Seeing Green

It's St. Patrick's Day Eve. I love the color green. I really have no other ties to the holiday other than the fact that I'm about leprechaun height and I want to find gold at the end of a rainbow. But I do love holidays! I wish I had a big box of decorations for each month/holiday that I could decorate with each month. I think there's something so magical about decorating and I just love it. Sometimes I think what traditions I like the most and now that I'm older I have ideas in my mind of what traditions I think would have been fun as a kid.

I babysat for a family one weekend and it happened to be St. Patrick's Day on Sunday. I was there Friday-Saturday night. On Saturday I told them some made up story about leprechauns and how nobody has ever been successful at catching one, but that if anyone tried to catch one the leprechauns would leave a gift behind. It was silly but they bought it. The key to success when selling a story to skeptical kids is inflection. First you lower your voice so it's like you're telling them a secret, you make your eyes wide and get really into what you're saying. Once you can see that they're hooked you become animated but not overly so, you don't want to give them reason to question your sanity. Every story has an ending and ending it with a flourish helps seal the story.
The story was my bait and once I was done, they were on the hook. I had planned ahead and brought a shoebox and other misc. supplies as well as crafting supplies. All day Saturday I kept them entertained by decorating this box with all sorts of green and rainbow craft stuff, paper, glitter, stamping, coloring, cutting out shapes, etc...Once they were done we found a quiet corner of the house and set our 'trap. We rigged a little system like you'd use to catch a rabbit (like I know what a rabbit catching trap is...). It was the box standing on it's end with a stick propping it up. We used a little bit of lucky charms as bait under the box.
That night after reading stories and tucking them in I waited until I knew they were asleep (they were REALLY excited for the next morning so it took some time). I had a hidden bag with chocolate coins, green clover confetti stuff, a few other St. Patrick's Day themed items/toys, nothing fancy at all. I made a trail of green confetti on the hardwood floors and put all the goodies under the box and removed the stick so it looked like something had knocked it over.
I explained to their parents when they got home and they thought it was fun. Well the next day at church they were like, you're wonderful but those kids were up at 6am to check their leprechaun trap...woops...they weren't really mad though.
The kids were really eager to show me what the leprechaun had left them. They each had their own animated story about what happened and how it had gotten away. They were beaming as they explained it all to me.

This doesn't have much of a point other than if you ever want someone to set a leprechaun trap I'm your girl. I haven't caught one yet but never say never!

Honestly the idea of setting this sort of thing up makes me so excited (don't worry I'm not going to because that would be weird). Maybe in an alternate universe where I had kids I would be setting up that surprise right now! I'm like an old kid. All I want is a bouncy house and a pair of heelies. #isthattoomuchtoask?