HAPPY ST. PATTY'S DAY!

Not only is today St. Patrick's Day...but today celebrates the heritage of my amazing fiance, Mr. Hess.  Anyone who has met him knows he is proud of being Irish, and I have to say I am proud to officially marry into it in about 4 months! 

If you paid any attention to the silly but informative video post about "Our Claddagh Rings" in the beginning of the month, you would know all of these things.  But even if you missed it, you probably now understand how much Mr. Hess and I LOVE St. Patrick's Day and celebrating an IRISH holiday!  Heck, we ideally wanted our wedding to be all green and white and theme it out around this time of this year (St. Patty's Day) - but obviously that didn't happen and thankfully we still have 4 months to put everything together! PHEW!

Traditionally, Mr. Hess and I will be celebrating the day with an Irish dinner made up of corned beef & cabbage....well at least he will.  I can honestly say I try to eat it every year, but I mostly just end up pushing the food around on my plate and ordering some kind of Irish stew - works for me!  Either way, we like to at least honor the holiday by grabbing an Irish meal and usually meet some friends out to celebrate later.  Hopefully by next year once we are married and settled into our new place, I will actually take the initiative to learn how to cook these things, but for this year - a good 'ol Irish pub will do!  I can here the "top of the mornin' to ya's" already....

So before we go, I thought I'd share some fun facts about St. Patricks Day with all of you, as I stumbled upon them a week or so ago doing some research on shamrocks!

• The shamrock is the traditional symbol because St. Patrick used it to explain the connection between the father, the son, and the holy spirit in the Christian religion. 
• For good luck, the shamrock is usually included in the bouquet of an Irish bride, and also in the boutonniere of the groom. **HINT HINT!!! ;)
• The very first St. Patrick's Day parade was not in Ireland. It was in Boston in 1737.
• The city with the largest population of Americans of Irish descent is Boston (23%). (NO WONDER those Boston Celtics fans are DIE HARD, even when they come to Orlando!!!)
• In Chicago, on St. Patrick's Day, the rivers are dyed green. (FUN! We'll be there next week!)
• 34 million Americans have Irish ancestry, according to the 2003 US Census. That’s almost nine times the population of Ireland, which has 4.1 million people.
• One estimate suggests that there are about 10,000 regular three-leaf clovers for every lucky four-leaf clover. 
•  Legend says that each leaf of the clover means something: the first is for HOPE, the second is for FAITH, the third is for LOVE, and the fourth for  LUCK.

   

Dying the Chicago Rivers Green - SO COOL!

All of this information I found at http://www.whsv.com/seasonal/misc/40129602.html...which also provides some great videos on how to make Irish dishes such as Irish Nachos and Irish Coffee...YUM!

All the best to you and yours on this St. Patrick's Day! Off to go get ready for dinner, but I'm going to leave you with a pretty amazing video if I do say so myself - ENJOY!!!

HAPPY ST. PATTY'S DAY!!!!

Presh