We celebrated St. Patrick’s Day for the first time and it was so much fun!

We all wore green and the kids got special chocolate gold coins as a treat!

We read St. Patrick’s Day books, and did our usual daily routine of school and such. Once Mordecai and Dakota were napping in the afternoon, Sadie and I got to work on decorating our kitchen table and did some baking!

We made Irish soda bread and it was so much fun! It was the perfect bread recipe to make with a child because it doesn’t have any yeast or need to be kneaded. So, no waiting time and less mess 😉

We used a recipe from my Taste of Home cookbook. It was simple and we had all the ingredients on hand (aside from buttermilk; we made it ourselves with whole milk + 1 tablespoon white vinegar!). Here’s the Irish soda bread recipe!

Irish Soda Bread

Ingredients:
3 cups all purpose flour
2/3 cup sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup raisins
2 eggs, beaten
1-1/2 cups buttermilk
1 tablespoon canola oil

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350. In a large bowl, mix the first five ingredients. Stir in the raisins. Set aside 1 tablespoon beaten egg. In a bowl, combine the buttermilk, oil and remaining eggs; stir into the flour mixture just until moistened (dough will be sticky). Transfer to a greased 9-inch round baking pan; brush top with reserved egg.
2. Bake 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack to cool. Cut into wedges and enjoy!

We were so excited and proud of our bread! The best part? It tasted great! I cooked it about 40 minutes and cut it and we tried some and realized it was a little doughy inside so I popped it back in the oven… and then our oven went wonky and gave me a heat error and went to like 500 degrees and burned it on top 🫠

For dinner, I cooked lamb steaks! They were great… but I was too afraid to burn them in the oven so I cooked them in a pan!

And dessert was…. shamrock shakes!! ☘️

We had some from McDonald’s recently and wanted to see if a homemade version would taste better. So we used vanilla ice cream, whole milk, peppermint extract, whipped cream, and clover sprinkles to make them. The verdict? Homemade is better!

Mordecai was especially a big fan! We were cracking up at his milkshake mustache after he polished off his shamrock shake.

To cap it all off, we filmed a vlog of our baking and celebrating. It was such a great day and I’m so glad we decided to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day this year 😊

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Do you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day?