Sláinte!

The little Dragans and I are pretty proud of our Irish heritage, especially around this time of year!

They're also very proud of their Russian and Slavic heritage, stay tuned for an Easter recipe in a few weeks!

In a rare bout of crafty inspiration (seriously, this hardly ever happens, crafts usually give me hives) I came up with a fun little St. Patrick's Day project and we thought we'd share it with you!

 

Disclaimer: I'm not much of an artist or a craftswoman, my sister got those genes, so these aren't meant to be my entry into an unofficial "Best Mom/Artist of the Year" competition. Just a fun activity with the kiddos. Not Pinterest-worthy. Not even really #Pinterestfail- worthy, although that is a very entertaining timekiller.

We started with simple black origami boxes. I really love origami and find it really relaxing. If you want to make the simple box, or any number of other fun folds, I'd look here. I made these ahead of time for the kids, but I think B could have handled it. To jazz them up a bit we added some fun Irish sayings in metallic sharpie (!) like "Happy St. Patrick's Day" and "Sláinte" which means good health, or basically "Cheers!" in Irish Gaelic.

Then we painted cardstock strips to look like rainbows. We had markers, crayons, and watercolors on hand, and I really think the watercolors looked the best. 

I did a quick staple surgery to make the rainbow and then we glued on cottonball clouds. Thank you, Sunday school, for teaching me how to gently pull apart a cottonball until it looks like a cloud. 

Then it was time for the best part -- filling the pot with gold! We used Rolos and Hershey's Nuggets for our gold because, well, they're gold. And delicious. Obviously we sampled some, it would be very rude to deliver unsampled treats to friends and neighbors. A pretty funny dichotomy of personalities emerged in candy distribution methods. B is of the "I will count out an equal number for each pot" mentality whereas Little Guy adopted the "fistful" method in between attempts to steal more samples. Very telling. They should use this as a job interview question.

This was a really fun project and we already delivered our first pot o' gold to our wonderful neighbors. We have big plans for the weekend of St. Patrick's Day celebrations like checking out the green river and making a feast of corned beef brisket and cabbage.

True or False: I bought all of the Irish/St. Paddy's Day products at Costco.

False.
I bought ALL BUT ONE of the Irish/St. Paddy's Day products at Costco because I already had that one at home. It was the Kerrygold butter, or according to the Little Dragans: the good butter. 
Because Irish kids know what's up.
Sláinte!

BONUS BYTES FROM B

Hi,

It’s me B,

I had a great time decorating the box.

You can let your imagination go wild!

Have you ever made a holiday gift for other

people? Like us and subscribe!

See you next time,

B