Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We love this holiday at our house! This year, my son has been very excited about Leprechauns. They've been talking a lot about them at school. Their class leprechaun, Lucky, has been leaving little shamrock footprints around the classroom, and creating lots of messes while the students aren't there. At Grandma's house, some milk was left out in a little pitcher, in case the leprechauns were thirsty. In the morning, the milk, poured into Kade's glass, magically turned green! He was convinced that if he drank it, he would be magical just like one of them. Last night, they caused more havoc in Kade's room, knocking down his giant robot.

Kade had a class assignment to create a Leprechaun trap. Here is what we came up with! The three of us made it together, but Kade did a large part of the work, and made all the decisions.

We painted a piece of cardboard green, painted a gold road, and stapled shamrock wire garland around the pathway. The straw ladder leads up to the top of a painted and decorated laundry soap container.

Doesn't it look enticing up there? We wanted to lure the leprechaun to the top of the ladder to see the pot of gold. We put lots of signs around, because as we all know, they never follow the rules!

The cauldron holds a ton of gold
(little rocks that were rolled around in gold paint).

It sits at the back, so the leprechaun has to step onto the disguised trap to get to it, and he'll fall into our little playouse.

Inside, Kade made a very comfy pillow to land on so the leprechaun won't get hurt. The floor is covered in plush blue fleece carpet. The cardboard table holds a little bowl (the dome top of one of those quarter machine ninjas) filled with Lucky Charms cereal. A "TV" on the wall is on for his enjoyment. There is even a cute window, complete with curtains. But how come he can't see outside?

Peek-a-boo! There's Kade, lifting the secret flap on the outside to peer into this tiny playhouse and see if he has caught anything!

We hope we have made this little trap so inviting, the leprechaun won't even want to leave! I am excited to pick up Kade from school in half an hour and see what happened. But if we don't catch any this year, we can always try again next year!