Hey friends! In this episode of Holiday Head Start, we’re sharing a fun roundup of St. Patrick’s Day ideas—some from our own childhood traditions and some fresh inspiration from others. The beauty of celebrating smaller holidays like this one is that there are no big expectations—just fun little touches to add a little sparkle to the day!

We chat about our favorite traditions, like a leprechaun visit that leaves behind tiny footprints and a pot of gold, plus an easy festive punch and a creative take on “Irish” haystacks. We also share a fun printable dice game to use up leftover candy and a sweet shamrock-shaped pretzel treat.

If you’re looking for simple ways to celebrate, we’ve got you covered! Tune in for all the details, and be sure to connect with us on Instagram @theholidayheadstart to share your favorite St. Patrick’s Day ideas.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Rainbow Haystacks from SoFestive
• Shamrock Dice
• Prequel Skin Utility Ointment
• Grab The Holiday Headstart Playbook
• Take the Holiday Profile quiz
• Follow on Instagram @theholidayheadstart 
• Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts!

What’s Next:

Choose something festive to add surprise and delight to your St. Patrick’s Day!

If You Enjoyed This Episode, You’ll Love These Too:

• Episode 22 – Easy Valentine’s Day Traditions to Start With Your Family This Year

More About The Holiday Headstart:

Welcome to The Holiday Headstart podcast, where we get intentional about kicking overwhelm to the curb and bringing joy back to your holidays (and every day). We’re Heidi and Emily, two sisters and former elementary school teachers, who’ve taken the simple strategies and practical tips we mastered in the classroom and put them to work in our personal lives. 

And we’re here to help you do the same! Join us each week as we share how, with a little planning and a little prep, you can ensure that the days that make life special don’t become the days that make you stressed. 

Welcome to the Holiday Head Start Podcast, where we get intentional about kicking overwhelm to the curb and bringing the joy back to your holidays and every day. I'm Heidi, and I'm Emily. We're two sisters and former elementaries.

And we're here to help you do the same. Join us each week as we share how, with a little planning and a little prep, you can ensure that the days that make life special don't become the days that make you stressed. You can check out the show notes at theholidayheadstart. com. Ready to get a head start on your holidays?

Let's go!

Some of these are traditions that Emily and I love, and some of these are fun ideas that we have gleaned from other people.

I like doing something where anything you do feels like a bonus. Yeah, St.

Patrick's day, there are no expectations. There's no worry about doing it right. We're

Patrick's day traditions. Multiple blog posts keep this in mind and when I checked out their list, it was things like watch a movie, read a book, wear green.

So no, let's see what we can do to make St. Patrick's day have its own unique flair.

I do it pretty close to what we had as kids, which is just, there's some leprechaun footprints that appear overnight and they lead to a little pot of gold. So, I have a little cauldron. Shaped soup bowl that actually is from Halloween. We had one when we were kids that, that was like, how do I describe it?

Heidi, the one we had,

But in the meantime, I have these old, crate and barrel which is cauldron shaped bowls. I use one of those. And I put. Individually wrapped Rolos in there because those are wrapped in gold and then the miniature Reese's peanut butter cups that are also wrapped in gold go in there and then gold coins.

If I see them, sometimes those are hard to easily find at the store and they're pricey because you have to buy a whole bunch. Yes, they are pricey. That's why I only put in a few if I do that. And that is it. That is that's pretty much the extent of the tradition. I also usually have a box of lucky charms next to it, but That's just because it's cute.

My kids are not even big cereal eaters, but it's easy. It's simple. When we were kids, the leprechaun footprints were cut out of green construction paper and they led from our bedroom. Door to the pot of gold, correct? Heidi. Isn't that what you remember? Like I remember walking down the hall trying to walk on a little.

Yes. Now I did it that way for a while, but one of my kids found little footprints in a drawer after that. So I'm like, well, I need to switch this up. And also, I don't know. It's cute, but the kids were much more like, I can pick this footprint up, which is funny because I don't remember like having an issue with that as a no, it was just like, Oh, who cares?

Like it's so cute. I don't know. My kids are realists apparently. So I switched to, and this is actually my tip because it is much, much easier, which is I switched to leprechaun footprint stickers that I got off of Amazon and you know, they're big enough to look like teeny little. Boot prints and they have like little shamrock shapes in the imprint of the shoe print.

And I just do a small path of them because my kids sleep upstairs. It's a very far distance. I would have to do a lot of footprints to get to the gold if I was going to do that. So I just do it from our back patio door to the kitchen island. So not very far at all. and you can buy , The footprints in bulk, and it's just so much easier to slap on a sticker and they come off easily to off of the floor and the side of the kitchen island, without damaging any of the paint or the floor.

because I remember, St. Patrick's day eves in the past, or you'd be up late trying to cut out a bunch of little paper.

It's so much simpler now knowing that I've got footprints. I can slap on the ground and I have a habit every year of looking at how many stickers I have left and deciding if I have enough for next year Now so that I order more right then For next year, if I'm not going to have enough, so, so far, I've never found myself without them.

Knock on wood,

and you're like, Oh, I have three. Yeah. Yes.

She did also make a more Irish dinner. I do not do that because my kids are no fun. They don't appreciate any good food. So no, I don't make colcannon, which is what we used to have.

I really don't enjoy it.

was pretty straightforward. The nice thing about a punch is you could just throw everything together. No true story. So I think it's Sprite or 7 Up, pineapple juice and lime green sherbet. And it was lovely and green and tasty. We did much

Maybe I'll find some this year.

