St. Patrick’s Day Table

Kathleen at Kathleen Cuisine is hosting her 8th annual St. Patrick’s Day Blog Crawl today starting this evening and I didn’t want to miss it so I found some green to share.

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It was hard to get the kitchen colors to show right in these photos. We have no yellow on the cabinets. The kitchen and eating area are three shades of green.

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Pewter seemed like a good choice to add to the table so my chargers, flatware, and tankards are pewter. Maybe those tankards will hold some Guinness tonight. The flowers at the center of the table were a birthday gift for me from the Mennonite Girls Can Cook delivered to my birthday brunch by Anneliese. My milestone medicare birthday was on Monday of this week. I’ll share about my birthday on Friday.

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My house smells delicious right now as my corned beef and cabbage meal has been cooking in the slow cooker all day today. Since Dear and I are headed for a little getaway on St. Patrick’s day tomorrow I decided to make our Irish meal tonight. It will be fun for the four of us to sit at the table all decked out for Kathleen’s St. Patty’s Day Blog Crawl.

Here’s a link to a recipe for these light green cookies that would be fun to serve on St. Patrick’s day that I posted this week on the Mennonite Girls Can Cook Blog.

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Pistachio-Coconut Cookies.

I’ll leave you with this old Celtic blessing and a Celtic Cross from Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.

An Old Celtic Blessing

May the blessing of light be on you –
light without and light within.
May the blessed sunlight shine on you
and warm your heart
till it glows like a great peat fire.

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It’s Guinness Time…

…and time for Kathleen’s St. Patrick’s Day Crawl at Cuisine Kathleen! This is the 7th annual crawl!

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It was a March miracle that I actually put together a tablescape and photographed it for the crawl.

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Will you be making Corned Beef and Cabbage or Irish Stew or something else that says “Ireland” for St. Patty’s Day?

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We saw this at the Crown and Trumpet in the town of Broadway in the Cotswolds.

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I hope to get around to see all the St. Patrick’s Day tables joining Kathleen’s crawl!

Birds, Nests, Eggs!

It’s time for Cuisine Kathleen’s Let’s Dish challenge and her theme is Birds~ Nests~ Eggs.

We just had our Women’s Friendship Tea at our church this past Saturday and I happened to have a sweet bird on a nest in a cage as my centerpiece. So timely!

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2014-04-05 2014 NSB Tea2My guests…Susan, Shavonne, Laura, Wilma, Pat, Andra, Judy, Katy, and Katie.

2014-04-05 2014 NSB TeaThere were a total of 36 tables at our Friendship Tea. It was organized so well with hand made food in our church kitchen. Many of the men and boys in our church volunteered to serve the tables and they poured our tea and made sure we had what we needed throughout the program. There were take home gifts for each of our guests and door prizes, too.

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2014 NSB Tea 057The theme this year was Snapshots: Behind every snapshot there is a story. I will have a few more posts showing the rest of the creative tables and the photo booth opportunities before and after the tea in our church lobby. Here’s a panorama photo of several of the tables in our worship center.

2014 NSB Tea 049This was the first year since Dear and I have been attending Northshore Baptist Church that I was able to participate in the Friendship Tea. What a wonderful well run event it is.

2014 NSB Tea 131Katie and my snapshot at one of the photo booth backdrops in the lobby. Stay tuned for many more snapshots from this event.

I’m looking forward to visiting all the posts linked at Kathleen’s Birds~Nests~Eggs challenge.

St. Patrick’s Day Crawl

Cuisine Kathleen is having a sharing of the green party. If you’ve never visited her blog you should because she always has such yummy goodies to share and pretty tables to show. She knows what to put on a plate! For the 6th Annual St. Patrick’s Day Crawl I’m putting some goodies from the past together.  Thank you, Kathleen.

This little Belleek bowl is about the only thing I have that is Irish and worthy of St. Patrick’s Day. I found it at a thrift store for under $5.00 and thought it was a steal!

