St Patrick's Day Mantle and Faux Covered Books

This is the first year that I decorated for St. Patrick's Day. I gathered up stuff I had around the house and came up with this:

I had one green book and I covered two in green. This is how I did it. 

I cut the paper to just bigger than the books width. The paper that I had didn't cover the whole book (we'll see that later). I used 12"x12" paper. I folded the paper on one edge a little over an inch as below on one of the edges. 

 Use some tape on the inside of each edge. Tape it as it shows in the picture. Sticky side out. 

 Repeat on both sides and slide the book cover into the pocket it made. 

 Fold the paper around the book and tape on the back side. I used painter's tape so it could easily be removed without hurting the book. 

 I creased the edges to make it look like the real cover. 

 I used them to add some height to the the arrangement. 

Do you decorate for St Patty's Day?

Here are a few projects we've done in past years. 

$7 St. Patrick's Day decor (doubly lucky!)

I've posted before about using glass vases to extend the life of your holiday decorations, and so you can use them year-round, just changing what's inside. I finally found some suitable vases at pretty much the only place I was willing to buy them from: the dollar store. I picked up five. Add some plastic Easter eggs from Wal-Mart for $2 and I have decorations for two holidays in a row!

To go with the green theme, I searched around my house for green things to fill the vases. Here are some ideas for "free home decorating."

• Food! I had these limes on hand for a recipe. (They've since been used.) Plastic fruit also works well.
• Pens, markers, crayons and colored pencils. If we want to color something green, this is where we need to go.
• Craft supplies. I had two balls of green yarn and a spool of thread very handy. Fabric and paper could also work well.
• Small toys. A set of blocks had three colors of green, and we added things like a spinning top, k'nex and a tiny Buzz Lightyear.
• Seasonal holiday supplies, like the Easter eggs I'll be filling these with next, or Christmas ornaments.
• Candy. I'd love to see these full of pastel M&Ms! Wonder how many bags that would take . . .
• Plants (and fake plants). If I couldn't find anything else, I knew I had some fake greenery somewhere to stick in here. Everything from flowers to fall leaves would work great.
• Nature. In the fall, things like acorns and maple helicopters could make very cool seasonal decor. Plus, a fun family activity: nature walk! Sand and seashells also make great seasonal or year-round additions.

I was so proud of myself for finally putting together some really cool, really me holiday decor I could live with . . . and then I put the green vases on a green shelf in front of a green wall.

Nice.

What would you put in these vases for your favorite holiday?

Other St Patrick's Day crafts from the Wayward Girls:

$5 Irish Flag Apron

Keeping up with the Irish-inspired crafts this week, we have my:

This craft was inspired by a quick Dollar Store craft I pinned last July:

Source: momtastic.com via Jordan on Pinterest

I knew right away I'd adapt this for St. Patrick's Day. So I picked up kitchen towels in the right colors at the Dollar Store, and 3 yards of sparkly shamrock ribbon for $2 at Michael's.

Unfortunately, the only towels in the right shade of green also had stripes, and I wasn't going to just settle. So I "sewed out" the stripes like this:

But you'll have way more luck than I did, right? Once you've got the towels all set, you have two choices. Horizontal half apron:

Or vertical full apron:

The trickiest part of this wasn't sewing out the stripes—it was matching the sizes of the cloths. I wanted them to be about the same width and height--but all three kitchen cloths were different widths, and all three had different motifs on them. Fortunately, other than the stripes, these decorations were near the edge, so I was able to cut them off when I made them the right width (and hemmed them. I hate hemming).

The orange cloth was the largest, so after I cut off the colorful stripes, I ended up turning it sideways and folding it in half, making it into pockets for my apron. The biggest pieces of the left over cloths I hemmed to make into rags to keep in those pockets.

A couple more apron tips:

• Remember that the top of an apron is narrower than the waist and bottom or it gapes when you tie it behind your neck. I fixed this with some vertical darts from the top to the bust points.
• Sew on the neck strap(s) first and try it on to determine the best place for the waist ties. (It's also a good idea to try it on when pinning the darts in place, too.)
• And be careful when sewing over the hems:

But there was more waywardness for this craft. It came in a . . . well, a stupid way. I keep my sewing stash in two big drawers that are within my kids' reach--two locking drawers. This works great . . . until you lose the key. So also for this craft, I picked a real lock for the first time. Hairpins--not just for hair.

How will you celebrate St. Patrick's Day?

Irish Potato Candy!

I like St. Patrick's Day for two reasons--and neither of them is my Irish heritage:

1.) When I was in college, I spent Thanksgivings with my aunt. Randomly one year when we got up silly early for Black Friday, we began speaking in an Irish accent. These things only make sense before 5 AM.

2.) I've written some novels, featuring a character from Ireland. I'm currently in the process of editing the sequel, which features even more characters from Ireland, so I'm up to my neck in Irish accents and slang and culture. I've spent approximately 1,000,000 hours on it ;) .

That being said, until Ireland began capitalizing on the tourism aspect of St. Patrick's Day in the last decade or two, it was mainly a religious holiday in the "Old Country." St. Patrick's Day is way more about celebrating Irish heritage outside of Ireland.

But since I'm outside Ireland, I'm down with that.

It's okay if they crack

First up, I went for an authentic Irish treat: Irish Potato Candy. Yes, apparently they really do make this in Ireland.

The recipe is relatively simple: boil ONE potato (I did two; bad idea) within an inch of its life. Peel and mash it until very smooth (um, wayward? Yeeeeah... I just mashed it.). Mix in powdered sugar until a dough forms.

Now, right here, this sounds pretty improbable. I mean, we've all squished up boiled potatoes and they seem pretty dry, right? But this amazing thing happens as you add sugar. It's hygroscopic, meaning it draws water to it, so it draws all the water trapped in the potatoes--and you're stirring a sweet potato soup for quite a while.

You can add food coloring now if you feel so inclined. Green's my favorite, so I did :) .

It took about four pounds (yes, pounds) of powdered sugar to get to the dough stage. I kneaded the last bits in by hand.

Divide the dough and cover the dough you've set aside. (It may still dry out; I patted a little water on the surface and that seemed to fix it.) Then roll it out quite thin and spread peanut butter on it. If you missed it before, I'm wayward, so I rolled it out until I got tired of rolling. Spreading the peanut butter was the easy part :) .

Then you roll the candy up. I had a handy kitchen blade that I used to encourage any stubborn bits up. To slice the candy into spirals, I used a serrated blade and a gentle sawing motion. The bottom part of the roll always forms corners as you press down, but you can reshape those with your fingers.

Unfortunately, that first batch of spirals only took about a third of my potato dough, so from there, I went for a faster method: the peanut butter potato sandwich. Spread peanut butter over the whole thing, cut down the middle and flip over. Then cut into squares or rectangles (a kitchen blade or a pizza cutter work well for this!). I like to call these "Potato pillows."

Next time, I'd want to try dividing my sugar potato soup into two batches, one white and one green, and either roll them together, alternating with peanut butter, or layer them several times for the pillows (Oh, and roll them a lot thinner). The peanut butter looks like the orange from the Irish flag, and then you've got a great tricolor theme!

Either way, they were surprisingly tasty! (But a little grainy because I didn't mash them as much as I should've. Live and learn!)

How do you like to celebrate St. Patrick's Day?