St. Patrick's Day 2016 recap

Here's what we've done all week to have some fun with St. Patrick's Day.

Rainbow Fruit Skewers

The kids had this as an after school snack and then with dinner we had more rainbow fruit.

We also had Clover Cookies

These were just sugar cookies that I cut into clover shapes using a cookie cutter.  I don't have much success with cookie cutters so I just made one clover cookie per person and the rest were circles.  Oh and having a cute helper is always fun.

We also had green pudding.  The kids don't like pistachio pudding which is already green, so I made vanilla pudding and just added some green food coloring.

On St. Patrick's Day we had some fun with Leprechaun photo props.

Even I got into the Irish Spirit.

I must say, I think we do look happier than the people advertising the product.

 The St. Patrick's Day fun didn't stop there.  We even tried to catch a leprechaun.  My 5 year old made this trap.  We didn't catch any leprechauns, but he did leave us some gold.

It was a gold digging kit and she had so much fun finding her little nugget of gold (pyrite).

Here she is hard at work, digging away.

Getting closer.

She found gold.

She was so happy to have this golden rock.

Usually I have gold coins for the kids, the chocolate kind.  I didn't find them this year.  I also didn't look very  hard either.  Anyway, my older daughter was disappointed there wasn't any chocolate (she definitely takes after me) so I had to bake something chocolaty.  Brownies with some green icing clovers on top.  This yummy after school snack made up for the lack of chocolate coins at breakfast.  Oh, and of course breakfast was Lucky Charms.

And here's my littlest guy looking all cute in his leprechaun shirt.  

We've had fun with this holiday.  If you want to see what else we've done, click HERE for the previous post.

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Fingerprint Four Leaf Clovers

The kids and I made some St. Patrick's Day cards to mail out to their cousins.  Each kid helped decorate the cards, including our 17 month old.

For his contribution, I put green marker on his finger 

and pressed it onto the card four times, making a four leaf clover.  

Then I added a line for the stem.

Pretty cute and pretty easy.

Just make sure you use washable markers so the mess is easy to clean up.

For more St. Patty's day fun, check out these posts from previous years:

Here's the Rainbow Surprise Cake I made for the kids last year,

and the Lucky Leprechaun or Pinch Proof Juice.

I still love the "Not Lucky... Blessed" sign I made and have displayed it again this year.

Kiki Creates shows us how to add some leprechauns-ness to family pictures.  

Bunch of Craft displays her St. Patrick's Day subway art: 

A Little Tipsy did this cute shelf display:

Here are some simple, quick and easy treats to make:

Pot O' Gold in a bag

Another Pot of Gold

Lucky to have You - easy treat to make

Lucky Breakfast - start the day off right, I mean green

And some fun activities:

Leprechaun treasure hunt -follow the colors of the rainbow

 

Lucky Bingo

I am lucky craft

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St. Patrick's Day Surprise Cake

My sister in law and her two little girls were visiting last week so I decided to make a St. Patrick's Day surprise cake while they were here.

I just baked two round cakes as normal.  In one of the cakes, I cut out a hole being sure not to go all the way through the bottom.  Then I added the M&M's and frosted it.

I added the second layer of cake on top and frosted that too.

Then I used the M&M's to make a rainbow.  I should have started with the purple, but luckily I didn't have to smoosh things around too much to get all the colors to fit.  Then I added some green M&M's so it would look like clovers, you know to make it more St. Patrick's Day themed.

The kids were surprised to find a 'treasure' inside.

We had deviled eggs with that same dinner and I added green food coloring to the yolks just to make dinner more festive.

We didn't actually do much on St. Patrick's Day, I even forgot to remind the kids to wear green.  At least the house was decorated with the crafts we made two weeks ago.  You can click HERE and HERE to find out more about the projects below.

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St. Patrick's Day rainbow crafts and more

I did a few crafts with the kids to create some more St. Patrick's Day decorations.

The first one was a little complicated and my 4 year old gave up, but my 10 year old had fun making it.  It's a 3-D rainbow pot of gold.

Materials:

rainbow colored paper cut into 1 inch by 12 inch strips

white paper cloud

blue 8 by 10 paper for background

glue stick

black paper pot made from two layers of paper with a slit cut out of the top layer(not shown) 

Here the girls are gluing the rainbow onto the cloud.

Once the rainbow was glued to the cloud, the cloud was glued to the blue paper and then the rainbow was folded over and glued to the inside of the pot.  Then the pot was glued to the blue paper.

This project made the girls ask what causes a rainbow.  We  have a bunch of these "Just Ask" books and luckily one was about rainbows.  So I read that while the girls glued.  I love these books, they explain things in simple ways for young kids to understand.  

And since the first project frustrated my 4 year old, we tried THIS idea from Pinterest.  It was much easier.

Here she is holding up her pot of gold and rainbow made from a paper plate.  You can see my "Not Lucky... Blessed" sign in the background.  Click HERE to find out how I made it.

Just like we made a heart hat for Valentine's Day, we also made a shamrock hat.  Although my little girl decided to do a different take on the green shamrock and made a zebra striped clover instead.  Here she is wearing it while showing off a picture she colored.

We displayed their decorations on the mantel, along with the "Not Lucky... Blessed" sign and a few paper shamrocks.

I also decided to add some fun to the kitchen.  We have this glass bottle that is too cute not to display, so I filled it with green colored water and added some vinyl lettering.  I couldn't decide which saying I liked best so I put one on each side.

So that's it for our St. Patrick's Day decorations.  I have a few treats I want to make (and eat), so I'll be back next week with those delicious recipes.

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