The Dear Little Shamrock

by Andrew Cherry

There’s a dear little plant that grows in Ireland.
‘Twas Saint Patrick himself sure that set it.
And the sun on his labor with pleasure did smile.
And a tear from his eyes oft-times wet it.
It grows thro’ the bog, thro’ the brake, and the mireland,
And it’s called the dear little Shamrock of Ireland.

That dear little plant still grows in our land,
Fresh and fair as the daughters of Erin,
Whose smiles can bewitch, and whose eyes can command,
In each climate they ever appear in:
For they shine thro’ the bog, thro’ the brake, and the mireland,
Just like their own dear little Shamrock of Ireland.

That dear little plant that springs from our soil,
When its three little leaves are extended,
Denotes from the stalk we together should toil,
And ourselves by ourselves be befriended.
And still thro’ the bog, thro’ the brake, and the mireland,
From one root should branch, like the Shamrock of Ireland.

shamrock ~ In the irish language, this tiny three-leaved -and, with luck, four-leaved – plant is called seamrac or semrach, the diminutive of the word for clover, seamar. Thus shamrock means, literally, “little clover,” which is just what it is.

The Dear Little Shamrock

There’s a dear little plant that grows in our Isle,
Twas Saint Patrick himself sure that set it;
And the sun on his labour with pleasure did smile,
And the dew from his eye often wet it.
It shines thro’ the bog, thro’ the brake, thro’ the mireland,
And he called it the dear little Shamrock of Ireland.

Chorus:

The dear little Samrock, the sweet little shamrock,
the dear little, sweet little Shamrock of Ireland.
That dear Ireland.

That dear little plant still grows in our land,
Fresh and fair as the daughters of Erin,
Whose smiles can bewitch, and whose eyes can command,
In each climate they ever appear in.
For they shine thro’ the bog, thro’ the brake, thro’ the mireland,
Just like their own dear little Shamrock of Ireland.

CHORUS

That dear little plant that springs from our soil,
When its three little leaves are extended,
Denotes from the stalk we togethr should toil,
And ourselves by ourselves be befriended.
And still thro’ the bog, thro’ the brake, thro’ the mireland,
From one root should branch, like the Shamrock of Ireland.

CHORUS

From 2008 at Fado an Irish Pub in downtown Seattle…

An Old Celtic Blessing

May the blessing of light be on you –
light without and light within.
May the blessed sunlight shine on you
and warm your heart
till it glows like a great peat fire.

IMGP7563I love Celtic Crosses. This one is from Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois.

 I will be making Corned Beef and Cabbage this weekend at our son’s place in Eastern Washington. Do you make it this time of year?

The Three Birds Pub…

…or Public House. All secrets will be revealed and all projects will finally be shared from the mysterious sewing and planning for this evening of “Celebrating” good friends and good food.

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We had a wonderful time at a “Thank You” celebration at this old house Pub on Sunday November 10th. We wanted our friend from England (who now lives in Washington) to know how much we appreciated his offering of his parent’s home in Porthtowan to us this past September. He not only offered their home but also gave us some great recommendations for things to do while we were there.  Our guests were very surprised when they arrived to our house Pub on Sunday!

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We decided to name our pub “The Three Birds” because of the 3 birds on our stained glass window.

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The reader board is from a business our son Josh had when he was in high school. Dear spray painted one side of it with chalk board paint that you can buy at craft stores. We used Union Jack duct tape to frame the chalkboard and frame some other signs that we made for the evening. Our daughter in law, Laura, did all the printing on the chalk boards. The printing on the signs were my effort…oye.

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In England a lot of Pubs have Beef and Yorkshire pudding as specials on Sundays so we decided to do the same since our meal was on a Sunday, too.

As you stepped into ye olde pub you were greeted with various scarves from English premier league futbol (soccer) teams.

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We had lots of fun with our signage…

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We carried the bird theme wherever we could. These sweet birds were in a flower basket that Josh and Laura gave me for Mother’s Day symbolizing my 3 little birds that are all grown up now.

2013-11-10 Pub Night2Laura printed the names on the place cards, too. See the bird place card holders?

