and told me how good it was.  Small successes.
I also attempted to make a rainbow out of fruit.  I wanted to use slices of strawberry, orange wedges,

It didn't quite look like a rainbow (I was in such a rush that I put the colors
in the wrong order) but it was delicious and also pretty.

chunks of pineapples, grapes and blueberries to form the arcs but there were no pineapples or blueberries at the super market successfully eliminating two colors.  But I tried anyway.
I used bananas for yellow and skipped the blue and purple. Since I was running around like a crazy person before the party (I was prepping games and putting up streamers and other decorations) I actually didn't have time to slice the fruit but luckily for me some of the teachers were able to take care of it for me.  They are awesome.  Then when I finally had a second I made fresh whipped cream and turned it into a cloud on our rainbow platter. It was quite lovely and also very successful with both adults and kids.  The fruit was fresh and the whipped cream a nice complement.

Just wow!! So many levels of intricate!

But honestly the showstopper at our party was not made by me.  One of the parents made an utterly gorgous looking Over the Rainbow Leprechaun cake.  I almost didn't want to cut into it.  It was green inside with chocolate chips and was quite tasty.  I was so amazed by the skill involved in making something so in depth.  She also made these adorable fudge top hats.  I didn't get to try one but they were very cute and I'm told they were quite delicious.

The adorable top hats!

It was a great party and the kids really enjoyed themselves running back and forth and playing our English games.  The adults had fun socializing and eating our various treats so overall I'd say the party was a success.
We had a lot of fun and were utterly pooped by the end but a couple of us still made the effort to go out for a beer (or in my case cider) and some live Irish music afterwards.