Hey! Kirsten and I will be on Channel 2’s Fresh Living today sharing fun ideas to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with your kids! Set the DVR or tune in at 1 pm if you want to catch us (you can see the segment right here!)
In our house there’s a mischievous little leprechaun that visits St. Patrick’s Eve and he wreaks all sorts of havoc on our home. He leaves little foot prints all over the house, clues that takes us on a gold hunt are mysteriously left behind, our furniture is turned over, and he always turns our milk green. Trouble I tell you! In order to put a stop to this we’ve started leaving out a leprechaun trap in the hopes of taking care of this leprechaun once and for all.
Here are a couple different ideas, if you’d like to set a leprechaun trap this year too! The main point is to have fun and let imaginations run crazy. I picked up some gold glitter and green spray paint at Hobby Lobby and we found objects around the house to use for our traps.
For trap #1 we painted a shoe box green and some wooden discs (that I bought years and years ago for a project I never got around to doing) that we sprayed gold. 
Knowing how greedy leprechauns are, this pot of gold will be our bait for the trap. I found it at the craft store and tied and glued it to a dowel.
We used the dowel to prop open the shoe box, glued spanish moss on the lid and scattered our gold “coins” around. My 5 year old can’t wait for the leprechaun to grab the pot of gold, which will in turn pull the dowel and close the lid before the sneaky little creature can escape!
For our second trap we used a pirouette cookie can covered in scrapbook paper (this is a Crystal Wilkerson digi paper I printed off) with a piece of paper sprayed with the gold glitter paint on the inside. Conveniently there is a ladder propped up to the side of this Gold Vault with a KEEP OFF sign the leprechaun is sure to ignore. Once he enters the vault there will be no way to get out!
If you’d like to have a Gold Hunt at your house too, Hannah has designed some cute clue cards to get you started!
These leprechaun trap ideas are just too clever and cute! Your little one must be beside himself with anticipation.
Awe…too cute! I miss the days when my kids were little enough to do this sort of thing with them! 🙂 – Karen
I can’t wait to see the TV spot footage. What fun little traps. Clever, clever. (Though I am a little worried about the hole in the PediPed box making for a good escape hatch…)
The hole is actually for air. Live leprechauns are much better than dead ones! Don’t worry a lot of thought and deliberation was put into that hole!
I think the little pot of gold trap is awesome. Very cute and so many lovely little details. What a great idea for St. Patrick’s day. Thanks for sharing it.
Another fun treat!!! Thanks for sharing!!! I hope you don’t mind, but it was too cute not to share over at orangepeanut.com
This is just the cutest idea I have seen. I love and and my kids want to make it. I would like to post on my blog and add the link to you guys. Two thumbs up.!!
We allow one picture from our post to be used with a link back! Thanks tons!
What a fun idea! So creative! I’m featuring this at my Friday Favorites party this week. Please come by and check it out!
What do you say when they don’t catch one? Or what do you place in there?
Oh we never catch one! Those leprechauns are sneaky little things! Most of the time the trap is tripped and evidence is left behind showing that it was close, but he got away. As much as my boys would love to catch a leprechaun they really enjoy plotting and trying to figure out how to improve their traps from the year before–it’s all about the chase!
i also would like to know what you tell the kids when you didnt catch them i want my daughter to do this in her kindergarten room
I FEATURED this on my blog today! I hope you can stop by!
http://keepinitthriftyandrea.blogspot.com/2012/03/st-patricks-day-inspired-crafts-and.html
XOXO Andrea