St. Patrick's Day 2012

Frances' school had the PTA Carnival on St. Patrick's Day this year. I had volunteered to bake a cake, and then in a moment of insanity I also signed up to bring food for their International Food Sale.  I baked a rainbow cake on Friday night. It was a ton of fun and a lot easier than I had expected.  I used two boxes of cake mix, divided it into six bowls and tinted each one a color of the rainbow.  (Sorry about the crappy iPad photo.) 

Then I slowly added each color to the middle of the baking dish.  You don't have to mix or anything. You just pour one color straight into the middle of the pan.  Each successive color pushes the next one outwards until your baking dish looks like this:

Bake as directed in your recipe and then decorate.  I just used white frosting and the used Skittles to make a rainbow on the top of the cake. I wanted somebody to be surprised when they cut into their cake! 

I also made a batch of black bean and corn quesadillas with a recipe I got from Budget Bytes. Easy, peasy, DELICIOUS!
Mix together:
1 can of black beans (drain off the clear liquid)
1 cup of frozen corn
1 package of taco seasoning mix (or less depending on your intended consumers)
2 cups of cheese
And add to tortillas and cook on both sides. Frances and I LOVED these. I think they were a bit too spicy for the boys, so when I try them again I will use less taco seasoning.

After preparing all that madness, I decided to make us some St. Patrick's Day shirts.  (Frances made the glasses at her after-school program on Friday.

We went to Fun Day and had...fun!! The kids got to play a bunch of canival type games and win cheesy prizes.  They got to watch a magic show too. Frances helped the magician turn a blue scarf and a white scarf into two polka dotted scarves.

After participating in the cake walk (and thankfully not winning a cake) we ate some lunch.

The kids chose facepaint over temporary tattoos and Henry got a cute frog for his cheek.

We went home for some well-earned naps and then, because I am a glutton for punishment) we went out to the park with the Washingtons and ended up having dinner with them too. We got home about 9:15 that night and were still able to get up for church in the morning.