The St. Patty's Party That Wasn't.

(Did you know that you can dye your rice krispies treats any color you want by adding food coloring to the melted marshmallow goo? You can. You can also cut them and frost them to look like clovers. With decorator sugar. FYI.)

We had planned for a St. Patrick's Day Playdate with Logan and Savannah's friends at our house, but Savannah is now sick with a tummy bug. Last night at around 11:20 she was crying for me and when I went up she told me that she had a booboo and I asked her where. She put my hand to her mouth, threw up in it, and, when I said, "Oh, clearly you have a booboo in your tummy" she responded "No, booboo in mama's hand". Obviously this is my daughter :) Never missing a beat.

Love that.

So, anyway, we had planned this playdate and I had a few simple crafts that I thought I'd share, plus we made teacher appreciation presents (I'm in charge of that for PTA so it's on my mind)

Our first craft for the party was going to be simple foam hats with shamrock decorations. One of the reasons that I like waiting until the last minute is that I get things on clearance! I bought these things yesterday at our local Michaels for $.33 each (including the bags of foam adhesive shamrocks!!) Not very complicated, but our target audience was between 1 and 3, so simple is good. I wrote Savannah's name on hers and then let her stick on the shamrocks.
The next craft I planned was decorating little cloth bags. We were supposed to go on a hunt for gold coins so I had these small bags ($.50 each) and my fabric markers ready to go to make rainbow bags. I had a story from the library about the gold at the end of the rainbow, so the plan was to read that, decorate the bags with rainbows, and then hunt for our gold chocolate coins. Savannah wasn't much interested in this one, so I did it for her. Forgive my ugly attempt at a leprechaun.
Finally we have the teacher appreciation gifts. These are a little more involved, but we did them over two days. So, here goes. First the supplies. You will need to assemble some glue, glitter, a terra cotta pot, your green scrapbooking paper scraps, scissors, bamboo skewers, a green crayon, tape, floral foam, small brads and ribbon.
No, it's not sideways at our house, I just have no clue how to rotate pictures on here :) So, first things first, paint a line of glue around the top edge or rim of your pot and roll it in glitter. We put our floral foam inside first. Also, if you've never tried Martha Stewart's glitter- you totally should.
So, next, paint a little glue on your floral foam (or sqeeze it out, whatever floats your boat) and let your baby cut up a ton of ribbon to be grass. We also added some confetti. That's optional :)
So now we have a glittery pot of grass! Hooray! Next, cut up your scrap papers into hearts. You'll need 4 as far as I'm concerned, per 4 leaf clover. Savannah preferred 3 and Logan enjoyed 5. But I say 4. Either way, it was a good way to practice counting to whatever number. Line them up in circular formation, and attach them one at a time with the brad. We also had a little circle plastic embellishment that came in our brads. I had run out of green by the time I decided to take this picture, so there's an orange one. True story, the flag of Ireland is Green, Orange, and White. I'm an unintentional GENIUS ;)
Fabulous! Now, peel your crayon a little so that you can use it on the side and color the skewers green. I'll wait. Done? Excellent. So, now you'll want to either glue or tape them to the back of your shamrock. I'm not very patient, so we prefer tape. Once you've assembled them, stick them into your floral foam. At the end, we add a square piece of paper to a skewer and write "I'm so lucky you're my teacher" and the child's name. Or, in Savannah's case, Coach, since she has a swim coach, but no teachers yet. :) Although this would be cute for a Sunday School teacher, too, no? People tend to forget them, and they need love, too!
So, that's our party that wasn't, and our St. Patrick's Appreciation gifts. Hope you enjoyed! We're going to be around sipping gingerale and eating crackers for awhile, so maybe I'll come up with something else cute, too! We have a shamrock shaped cookie cutter- maybe some potato stamps!! With Green Paint! That'd be fun on a t-shirt!