Today is one of my favorite days of the year! As an Irish Dancer I spent March 17th performing at local schools and pubs with some of my best friends. It was a day of hard work and lots of fun…and seriously, who doesn’t love a chance to skip school in order to go dance and party all day?

In the spirit of the day, I wanted first to praise the beauty of March 17, 2012 Google Doodle created by artist Jennifer Hom. It’s reminiscent of all of the things I love about Celtic art and knots, but not overly burned with the cliched shamrocks and glaring greens that dominate the usual celebrations. It reminds me of all the time so many of my friends and I spent choosing designs and colors for solo dresses, or even dreaming about the day when we’d get to design a solo dress.

Secondly, I found this sweet children’s book at the store the other day and I couldn’t resist buying it just for myself!  S is for Shamrock: An Ireland Alphabet is adorable and even features a dancer in some semblance of ghillies and appropriate attire dancing to a band made up of an accordion, a fiddle, a bodhrán, and a tin whistle. Sounds like my kind of St. Patrick’s Day party!

Finally, I found this adorable pair of Ghillie Earrings on Amazon and don’t know that I can live without them! I imagine feises are overrun with such things, but I’ve been out of that circuit for too long to have picked them up sooner. Either way, these would nicely pay homage to my childhood past time and look nice too! I think I’ll be giving myself a present in the near future.

I hope you have a very happy St. Patrick’s day! I’ll be drinking green sprite, eating Irish Stew, baking soda bread, blasting Gaelic Storm and raising a glass for Uncle Mike. Cheers!