St. Patty's Day

Since the past 3 years have yielded not results in our pursuit to catch a leprechaun, Daddy took the lead on constructing a trap with the kids this year.  They were going to dig a small hole in the front yard, cover it with light debris and hope for the best.  But upon hearing of rain in the evening's forecast the team went to work with a new plan. 

Sophie watercolor painted a beautiful rainbow, both Sophie and Rhys glued gold foil to it to lure the leprechaun in.  This was hung from the edge of a desk.  Below a ladder was propped up against an empty tissue box. The hope was he'd climb the ladder and jump to try and reach the gold, but falling short he'd land in the tissue box. They even taped the box to the floor so he couldn't knock the box over and get out.

We never thought for a minute he would have had his lucky pocket knife on him!  But in the morning we found he had cut a little flap out of the box and escaped.

Rhys rounds the corner, rubbing the sleep from his eyes only to be greeted by the flash of mom's camera.

Chaos is what the leprechaun left behind--wastepaper baskets up on shelves, rainbow decorations turned up-side-down into smiles, our toaster even ended up in the living room! There were numerous things we found throughout the morning. At lunch he turned our milk green.

Breakfast was a green smoothie or "lucky leprechaun juice" with buttered toast with green sugar sprinkles. Lunch was "construct your own leprechaun face" using PB, bread, raisins, grapes, and grated carrots for hair and beard.  For dinner we splurged on green mac and cheese colored by spinach, peas, and broccoli and a spicy celery salad on the side.

The kids also got gold wrapped chocolates and rainbow skittles in a little, overturned disposable food container cutely painted and disguised to look like a leprechaun hat.  I spent a couple nights putting those together.  On St. Patty's Day afternoon we delivered extras to Primary teachers and our favorite librarian in the children's section, among others. They looked like these from Canadian Living because that's where I got the idea.

Hope you had a good time celebrating as well.