I

the kids do like it. So I'll have to think about that too. Been a pretty good substitute.

I wonder what I could serve with it for dinner that they would actually eat.

See a cute idea from our friend Melissa at the So Festive blog and she does Hawaiian haystacks. I think she calls them Irish haystacks. So it's basically just rice and shredded chicken. And gravy, which I think is just like cream of chicken soup.

And then you can put all kinds of different toppings on it. Chow mein noodles. Those crunchy

We'll put a link in the show notes if you want to see it. So she had a topping for each color. I think she dyed the rice green. Which made it even more fun if you've got kids with aversions to colors, that might not work, but

Okay. Maybe we'll try it this year. I'm not convinced they would put much on their chicken and rice, but maybe they would, I think it would be worth a try. It would be cute anyway. So we'll try it and next year I'll report back. That'll be a

Well, one idea that I just came up with recently, so we'll have to try it out again with your kids this year and see how it goes, is, so if you've seen, around the holidays, there's often a game that's like a dice game for candy, where you just have like a pile of candy in the middle, then you roll a die and whatever you get, you either take some candy or put it back.

And I was thinking that that could be really fun for St. Patrick's day. So I made a cute pot of gold printout so you could put that in the middle of your table and that's your pot of gold that they're taking the candy from. Because I know when you're buying that. St. Patrick's Day morning candy.

You have to buy the whole bag. Yes. And you always end up with leftovers. I remember the joy of that as a kid finding those in the back of the pantry because only so many would fit in the bowl, but right now this would be a good way to use that up or. Maybe we could throw in some Skittles and Starburst and make it a rainbow too.

And then another idea I had was. So we do Rudolph noses in December, and this is my kind of baking, it's a pretzel, a rolo, and a red M& M. That is it. So you just like lay out a sheet pan, cover it, like tile it with little square pretzels, put a rolo on each one, pop it in the oven for, you know, about three minutes.

Once the rolo starts to look a little melty, you pull it out, you put a red M& M on top

What I like about this recipe, I'm doing air quotes. You can't see that, but I'm doing air quotes. What I like about this recipe is it has so many steps that are kid friendly, so you can kind of just get everyone involved. Some kids are unwrapping the Rolos.

And put a, gotta kind of balance the Rolo in the middle, put it in the oven, let the Rolo get a tiny bit melty, and then you put a green m and m in and now you've so cute. You baked these beautiful pretzels, Shamrock.

Because I felt like the chocolate to pretzel ratio was off, even though it looked adorable. Like once you bite into one pretzel, it's gonna fall apart.

That's too much pretzel and not enough chocolate. So either we need bigger Rolos

The different rainbow color jello and in between I had like custard because it was like something that mom had made before where you layer the jello. Yeah. It's like a, like a whipped cream type layer, something like that. I can't even remember. It was so much work to like do that many layers and they're teeny tiny in this little shot glass.

It was freaking adorable, but I will never make them again because it was so much work. Hours and hours. I guess if you did a big container of them instead of a bunch of tiny individual ones, it would be less work.

Well, we would love to hear your St. Patrick's Day ideas. Please come and connect with us on Instagram at the Holiday Head Start.

Now it's time for Get a Head Start Tip. Each week, we leave you with a small, actionable tip to help you get started on your holiday planning. This week's get ahead, start tip is make your Easter plans. Tell us more about that, Heidi.

An easy way to get your Easter planned is to add it to your holiday tasks in March, and then just take a few minutes to figure out what needs to happen and what you need to get, and you will be all set well before April 20th.

Since those hiding spots probably aren't too full of Christmas gifts yet, hopefully there's room to stash a few chocolate bunnies in there for a while.

They don't look like anything exciting. So you can stash gifts and surprises in them and put them in the basement or the garage without attracting too much attention from anyone who might be a little snoopy.

So it doesn't get too hot, but have to keep an eye on it. Cause I don't want my chocolates to melt before I can get them into the baskets.

I know. And she is my hardest kid to buy for. It could be the age maybe all 15 year olds are hard to buy for, but her especially, I just, Oh, it's hard. So got to get a jump on that early. What are you working on, Heidi?

I'm only one year in, so who knows, but that is the trade off. However, it has been worth the expense all around. Just to be able to breathe. So I will take that.

It's

I need to switch out the filters in mine. I think I have one that runs all the time in my room and because it runs all the time, I tend to forget about it. It's like kind of behind my door during the day, so I just don't even notice it. So I'm guaranteed that one needs a new filter. And then my downstairs one hasn't been on in months because it needs a new filter and they are not cheap.

So yeah, I just ordered new ones. And got the wrong size. So I got it ordered again. Oh, goody.

So it's kind of similar to aquifer. So think of that kind of texture, but it's like a little lighter and less sticky. So I use it when I'm like layering on, on my chapped lips, the way that Sharon from Sharon says, so talks about making a moisture sandwich. I like to use that as my last.

Step. And I, it's really good for irritation that I get around my eyes and nose, like especially during allergy season. I feel like this is very soothing to put on that kind of skin irritation.

Perfect. That's it for today's episode. Add some festive sparkle to your St. Patrick's day and remember to get started on your plans for Easter.

Thanks for tuning in today. Use this week to get a head start on planning for what's ahead. And remember, don't get it perfect, get it going. Come follow along on Instagram at theholidayheadstart. We would love to hear from you. If you liked this episode, head to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review. We'll see you here next week.