Hats and Rainbows - St. Patrick's Day

So I realized that I never posted what I did last year for St. Patrick's Day.  Probably because I was still finishing them as I was running out the door.  Then I figured why would you need to know right after St. Patrick's Day?  I'm working on several posts right now, but since this holiday is quickly approaching I will finish it first.  To see all my St. Patrick's Day posts go here.

I made these for the kids and their teachers:

I apologize for the pictures.  Just take note that the paint scrapes off easily after it has been sprayed.  It needs some time to dry completely so it doesn't scrape off.

I just purchased the small Glad Containers:

I laid them out on newspaper:

Carefully spray paint them green:

Let them dry.  Hopefully you have a few days to let them dry so the cure all the way.  
I didn't get pictures of the next step, but wrap black ribbon around the base of the hat.  I cut out the buckles with my cricut and gypsy using glitter yellow paper.  I like the black ribbon with the white stitching best.
After they are dry you can fill them with with treasure and rainbow (or favorite treats, or gold coins, etc).  I used Rolos and skittles: 

I put the Rolos in first like gold treasure and then covered them up with a rainbow:

I don't think that I did, but you could use one of the tags I have made previously:

Those printables are found at the link above.

For dinner I went with the rainbow theme:

Rainbow Balloons hanging from the ceiling in an arc.

Individual Rainbow Fruit.  I like the fruit rainbow I made better, but these are quick and easy too.

Rainbow Jello.  

I made each color one at a time.  I decided to pour them into glasses instead of a glass pan.  It is a lot of Jello to eat though.  It took a few days, but this way I only had to use a small box of jello of each color.

I topped the jello with a cloud of cool whip.

I didn't use this for St. Patrick's Day, but I wanted to try it out.  Put food coloring in the water and then add the pasta to cook.  Obviously the red dye works better.  The one thing I remember thinking was that I needed to add more food coloring, more than you would think.  I haven't tried it again, but it is kind of fun.

See Link Party page for parties I have linked to.

Sneak peak at the St Patricks Day Treat

Here is a sneak peak at what we will be giving for St Patrick's Day. And it was NOT pinterest inspired!

Tutorial to follow, but all you need are Glad containers, green spray paint, black ribbon, yellow or gold paper, and something fun to put inside.

To see the post go here. 

A Day Full of Green and Rainbows - Part 2 (day of fun)

Now for the day of St. Patrick's Day fun.  First the leprechaun comes to visit.  He is never too naughty at our house (although with my house upside down with all the rearranging I've been doing a prank would've probably been to clean my house).  Every year the milk turns green, there are green glitter trails, plastic coins and sometimes a little extra surprise in my kid's shoes.  Leprechauns are little cobblers (hence the fascination with things being left in shoes) and I learned this year in Kindergarten that they make fairy shoes.  Last year in Boo's Kindergarten class the Leprechaun peed green in the toilet so it had to happen here too along with green footprints on the toilet seat.  

The footprints didn't show up so well in the picture and make a note: green food coloring settles so it has to be done not long before the kids come in.

There were green glitter trails to the traps the kids made, footprints along the traps, green coins in their shoes and in the traps, and a battery operated glow stick in their shoes.

Every year we make green pancakes with the milk that was dyed green (I add a couple more drops of food coloring), but we didn't get to do our green eggs on Dr. Seuss Day so I made those instead.  

Lunch is green too (some years more so than others):  Sandwich cut with a shamrock cookie cutter, green grapes, Mix it yourself pudding (Boo loved this one), Koolaid or Capri Sun that had a green label, and a rainbow cupcake shown on the previous post, etc.  Here is how I made the pudding:  In a small container I put in 1/4 cup milk and in a snack baggie I put in 1 Tablespoon pistachio pudding.  I told the kids to add the mix from the baggie to the container and put back on the lid and shake.  It not only turns into yummy pudding (don't forget to tell them to let it sit for a couple minutes - Bugs tried to eat it as a liquid), but it magically turns green.  Boo thought it was great that the Leprechaun could change the pudding green!

After school was the fun for dinner.  I usually make an all green dinner and while it doesn't bother me to eat green food everything green is a little much.  This year I made a rainbow to go with all our green:

It was so yummy!  We love fruit at this household.  Red: Strawberries (and raspberries ~ I considered using these as purple, but they were more of a dark red and there wasn't really room for purple), Orange: Mandarin Oranges, Yellow: Fresh Pineapple, Green: Grapes, Blue: blueberries, Clouds: a strawberry yogurt/cool whip dip (take a container ~or two~ of strawberry yogurt and add a few scoops of Cool Whip to taste).  I thought about adding purple grapes, but wasn't willing to spend $2.49 a pound.  There wasn't really room on the platter anyway.  This is a pretty big platter (I've never filled it before), but I could have used more room.
I also added the green food to the menu.  I made green shamrock jello (instructions below), green rice (add some food coloring to the water), broccoli, pistachio salad and chicken tenderloin cooked in cream of mushroom soup - not green - I refuse to eat green chicken. 

