Leprechaun "traps" for St. Patrick's Day

There are some very cheery posts out there for celebrating and crafting St. Patrick's Day. Although this one isn't as fancy, it is one of my favorite new traditions we started as a family.

Last year when St. Patrick's Day came around we had only been home from the hospital with Little Brother for a few days. We were looking for some ways to create a little fun for Big Brother. We had ordered The Night Before St. Patrick's Day, and it leant itself perfectly to creating leprechaun traps.

We used recycled materials to create our traps, primarily some boxes we had, and then some paint and sequins to decorate them. Big Brother did one one his own, he and I painted the middle one, and he made the large one with Daddy. He was pretty proud of the creations. Inside the boxes we placed gold necklaces, really just gold mardi gras beads, to lure the leprechaun in. 

At this point some family members had stopped by to visit for lunch, and two of our guests took Big Brother with them to pick up pizza. While he was out the leprechaun visited. This meant moving through the traps and swapping all the gold necklaces for green ones, leaving some gold coins, making a mess with sequins, leaving some sparkly shamrock chains on the floor, and of course creating green tracks all across the kitchen floor! In fact, the leprechaun made tracks all the way to Little Brother's room where there is a small hole in his closet and then disappeared. (I think my brother who was visiting for the day had the most fun with this part, although he had green paint on his thumbs for the rest of the day . . .) The leprechaun even left some notes for the whole family. 

We ended our day with corned beef and cabbage, our favorite Irish Soda Bread recipe, and rainbow vanilla pudding. 

We're definitely looking forward to recreating this tradition again next Monday. Who knows, maybe we'll actually catch him this year. 

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