St. Patrick's Day Decorations and Traditions!
Our St. Patrick's Day celebration has evolved over the years mainly because Elodie has felt that it's a boring holiday. And, I guess it is if you are a kid and not going out to the Irish pubs for an epic night!
Our favorite dishes: roast beef with colcannon and chocolate stout cake for dessert!
Our weird movie tradition: The Great Land of Small. This movie is so bad it's good, in our opinion. We watch it every year because it's full of randomness and 80s camp -- and it's the only leprechaun movie we've found that isn't too babyish or a cheesy horror!
Keep scrolling for our favorite crafts. These are decorations we keep and display every year.
Four-leaf Clover Flags with Rainbow
Materials:
Twine
Card stock
Pages from an old book
Pom poms
Felt glue
Elmer's glue
Gold sequins and glitter
Washi tape or tiny clothespins
Directions:
Draw out your flags and cut. We made ours from the pages of an old book. The flags are each 1/2 a page (about 4 inches). We made 8 flags for a 6-foot banner. I traced one heart from card stock and used it for all the hearts of the four-leaf clovers.
Draw out your rainbow on card stock, cut and paint. Once dry, add your pom pom clouds and black pot (we used black card stock). Draw your pile of gold with glue and heap with gold sequins, filling in any gaps with gold glitter.
We hang our banners in the same place for every holiday, so we have hooks we leave on the wall. Instead of measuring, I tie a loop on one side of the twine and hook it. Then, I pull the twine over to the other hook, cutting it the length I want.
Then we tape our twine to the floor to figure out the layout of the flags. We decided to string pom poms too. (Tip: use a thick needle and string through the center of the pom pom so the fibers of the pom pom don't fall apart.)
Attach your flags and rainbow with tape or tiny clothespins, and it's ready to hang!
L-U-C-K Wall Hanging
Materials:
Cardboard letters
Tempura paints
Pom poms
Glitter
Elmer’s glue
Hot glue
Twine
Stick
Directions:
Cut your letters from cardboard. Mine are 6 inches tall and 4 inches wide. The most important part is to make the letters the same width so they look even when stacked on top of each other.
Design your letters. We used paint, pom poms and glitter. I recommend using a thick layer of felt glue for the pompoms. We used a paint brush to get the glue into an even layer. It also helps to gently press the pompoms while they dry so they securely adhere to the glue. Place the letters under a book for 20 minutes (not too heavy or the pompoms will be smushed flat).
For the rainbow, we painted one line of glue at a time and sprinkled each color of the rainbow. We found an old shamrock necklace and attached the charms with hot glue after everything was dry.
Once we finished our letters, we used hot glue to attach loops to the top of the L and U as well as the ribbon holding the letters together.
Lie the letters on the table and make them even. Tie string through the loops and attach to the stick. Also tie string for hanging the stick. We painted our stick with glue and sprinkled it with gold glitter first!
I found I needed to adjust the strings holding the letters, so make those extra long and trim once you get them where you want them. I hung it on the wall and made the small tweaks to balance everything out. Instead of hanging our stick with twine, we cut the shamrock necklace and hot glued the beads to the ends of the stick.
Leprechaun Embroidery Hoop
Materials:
Embroidery Hoop
Scrap of fabric
Felt
Embroidery floss
Paint pens
Craft glue
Directions:
He’s a cheeky one with the side smile! I cut out the felt based on a cartoon face we liked when we did an image search. We glued the pieces together before we started the embroidery. I did pencil lines for his eyes, mouth and the four-leaf clovers around his face. Elodie did all the embroidery this time! We hung him on the wall in the hoop and enjoyed his little smiling face (until it was time to put up the Easter decorations!).
And there it is! Wishing you lots of abundance and luck in all the good stuff this season!