Now for the Jello instructions.  I found these for Dr. Seuss Day (and yes, I will blog about it, but I'm so behind).  I took two small packages of lime yellow and added 2 cups of boiling water.  Stir 2 minutes until dissolved.  Stir in 2 cups of ice cubes (not crushed ice).  The original instructions said to stir for five minutes, but I didn't.  I stirred until the ice slowed down in melting (if you have tiny pieces I recommend pulling them out now before it begins to set) and then I ended up adding a few more cubes to keep it cold.  While it was sitting on the counter with ice. . .

I beat some heavy whipping cream.  When it started forming peaks I added powdered sugar to taste (make it as sweet as you like it).  Then I continued beating until it was stiff (but not until it turns to butter ~ close though).  
I forgot to take a picture of the Jello before I started filling the cups, but it will be kind of chunky.  Don't forget to move the ice when it is partially set like this:

First I took the whipped cream and I put it in a Ziploc sandwich bag and snipped the corner.  I made it a little bigger than I wanted, but it turned out to be the perfect size.

Then I took some clear cups (5 since there are five of us) and started making shamrocks.  The method that worked best for me.  Start towards the bottom and squeeze out a straight line going up.  Then I made three circles (if you want to call it that) next to each other until they touched.  The inside looked like this:

Then I rotated the cup and made one on the other side:

 

Then carefully spoon in the Jello.  Try to work a little fast because you don't want it setting up before you get it scooped in.  Make sure you go around the shamrocks without smearing, squishing, or ruining them.  Don't worry it isn't really hard.

The top will be bumpy because it is already partially set up.  Next year I was thinking of making yellow jello the same way and putting it in black cups like a pot of gold.  (Maybe I'll try that for their lunch boxes).  Be sure to put it in the fridge so it can finish setting up.

Finished product on the plate.  My kids LOVED this!  It was a great surprise.  The best part is that I finished them within 1/2 hour of dinner, but they were set!

Here is dinner ~ a rainbow and various shades of green:

To make it a little more festive the kids had these fun four leaf clover straws and our shamrock table cloth:

I probably left off a few things, but besides running around crazily after school it was fun.  I'm always crazy busy on these holiday, but the kids love it (and so do I) while my husband rolls his eyes and puts up with it.  I view it as creating memories.  And probably future crazy moms!

Linked to:

Flour Me With Love

A Day Full of Green and Rainbows - Part 1 (getting ready)

Another Holiday and another day for me to have fun!  My husband thinks that I like the holidays more than the kids.  Maybe he is right, but I get the most joy out of seeing the kids so excited.  I also decided that he probably wishes I put as much effort into cleaning the house as I do in destroying it with all my projects :).
The holiday began on Wednesday.  I decided to make rainbow cupcakes found on familyfun.com.  I think they are SO cute, but they are a little bit of work.  Plus they only make 16 versus the 24 so if you want to make them for school or something similar you may have to make 2 batches.  Although if you don't eat a ton of cake it cuts down on the amount cupcakes you have on hand.  I made them for the kids' lunches plus took them to my scouts.
Here is how I made them:

Make a white cake mix according to package instructions.  Divide into six small bowls:

 By small I don't mean very big.  To give you an idea I used 2 cup containers and it only filled it this much:

Dye each bowl a color of the rainbow.  They have the formula on the link above, but just in case you are lazy like myself and would rather have it all in one place I'll give you what I followed:

Red: 18 drops

Orange: 4 drops red, 12 drops yellow

Yellow: 12 drops

Blue: 12 drops

Green: 12 drops

Purple: 9 drops red, 6 drops blue

FYI - Make sure your food coloring isn't almost gone.  I also didn't compare the bowls to make sure the batter was even (though it was close) so I used the one that I thought had the most as red since that was the top color.

 I used those teaspoons pictured above to put one scoop into the paper cups.  I then used the back of the spoon to spread out the batter.  The purple is spread out and the bottom left corner shows the blue one spread on top of the purple. 

I found that if I used a swirling motion (twisting of the spoon from the middle to the edge) I was able to spread the batter easier and smoother.  Also I noticed that I tended to make scoops bigger when I first started than when I ended so  I varied my starting place.  You won't get more than the 16 cupcakes so make sure you go ahead and use all the batter.  Color order: purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red.  Then the top color of the rainbow - red is the top color of the cupcake.

Here is what it looks like finished (I didn't take a picture of it cut in half, but I think I may have one left ~ If I do I will do just that). 

