St. Patrick

How to Make an Easy Shamrock from Pipe Cleaners

March 6, 2012 By Lacy

This is a great tip for making Shamrocks from pipe cleaners!

This picture really says it all:

Just put 3 of your fingers together, and wrap the pipe cleaner around all them, 1 at a time. Pull it off the tops of your fingers, and twist the 2 ends together to hold it.

Trim the stem to your desired length. You’re finished! Even if kids need some help, use their fingers to wrap around and they totally think they made it themselves. Lydia only wanted to make them in pink and purple, which was fine with me.

You can use these however you want. You could probably tweak this technique for making shamrock rosaries, and you could also make a shamrock for your St. Patrick paper bag puppet to hold! Also, you could use these as a prop for singing the St. Patrick’s Day Trinity song!

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Filed Under: 03 March, Crafts for Kids, Liturgical Year, My Crafts, St. Patrick, Trinity 2 Comments

Shamrock Shepherd’s Pie for St. Patrick’s Day {and a linky!}

March 1, 2012 By Lacy

I thought for today’s First Friday link-up, it would be fun to have a St. Patrick’s day theme! Scroll to the bottom of this post to see everyone’s ideas and add your own links.

As many of you already know, I have a St. Patrick’s day article out in Catholic Digest this month. I was really excited about the projects I got to share! There are directions in the article for making a shepherd’s pie with a green pepper shamrock on top, but they didn’t end up using my pictures- they used stock photos. I felt like that project really missed it’s punch without the photos, so I wanted to share them with all of you.

The reason why I made a shepherd’s pie is because St. Patrick worked as a shepherd boy when he was a slave. The shamrock embellishes the top at St. Patrick’s symbol for the Trinity- one clover, 3 leaves!

You have to be choosy when selecting a green pepper for this project! You need a green pepper with only 3 bulbs- not 4! If you get one with 4, when you slice it, it will look like a 4 leaf clover, not a shamrock. A 3 petaled shamrock is a great symbol for the Trinity. A 4 leaf clover is a good luck charm carried by Leprechauns and adorns rainbows and pots of gold.

Ingredients needed:
•   1 pound ground beef
•   Salt and pepper
•   1 cup frozen peas
•   1 cup frozen carrots
•   1 cup beef broth
•   2 ½ cups mashed potatoes
•   1 green pepper (with three lobes)

Brown the ground beef and add the broth, then salt and pepper to taste. Mix in the peas and carrots, and then put the ground beef mixture into a pie or casserole dish. Arrange the mashed potatoes on top however you’d like. Slice the green pepper crossways to get a shamrock shape, and add another sliver to make the stem. You’ll get the best shamrock shape from a slice close to the end of the pepper. Add this “shamrock” on top of the mashed potatoes to garnish the pie. Bake at 350 until the pie is warm throughout, and the mashed potatoes start to brown on the edges.

We got fancy and piped on the mashed potatoes with an icing tip. You could just make the top swirly with a fork if you’re looking to make it easier.

I think this is a really fun dinner to serve up for St. Patrick’s day! What are your plans for celebrating this great feast day? Share your links below!

Read the link-up rules here before adding your link. Feel free to join in the St. Patrick’s day theme, but you are welcome to share other Catholic posts for March as well.

Related Posts:

Craft a St. Brigid’s Cross
Shamrock Lacing Craft
Make a St. Patrick Puppet (This is also last year’s St. Patrick’s day Link-up!)
Shamrock Rosary Craft
Catholic St. Patrick’s Day Ideas
Craft a Shamrock Bowl
Shamrock Trinity Craft
Catholic St. Patrick’s Day Printables
Catholic St. Patrick’s Day Food
Catholic St. Patrick’s Day Crafts
My St. Patrick’s Day Pinboard on Pinterest

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Filed Under: 03 March, Fun Food, Liturgical Year, My Kitchen Creations, Saints, St. Patrick 8 Comments

How to Make a St. Brigid’s Cross with Kids

January 26, 2012 By Lacy

I have wanted to try making a St. Brigid’s cross for years, but never got around to it until now. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, and we had a lot of fun! St. Brigid’s feast day is on February 1, but St. Patrick’s day is an equally great time to make this fun craft!

I decided to experiment with several materials to see what made the best cross. Here are a few I made out of colored raffia.

While the raffia crosses are adorable, the raffia was harder to work with than the pipe cleaners. Next, I tried making some crosses out of plastic string. It didn’t go well. In fact, it went so un-well that I don’t even have any pictures to share. It was a total craft fail. Therefore, I’m going to recommend using pipe cleaners for this project! (If you’d like to try your hand at making some St. Brigid’s Crosses out of raffia, I’m going to suggest learning first with pipe cleaners and then moving to the raffia.)

