Be Irish For A Day
Plan a St Patricks Day Party

Start planning your St Patricks Day Party now. Everyone wants to be Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, so celebrate this fun and whimsical holiday! While our family is not Irish, you would not know it by the joy we always took in celebrating Ireland's favorite holiday. St. Patrick’s Day is a special day in Ireland. It commemorates the anniversary of the death of their beloved patron saint, St. Patrick on March 17, 461. While it was originally a religious holy day, it has transformed itself over the years into a grand celebration of the Irish and their culture. Cultural icons like the color green, shamrocks, the Blarney Stone and lucky leprechauns and their pots of gold abound, as everyone celebrates much of this Irish mythology dating back to the origins of the Gaelic Celts. So get ready to celebrate and become Irish for the Day! Plan a fun St Patricks Day Party for your friends and family.

Invitations & Decorations for your St Patricks Day party are available at all the party stores as well as online. A creative party invite is a small potted shamrock plant. They are inexpensive and cute. I just saw them for sale in my grocery store here in the Northeast for 1.99. You can add green ribbons or decorate the pot with shamrock stickers. For less than a quarter each you can purchase cardholders from your local florist. Make your invite on the computer and insert it into the card holder which then goes into the shamrock plant! Keep the invite no larger than 3 x 5”. Brighten your home by decorating with shamrocks and green party goods. Your St Patricks Day party needs music.. so put together a fun Irish song playlist on your Ipod or buy a CD. Or maybe you are lucky enough to know a bagpiper???

Food & Drink You have a couple of options here depending on the age group of your party. For kids, I would recommend a St. Patrick’s Pizza and Pasta menu. The pasta can be a simple alfredo sauce with green peas and basil to tie in the Irish theme. You could also get “margarita” pizza, which has cheese and fresh basil to keep on theme. However, most kids could care less about the colors and would prefer regular tomato pizza.

For an adult St Patricks Day party, your menu can be a bit more diverse. Here is an awesome broccoli appetizer. It fits the festivities with its bright green color. Put it in a bread bowl surrounded with the bread bits and some crackers and it is just perfect. If you want a great appetizer, again with a green accent, this potato and pesto soup recipe is one of our family favorites. Finally serve the traditional Irish dinner. Here is an easy corned beef dinner recipe. You just can’t make a mistake with it and you can make it in advance. Don’t forget the Irish soda bread. You can buy it any grocery store or bakery, but if you want to make it yourself, try this recipe. A pint of Guiness and you are ready for dinner!

Fun Dessert Ideas Have you heard about cake balls? They are mini bite-sized cakes and are spreading in popularity! They can be decorated for any holiday and are so simple to make. Here are step by step instructions on how to make cake balls Decorate with green sprinkles, sugars of even make shamrocks out of fondant and you will have the perfect St. Patrick's Day dessert.

Fun & Games Fun and Games. You just can’t have a St Patricks Day party without some activities. Here are some great ones we have used over the years.

Free printable Lucky Leprachaun Bingo Game

St Patricks Day Party Twister Make shamrock cutouts in various colors and tape onto your floor. On index cards write down all the colors of your shamrocks. Put the cards in a bowl. On another set of cards write: right foot, left foot, right hand, left hand. Have someone pull from the color card and then from the foot and hand bowl. Call out the picks.. then let the twisting begin!! As a person falls, they are eliminated. Last player left on the shamrocks wins. You could also use your own Twister game and just put shamrocks of the same colors over the circles on the Twister mat.

Finally, if you have room in your home or it’s nice enough to go outside, play a version of an old Gaelic farm game called HEAVE HO. In earlier eras, the participants would stick a bale of hay onto a pitchfork and throw it as far as they could. We play it by making shamrock adorned white luncheon bags and stuffing them with the contents of our paper shredder. Everyone then gets a chance to “heave” these bags using a spatula or soup ladle and we see who is able to toss them the furthest. It is not as easy as it looks and pretty hysterical to watch. We make the adults use a spatula and let the kids use the soup ladle. Winner gets a “Heave Ho” Champion t-shirt. The logo is usually a big shamrock with ”Heave Ho” Champ written underneath it.

If you are looking for some more fun activities for your family party or great games for class parties, check out these Printable St. Patrick's Day Games