Here is a top view:

I just added some white cloud frosting and some 'gold' found at the end of the rainbow:  Not the prettiest topping, but I was out of time before scouts started ~ they only cared about the treats anyway.  They did like the rainbow however!

Speaking of scouts (which is where I left off before the cupcake pictures) I also made them these cute little handouts found here.  

We also took a break from the bear book and decided do something fun.  I gathered up some boxes and other containers (can, egg carton, etc), some craft sticks, string, glitter, green and gold paper, and Rolos.  Brought some glue, tape and scissors then asked the boys to make some leprechaun traps.  I even hauled my camera there with all that stuff, but completely forgot to take pictures.  They did pretty good especially since I had my 7 year old with me and I was helping her make one most of the time.  Here is what they came up with (when they had them laid out around the house):

 Boo's Trap: Used a Capri Sun box.  She covered it green paper and put some glitter gold inside.  She decorated the outside with a 4 leaf clover and a rainbow.  She put a Do Not Enter sign on the outside because we all know Leprechauns don't follow the rules.  We took the plastic container the cupcake liners came in and punched a hole in it.  We tied a Rolo to the end and strung the string through the container and up through the box.  The string was taped lightly to the top of the box holding the container up.  When the leprechaun pulled on the gold Rolo he would release the plastic cup trapping him inside.  She didn't catch him, but she did catch a few green coins and he left his footprints there!  She was so excited the next morning.

Bug's creation.  He wasn't too thrilled how it turned out, but he created it himself and used his imagination.  The Rolo was in one of the holes and the leprechaun was supposed to stomp on the paper and fall through getting caught.  As you can see the leprechaun left some foot prints and green coins, but didn't get trapped!

Like I mentioned before all of our activities are at the same time so I brought a treat for those that I visit teach that I knew would be there.  I fully intended on delivering the other two the following day, but I didn't have the time to do it and get my dinner made. 

The saying reads: You are better than any Treasure found at the end of a Rainbow!  It is attached to the rainbow candy: skittles and a treasure candy.  I fully intended to take a picture of the bag the candy came in, but got caught up in getting projects done I forgot.  It is a purple metallic bag.  The pieces are individually wrapped and say Treasure across them.  I wasn't even sure they existed, but went looking specifically for treasure candy and was so excited to actually find some!

Download all the St. Patrick's Day tags here!

I also stayed up way too late making gifts for teachers.  After starting to substitute last year I began to comprehend how much time and effort our teachers put into our child's life.  Face it they are with them for 6 1/2 hours + a day.  That is a lot of time in our child's life.  I decided that I would try to show my appreciation for them a little more often even if it is in small ways.  I had bigger plans this year, but working full time for the first time in years I wasn't able to pull it off.  I have an idea though so maybe I'll try it out next year!  Anyway back on the subject, I scoured blogs and found some fun candies and viewed other people's creative genius at work.  A few ideas popped into my head and this is what I came up with:

 

These were for their teachers and Boo's paraprofessional.  It had Twizzler's rainbow licorice in a bag with gold candy (Rolos) and Treasure Candy.  When assembling your rainbows remember Roy G. Biv

I made these bags too:

Our schools are lucky enough to have specialists: 2 PE teachers, a music teacher, and art teacher, a computer teacher, and a Librarian (fingers are crossed that we don't lose ANY of these guys with all the budget cuts).  So I made them these (after subbing for them last year I realized how much work these teachers do as well and how little thanks they get AND they have the WHOLE school to teach!):

The tags were modified to say Librarian, Art Teacher, etc.  I filled one of the 4x6 bags with some fun treats just like the other teacher's present: Twizzler rainbow (there is enough in one bag of Twizzlers to do five rainbows and YES, they have the SAME amount of each color ~ that was a great help!), Rolos and a treasure candy.  I had to trim the licorice to fit into the bag.

Then I was thinking that I keep ignoring the middle school teachers.  After all there are 7 (okay 9 since all three PE teachers work together) and I keep thinking that is SO many.  Then I realize that I just made 9 gifts for elementary teachers.  Hmmm, what could I do?  I took what was left of the candy and assembled some more bags:

They had the cut up licorice in it and the candy.  It wasn't quite as cute, but at least they weren't forgotten.  Actually some of them were (PE teachers) since I only had 6.  My new goal is to continue to find cute inexpensive gifts like these for the specialists AND middle school teachers.  I added specialists to the list last year (all my kids were in elementary last year) and now I need to incorporate the new set of teachers.  I'm not sure what I'll do in two years when they all have 7 + teachers!
I had someone say that they didn't download correctly for them.  If that is the case for you, please leave me a message.  I tried on two different computers and they worked for me.  Just in case I uploaded them to a different site.  To try that site click HERE for the same printables as shown above.

Link up to:

Tatortots and Jello

Kitchen Fun with My 3 Sons
I {heart} Nap Time 
Flour Me with Love