Greensleeves (and Green Shirt and Green Skirt!)

Sunday nights might be relaxing for some people. But if you have school-aged kids, Sunday nights can be a whirlwind of lunch-packing, clothes choosing, and mental preparation for the school week. At our house this was true two days ago, on Sunday night. And things really were turned up a notch when one of the kids made an announcement. It was 8 o’clock and I was washing dinner dishes when she said, “I need a leprechaun trap. For tomorrow.” My sudsy hands stopped scrubbing. “You need a homemade leprechaun trap for school—in twelve hours?” She nodded. She may have mentioned it earlier than that but like many things mentioned in our household, it didn’t really stick. My brain is quite selective these days—if something mentioned does not need urgent attention in the next hour or two, it often is put aside into the labyrinth of my brain—possibly never to be seen again. Another one of our kids needed a leprechaun trap for Tuesday, St. Patrick’s Day. But this one needed to be finished by Monday? What’s this nonsense about bringing things in early? It completely butts heads with my preferred method of waiting until the day before something is due. These teachers—always wanting us to start early. Humph.

Nobody loves a craft project more than I do. But when it’s Sunday night and I’m on my last little bit of energy, this is not when I do my best creative thinking—or my best thinking of any variety. I sighed. But I reminded myself that leprechauns were counting on me to build traps for them. So I finished the dishes and busted out my hot glue gun and some paper plates. I found a plastic “clamshell” container holding some strawberries, and cut that up. Got some crayons and markers. Painted some balsa wood pieces gold. Had my daughter color a rainbow. And this is what we came up with:

Trap open:

 

Trap closed:

 

When the leprechaun is lured by the gold into the trap, the front of the trap will come down and trap him.

St. Patrick’s Day kind of snuck up on me this year. I’m not sure how I can say that, given that (unlike other holidays whose dates are not fixed) St. Patrick’s Day is always on March 17. I think I’ll blame my lack of focus on the fact that I was in full-on Quilt Mode until a couple of weeks ago. I did manage to throw a few St. Patrick’s Day decorations onto the front of the house a few days ago. And I do have an outfit I get out of the closet each March. It’s from St. P’s day three years ago and it’s still in great shape—after all, when you wear an outfit only once a year it lasts a long time! I have the green skirt, and a shamrock-embellished shirt. This year I made shamrock earrings out of felt, just to complete the look. Can you even see me in the photo below? I’m camouflaged:

My youngest child’s teacher had a green feather boa on this morning (I love her gusto!). It’s been fun to see how others acknowledged today’s color scheme. Of course, there have been a lot of rebels out there who were not wearing even a hint of green. I’ve already pinched two of them for not participating. I think I’ll go rest my pinching/typing hand now. After all, the day isn’t over yet—and there may be more pinching to do!