Getting a Jump on St. Patrick’s Day

St. Patrick’s Day it not-so-slowly creeping up on us. Now mind you, this has never been a holiday that I typically observed. My Mom decorated for every other holiday that I can remember, but St. Patrick’s day just never seemed to make it on the map. We pretty much went right from Valentine’s Day to Easter. I certainly never looked forward to it with the anticipation that my children do. Maybe it had something to do with being Italian and not Irish…who knows! Either way, no leprechauns came to visit, the food didn’t turn unnaturally green and neither did the toilet bowl water. The only observances I really remember were shamrock shakes from McDonalds (which I didn’t really even like at the time) and if we happened to own something green, we would wear it.

Enter my children. More specifically enter my then four year old. I distinctly remember picking him up from nursery school the day before St. Patrick’s Day.  He was so excited to go back the next day because they had prepared the classroom for all the havoc that leprechauns were about to bestow upon it. There were promises of turned over chairs and maybe even…wait for it…. gold coins! Yup, that’s all it took….gold 🙂  He was sooo excited! He wondered what the leprechauns would do at our house if they were going to do that at school? Heck…. I wondered what the leprechauns were gonna do too!! I had no idea the leprechauns even knew where we lived!

Well there you have it. Not wanting to disappoint I searched the internet for ideas. Every year since then the leprechauns visit. We build traps, we decorate, we eat green food. It seems like, just a little more each year. But it’s fun. I think ‘A’ looks forward to “Leprechaun Day” as he calls it, just as much as any of the other major holidays. This year is no exception. So, I have started buying up every green thing I can get my hands on. I have more shamrock decorations than I know what to do with and two bottles of green food coloring waiting in the cupboard.  The real challenge is narrowing down the to-do list to a realistic amount of “do’s” that can be accomplished between now and March 17th. (remind me next year to get started the day after Valentine’s Day and maybe, just maybe, I can fit everything in). And of course I am wondering what those pesky leprechauns will be up to this year…..

Here’s a peak at some of the work that’s been going on at our house. We have a couple of other projects in the making which I will be posting later, and without a doubt green cupcakes will be made. Stay tuned…

During some much needed “mommy time” I put together this LUCKY bunting with a little help of a free printable from one of my new favorite blogs. Check it out at Over the Big Moon. I guess it looks a little more like a banner than a bunting given that I didn’t tie it together, but it works 🙂 I just used glue dots to stick the ribbon to the tops of the paper flags. I needed to cover a larger area so this worked well.

After looking around a bit I was inspired to create a couple of St. Patrick’s Day printables of my own and frame them. You can download them here and here if you would like. They are both designed to print best at 4×6 size.

I have a feeling those pesky leprechauns will make us work for gold this year with this treasure hunt, downloaded from here.

We started something that looks like this…. Hmmm, wonder what it will be? Please come back in a few days and find out!

‘A’ even got into the spirit of crafting and started tracing, cutting out, and coloring shamrocks of his own to adorn our staircase 🙂 He is now convinced that the more we decorate, the more the leprechauns will love our house….and hopefully the more treasure they will leave lol!