St. Patrick's Day Fun

I'm playing catch up on St. Patrick's Day Posts.....

Some fun things we have done over a few years...

We made borax crystal shamrocks.

I'm not sure if this is where I originally found the idea, but they have great instructions and photos at Housing a Forest.

We started by twisting white and green pipe cleaners into shamrock shapes. My daughter wanted them to be more swirly. 

 (instructions from Housing a Forest)

"You will need 3 cups of boiling water per mason jar, 1/2 cup of Borax for each jar.  The more saturated your solution is, the larger your crystals will be.  Stir until all the borax is dissolved and the solution is clear, add food coloring if you desire."

We added food coloring, but it barely made a difference, so in the future I would just use the colored pipe cleaners. Regardless they turned out beautifully and hung in a window long past St. Patrick's Day. 

Make sure that your pipe cleaner creations don't touch the sides of the jars.

Our largest creation wouldn't fit in a jar without touching the sides, so we used a trifle bowl. 

 Here they are after sitting for a few days. You can see the crystals forming on the pipe cleaner and also the sides of the jar. 

This is what was left behind after dumping the water. A LOT of crystals. The kids loved this little experiment.

And here are our lovely crystals.

One year we decided to make a St. Patrick's Day treat, but I didn't have a lot on hand. We decided on popcorn balls. I melted the marshmallows (recipe found at Allrecipes.com) and added some green food coloring. When forming the balls, butter your hands (the kids loved this!) 

I think I buttered the pan also so they wouldn't stick after forming.

Then we simply wrapped in plastic wrap and tied with green ribbon and delivered to a few friends. They were so proud of their creation, and they tasted great too!

A few years ago I made rainbow jello in the trifle bowl.

It was hard to see the color variation between some colors, but with a light behind it, it looked awesome! This does take a lot of time. You have to wait for each layer to set up before doing the next. so start at least a few days ahead. And then add whipped cream clouds at the top. 

To be silly I made a leprechaun beard. My little twins ran around wearing these for a few days. I cut it out of quilt batting and cut a small slit for a mouth, and two small slits for to hang it on their ears. Because it is quilt batting it has a lot of stretch and you can easily make it fit most any face. But because its quilt batting it has a lot of stretch and will get stretched out too much to be useable. But good cheap fun!

And lastly we made this super easy shamrock craft. Just cut clear contract paper into a shamrock shape (I printed one and traced it). You will want to cut two at the same time, and give the child varying shades of tissue paper squares to put on the sticky side. Then place the second one on top of it to seal it in.