Pub Night 045This was another Chalk Paint project that Dear painted for me. I bought the white photo frame from Michael’s on clearance for $11.88. I liked the shape of the wood frame. Dear took the glass out of the frame and spray painted it with the Chalk paint. We let it dry and waited a few days before we treated the chalk paint as directed by rubbing chalk all over it and then wiping it off. Now it was ready to go. I stuck on the stickers and Laura printed out the menu.

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These banners were some of my sewing experiments. The front banner is just a short twine tied between our island pen lights with 3 of the 12 napkins I made for the table. There were only 9 of us at the table so I used these 3 to fill in the air space in our kitchen/eating area trying to cozy things up to look more like a pub. I’ll be brave and show more close up detail on my sewing efforts at the end of the post.

Pub Night 025Each place setting had a poppy broach that I made by cutting off individual poppies from a bouquet stem of poppies that we bought at Hobby Lobby. I used wire cutters to do that and then attached stick on pin fasteners on the backs so they could be pinned on easily, or not so easily as it turned out. The reason we decided on the Poppy broaches was to commemorate Remembrance Day/Veteran’s Day since our time together was on Veteran’s Day Weekend and Poppies are worn extensively in England during this time.

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The centerpiece was filled with some items that we would see on pub tables when we were in England and some things I added. I wanted to use as much pewter as I could.

Pub Night 011I used pewter mugs that Dear and I bought in England in the early seventies for our flower arrangements.

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The napkin rings were silver tea pots. All the plates were made in England. I used a combination of three different blue and white transferware.

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These are the rough cut napkins that I made from a yard and a half of British themed fabric. I was able to get 12 napkins from the yardage I bought. I trimmed the runner with some bias tape I found in my MIL’s old sewing box. I also used bias tape for the little triangle cut outs that were left over from my original Pub banner.

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Now to the most important reason for our evening…our guests!

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The lovely ladies with their poppies on. Left to right, Katie, Laura, Gwen, Terri, and Sophie. Terri and Gwen are sister in laws. Terri is married to Gwen’s brother Luke. Luke was too sick to be able to join us. Sophie is one of Terri and Luke’s daughters.

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Our guest of honor Gabriel with his wife Gwen and Josh and Laura. It was fun to share our England experiences with our friends and to thank Gabriel in person for his generosity to us and his great suggestions on what to see and eat in Cornwall.

Last but not least was our dessert.

Sticky Toffee 017Sticky Toffee Pudding. I will be posting the recipe at Mennonite Girls Can Cook on Wednesday, November 13th.

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We said farewell to our guests with our stomachs full and our hearts full. A most wonderful evening. Our kids helped us clean up and we went to sleep content with visions of Prime Rib and Yorkshire pudding dancing in our heads. If you want a tried and true recipe for Prime Rib and Yorkshire Pudding for your Christmas Holidays this year make sure you order one of our Celebrations Cookbooks. If you gift someone with this book you are also gifting children in Kenya who need clean water to live well. All of our author royalties go to this cause.

Sticky Toffee 013For the next couple days I think I’ll sit with my feet up and enjoy this book that I first heard about on Vee’s Blog, A Haven for Vee.  It finally arrived last Saturday. We ordered it before we traveled to England! What is on your schedule this week?

I’m linking up to Cuisine Kathleen’s Let’s Dish. As soon as her direct link is up for this week I’ll add it to my post. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to link up. Looking forward to seeing what’s going on in Dish world!!

A Spring Tablescape that…

…is on the dark side like our Spring has been.

 

 

 

 

 

My next Spring Table will be a bit lighter.

I won these great cloth napkins from Cuisine Kathleen and I’m hoping to post a tablescape soon using them. Thanks again Kathleen for your generous giveaway!

To see more tables all set for your enjoyment please visit Tablescape Thursday with Susan at Between Naps on the Porch.

Photobucket replaced all my photos with blurred out versions and they are holding my photos hostage until I pay them lots of money. I’m slowly going through all my posts and trying to clean them up and replacing some photos. Such a bother.