Erin go bragh

St. Patrick's Day has always been a quirky day for me, since my childhood when my fantastically fun Mom would dye everything in the fridge green. Keeping the tradition, my kids started the morning with either green oatmeal or cereal with green milk. I love playing leprechaun and watching them giggle when they discover that the milk turned green in the night. I wasn't sure what to do for dinner, a traditional irish meal, or more food-colored items, but then I found spinach tortillas at the grocery store and decided on green quesadillas and fajitas. I made lemonade, then initiated my oldest into the insanity by handing over the food coloring to let him dye it green. Peas for the vegetable topped it off, and voila! Green dinner.

Doesn't look tremendously appetizing does it? The peas are especially un-photogenic! But it was hilariously fun for the kids.

After dinner, I broke out a surprise craft - which was basically the stuff I had left over from a school project for my 2nd grader's class. When I volunteered to do a St. Patrick's craft for the class, I had no idea how hard it would be to find a decent St. Patrick's day craft. After pages and pages of "tutorials" that told me to give the kids a piece of construction paper and have them cut out a shamrock (seriously? Are there people who need a tutorial that says "1- give the kids a piece of paper 2- tell them to draw a shamrock shape 3- have them get their scissors out and cut around the lines 4- Enjoy your St. Patrick's day shamrock." Maybe I'm offending someone, but even the craft-challenged could figure that one out by themselves, I'm thinking), I came up with a craft of my own. And I've decided to post it. It isn't the best craft in the world, but it was fun. It makes a leprechaun hat out of green disposable cups.

Supplies needed:

• Green cups - I used plastic ones because they were completely green, the paper ones usually have white bottoms.
• Card stock - you can get two brims on one piece of cardstock - see pic below. I measured the diameter of the cup's lip, then made the interior circle 1/4 inch smaller. Then I traced another circle around it 1" bigger all the way around.
• Ribbon - I found some cute grosgrain ribbon, but felt would work too. I cut 12 inch lengths to be able to go all around the very bottom of the cup, though most of the kids chose to put their hat-bands higher.
• Glitter Fun Foam - cut into one inch squares, then cut a small square out of the middle to make it a buckle.

Assembly:

• Cut out the circles and remove the center circle, making a doughnut shape.
• Turn the cup upside down and drop the circle over the upturned bottom of the cup. The lip of the cup keeps the circle from sliding completely off. This is your hat's brim.
• Wrap the ribbon around the cup to form a hat band. In the 2nd grade class, I had them use glue. At home, to avoid messiness with the littler kids, I used double-sided tape. I wish I weren't out of glue dots, because that would have probably been easiest.
• Glue or double-stick tape the "buckle" over the spot where the ribbon overlaps.
• Optional: my kids wanted to add shamrocks. so I accommodated them.

Like I said - not a complicated project. It's just a simple craft idea. But I think they were both fun to make and turned out pretty cute. It is festive to see them sitting all over around the house.

So that was my St. Patties day. After spending the morning and most of the afternoon fighting off a monster headache, I was just so glad that the pain cooperated enough to let me have a fun night with my little lads & lassies - the sweet bairns are such a joy!!