St. Patrick's Day & Leprechaun Visits!

It's hard for me to believe that St. Patrick's Day is next week! It seems like we just had Valentine's Day. I have not picked up anything for the Leprechaun Visit, nor have I planned how the leprechaun is going to hide the treasure this year. However, if you are looking for any food, craft, activity, or leprechaun visit ideas, I have some of our past adventures below!

FOOD:

• Beef Stew, Soda Bread, Shamrock Pancakes, Shamrock Sucker Napkin Rings. The beef stew and soda bread are easy and delicious!
• Rainbow and Shamrock Pancakes. (see pic above in bottom row of collage) These were pretty easy to make. I made regular pancake batter, separated into 4 bowls and added food coloring to get blue, green, yellow, and red. I used small plastic condiment bottles (candy making bottles would work too) and made the shapes in the skillet. It is easiest if you have a bottle for each color, so you can pipe the an arch of color and immediately add the next arch, and so on, so the pancake bakes about the same time.Once on a plate, I added whipped cream clouds at the base of the rainbows.
• Make Rainbow Bread. One year, I made a braided loaf of bread with rainbow colors. After mixing the dough, I separated and dyed the sections different colors. I then rolled out each color into a long strand and braided it together. We used it to make rainbow sandwiches and french toast for St. Patrick's Day.
• Rainbow Cupcakes Part 1, Rainbow Cupcakes Part 2 (These will really wow your kids or guests for a St. Patrick's Day treat.)
• St. Patrick's Day Shake (My version of the Shamrock shake.)
• Shepherd's Pie (An easy shepherd's pie recipe that works great for St. Patrick's Day, or any night of the year.)
• St. Patrick's Day Lunch
• Make cookies! Cookies are always a hit with my boys and the shamrock cookie cutters are easy to use. We used green sprinkles, as well as green and white cookie icing. (DM TIP #1: If don't have a shamrock cookie cutter, use a heart one. Place the points of 3 hearts together and push down to join. Cut a small strip for the stem and push to add onto the cookie. Bake and decorate! DM TIP #2: I also made Pot of Gold cookies, which turned out to be a big hit. However, I could not find a cauldron/pot cookie cutter anywhere. Eventually I found this cupcake shaped cookie cutter and it worked really well for the pot of gold shape.) 
• Hidden Shamrock Pound Cake
• Leprechaun Donuts
• Oreo Gold Coins. Spray Oreos with Wilton Gold Color Mist Spray (Edible). Spray one side, let dry. Turn over, spray other side, let dry. You could also dip in yellow candy melts.
• Pretzel coins. Buy round pretzels (Meijer often carries these). Dip in melted yellow candy melts. Let set on a piece of wax paper. Fill center with yellow candy melts. Let set. Optional: Pipe on a shamrock/clover with yellow or green candy melts. You can also spray with edible Gold Color Mist Spray for more glittery shine.

• Pretzel shamrocks. Use mini twists to make shamrocks. Dip three twists in green candy melt or green colored white chocolate. Place with bottoms touching on a piece of wax paper. There will be a gap in the middle, fill with candy melts/chocolate. Take another twist (a stick pretzel will work too). Dip in candy melt and place as the stem. Let dry completely.   

ACTIVITIES, CRAFTS, AND FUN:

• St. Patrick's Day Themed Word Find/Word Search 
• Fingerprint Shamrocks
• Shamrock Coloring Page
• Paper Shamrock Decorations
• Shamrock Stamps
• Paper Ring Rainbow
• Stained Glass: Use contact paper and green tissue paper to make an easy shamrock decoration. (Click for directions from my pumpkin stained glass post.)
• Coin Toss Game
• Leprechaun Word Hunt
• Leprechaun Maze
• The Sky Is Falling game, use shamrocks, pot, or coin shapes for St. Patrick's Day.
• Make your own Rainbows!
• Make pipe cleaner clovers. These are easy to do!

LEPRECHAUN VISITS: 
I have banned any super messy leprechaun visits, so our leprechaun usually leaves a pot of treats (usually gold colored) for the boys to find. In the past there has been a cloud raining jelly beans with trails of confetti to find their pots of gold. One time there were even leprechaun donuts (see above under food) left with the pots. Below are some of our past leprechaun visits and pot of gold filler ideas.

• Leprechaun Pots of Gold (cloud made from batting with jelly bean rain over pots of "gold").
• Leprechaun Treat Bags (how to make your own pot shaped baggies).
• Make their lunch all green! I'm doing this for the first time this year, so we'll see how it goes!
• Ideas: Include a note from the tricky leprechaun and as a bonus include a Chocolate gold coin.
• Sandwich: Use green bread or green tortillas for sandwiches. I'm making peanut butter and apple wraps with a green tortilla. Instead of a sandwich you could also make peanut butter on celery sticks.
• Fruits/Veggies: kiwis, granny smith or golden delicious apples, green grapes, cantaloupe, pears, green bell pepper slices, celery, broccoli, sugar snap peas.
• Sides: green chocolate dipped pretzels, green applesauce (or at least with green lid), green veggie straws/chips, green candy popcorn (see my Candied Popcorn post for directions), only green jelly beans or M&M's
• Green pasta: buy green (check the Garden/Veggie varieties) or add green food coloring to water before cooking regular pasta.
• I found rainbow crepe paper streamers and wrapped it around the stair railings. There was a trail of coin shaped confetti leading to their hidden pots of treasures. There were a few trails that were dead ends too, so it took them a little while to find their pots of goodies.
• Last year there were also trails, but this time they were rainbows. I printed out pictures of rainbows, both a normal and reversed. The normal rainbow trail lead to their treasures. However, there were quite a few dead ends with the reversed color rainbows leading to a small pot with a note that said "This one is trick. Keep looking.".

 

• Make a scavenger hunt from the leprechaun for the kids to find their pots of gold. 

• Some fun treats for the pots/bags are: 
• green or yellow bouncy balls 
• shamrock stickers
• shamrock sucker (see shamrock sucker napkin rings above in Food for an easy to make one)
• green, gold, or themed pencils/pens
• fun pencil toppers/erasers
• bubbles
• chocolate gold coins
• green or gold Frisbee 
• gold or yellow wrapped candy (mini Snickers, Starburst, mini Reese's cups, Hershey Kisses, Sixlets, Rolos, etc.). Party City normally has bins where you can buy individual candy pieces and goodie bag stuffers, which is great for finding the colors you want! Some stores even carry bags of a single color of Jelly Belly.
• arcade tokens (or maybe car wash tokens for older kids)
• "gold" $1 coins (you can get these from the bank)
• St. Patrick's Day rubber duckies
• Small water guns or Nerf guns in yellow or green
• Cars, other toys, etc. Pretty much anything that your child likes that happens to be yellow or green colored, and will fit in a small basket or pot will work. For example, the boys are getting their own roll of tape this year because they used all of mine on craft projects. The tape cover just so happens to be green. 

What treats or tricks do you do for St. Patrick's Day?