Catch him if you can

Our last name is “Mccuiston” so it is only the natural order of things in our household that we love St. Patrick’s day…well that and my husband loves to home-brew beer. Each year we wake up on St.Patty’s day to find our house is a big old mess. The toilet water has been turned green, Lucky Charms can be found in the strangest of places, cabinet doors are left open, and once in a while these little mischievous Leprechauns even leave behind a chocolate gold piece or two. Perhaps in payment for the clean up I have ahead?

The kids wake up and promptly start running all over the house trying to catch them, because everyone knows if you actually catch a Leprechaun he has to grant you three wishes! This year we have a plan. The kids decided we needed to build a Leprechaun trap — I of course thought this would be a fantastic idea! I could use a wish or two granted after all myself.

The great thing about this project is the kids were all about it. I love projects that get their brain thinking and coming up with great ideas. So the theory in our house ended up as follows: Leprechauns like gold and they know that a pot of gold is always supposed to be at the end of a rainbow. Why not make a box disguised as a rainbow, throw some gold under there and see if we can catch him?

A+ plan!

1. Start by finding an old box. A shoe box, cigar box, or even a craft box from Michael’s will work great.

2. With plain white poster board we measure out the width of the box to become our “cloud” and hide the base of the box. Simply free hand a fluffy cloud and cut it out.

3. Grab some cotton balls and add some glue! Let the kids go to town adding them to the cloud.

4. For the rainbow the key was keeping the weight down. We could have taken the easy route and used good old fashioned construction paper, but fluffy tissue paper was so much fun for them! Start by drawing half of a rainbow onto the poster board and cutting it out.

5. Start adding the tissue paper! I simply cut tissue paper into squares about 1-2 inches and showed the kids how to use the end of a pencil to make little tissue “flowers”. Put the eraser in the center of the square and fold the paper all around it.

6. I poured a line of glue for them to show where to place the tissue paper. They thought it was the most fun ever. The joy of glue and a mess.

7. Allow everything to dry and then glue the rainbow to the cloud and the cloud to the box.

8. Once everything has dried take a pencil and wrap some fun green ribbon or even paint it green…or just leave it as is. The pencil is a great way to hold your “trap” up: the eraser end will keep it from slipping.

9. Be sure to add some gold! We picked up our “gold coins” at Michaels craft store but I am pretty sure you can find them at just about all of the stores in town that sell St. Patty’s day goodies.

10. Set the trap and watch your kids run to bed in hopes of waking up the next morning to have their wishes granted! So fun!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!