St. Patrick's Day!

Well, I know it has been a little while since my last post ;) And figured it is time to get back on the ball! Instead of trying to catch up, I am going to just start fresh from now or it would be a lot of posts! Anyway, I LOVE traditions!!!! So much! But never really had any for St. Patrick's Day, except for wearing green, and the occasion green themed foods. So this year I really wanted to make it fun for the kids! I found some really fun ideas all over the web, oh what would I do without it!

Anyway, first off I told Mason all about leprechauns, some stories and tales. We learned that they are tricky, mischievous little buggers that LOVE gold! And if you catch one, he has to give you all his gold too. So we built a trap this year, we found the design and instructions online. When you lift of the fake pot of gold, the cage (disguised as a cloud) falls down to trap whatever tried to take the gold! It was alot of fun to make and really made the kids excited for St. Patrick's Day.

We set out the trap the night before St. Patrick's Day and waited for what the next morning would bring! Well, unfortunately we did not catch anything :( But we did get a visit and some interesting surprises! Now we can't be sure what exactly happened that night but here is our theory from the evidence....

We decided to leave out a bowl of Lucky Charms cereal (leprechaun's favorite!) to entice the leprechaun to come to our house in hopes of catching him. From the looks of it, he came in through our back door, onto the counter top and ate some.... but only the marshmallows!



Then we figured he went down the counter and saw the pot of gold we left out on the trap...
The trap went off, but not fast enough because it looks like he got away! Though he did leave behind a $1 gold coin and a little note.
Then we follow the footprints down the hall
After researching leprechauns online to prepare for this day, I did learn that they are shoe makers, and really have quite a fetish for shoes. I also learned that if you leave a pair of shoes out, they might fill them with treats, or just steal them.... Luckily ours were filled with chocolate coins, candy, and shirts! What a nice little leprechaun!

After filling our shoes, I guess he needed to take a potty break and forgot to flush... kinda nasty!
... and play with the toilet paper a bit too
Then it looks like he headed back down the hall and out the back door.
Well that is our hypothesis from what we could see...
the kids really got a kick out the little visit, but decided to build a better trap next year to ensure victory!!! Here are the kids wearing the St. Patty finery..
The rest of the day, we played and had a fun 'green' dinner with some family. I made these green cupcakes and decorated them with some printables I found online too.
It was a really fun day and will try to do this or something similar every year! I hope it creates some fun memories for the kids when they get older!