I also experimented with different sizes of St. Brigid’s crosses. With both the raffia and the pipe cleaners, I thought the smaller ones were easier to handle, and very cute!

So after our many experiments, I’m going to recommend making these out of pipe cleaners with kids (and quite possibly, half-length pipe cleaners.)

You need 15 pipe cleaners to make 1 full sized St. Brigid’s cross, and about half that many for a smaller one. Whatever size you decide to make, you’ll want all of your pipe cleaners to be the same length when you start. You’ll need one that’s straight, and the rest of them should be bent in half. It’s easiest to do this before you start.

How to Weave St. Brigid’s Cross: a picture tutorial

Start with 1 straight pipe cleaner. Place a folded pipe cleaner over it. Rotate it once to the left, and add another pipe cleaner. Rotate it once to the left, and add another pipe cleaner. Rotate it once to the left, and …. well, I think you’re starting to understand. It’s actually very easy once you get going! Ever time you add a pipe cleaner, you put it over all of the pieces sticking up. Then rotate and repeat.

When the cross has gotten to your desired size, cut some small sections of pipe cleaner, and twist the ends together. We made this one using the colors of the Irish flag!

My 5 year old was able to weave a St. Brigid’s cross (with a little help) and she was very proud! I’m going to recommend this craft for everyone ages 5 and up! (Lydia’s is on the left, and mine is on the right. I think it made it easier than we used the same colors as we went so I could say things like “now we need the yellow one to point up.”)

I think the smaller ones were a little easier to handle because it was easier to keep the pieces of pipe cleaner straight. Once you get the hang of it with pipe cleaners, give the raffia a try! I used about 3 strands of raffia at a time. The directions I found said to soak the raffia in warm water before beginning, but I skipped that step and it seemed to work just fine.

I strongly recommend trying your hand at these! They’re super fun to make, and so cute when they’re finished!

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Filed Under: 02 February, Crafts for Kids, Liturgical Year, My Crafts, Saints, St. Brigid, St. Patrick 13 Comments

Religious Shamrock Craft for St. Patrick’s Day

March 16, 2011 By Lacy

Catholic ABC’s Week: 24
Letter of the week: T
Theme: Trinity
Saint of the Week: St. Therese
Craft: Trinity Shamrock Craft

This week we are learning about the letter “T”, and what better time to learn about the Trinity than for St. Patrick’s Day?! I just love when the whole world is celebrating Catholic feast days!

For this craft, all you need is green fun foam, plastic craft string, and stickers. I actually got a whole package of shamrock shaped fun foam from the Dollar Tree- 8 of them for $1, and half of them were already glittery! (Although the stickers won’t stick to the glittery ones). The plastic string is also available at most Dollar Trees, and certainly at craft stores. If you can’t get shamrock shaped foam ready to go, you can cut them out yourself- just do a google search for a shamrock template. You can also print shamrock lacing cards for free from Chalk in My Pocket.

Once you have your shamrock, just punch holes around it with a regular hole puncher.

Give your kids some plastic string and let them lace their shamrock. You could also use yarn if you put some tape on the end or have a plastic needle for them to use. Lacing is good for their hand eye coordination and motor skills. It’s also a lot of fun!

Once their shamrock is laced, have them add symbols of the Trinity. We used a heart to symbolize God the Father, a cross for God the Son, and a Dove for God the Holy Spirit. (The heart symbol was totally inspired by Karen’s Adventures in Mommyland!) I actually got all the stickers from AC Moore- it was a package of stickers for Vacation Bible School. The whole book of them was $1.

These were easy to make and came out pretty cute!

This craft is another good match for my St. Patrick Trinity Song for kids! We also read our Catholic Children’s Treasure Box Book 17, which is about the Trinity. Have you even heard of the Treasure Box Books? I need to type up a whole post about these books to I can rave on and on about how adorable they are!

Grab Bag Ideas for the Letter T: (be sure to check out the Classroom Scriptfor directions on using the grab bag.) Truck, Train, Tiger, Table (from a doll house), Tennis ball, Triangle, Tank, Tap shoe, Tape, Tea bag, Tea cup, Tie, Tissue, Tongue (from Mr. Potato Head), Tools, Toothbrush or Toothpaste, Top, Tractor, Turkey, Turtle, Tu-tu, Twisty tie, T-rex. (Avoid words that start with “Th” for new learners).

For More Resources, check out the Catholic Toolbox lesson plans for the Letter Tt. (Her Tt lesson is on the the Ten Commandments.)

Catholic ABC’s runs here at Catholic Icing every Wednesday with the new letter of the week. You can find the details of the program here.