Making a St. Patrick’s Day Leprechaun!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! 🙂 Did you remember to wear green? I hope nobody pinches you if you forgot! Today’s post is about making a leprechaun out of a paper plate! Sound fun? Let’s get started!

You will need a small paper plate that is blank on the back, some orange yarn (I couldn’t find solid orange yarn), glue, scissors, a peach or tan crayon, a black marker, green construction paper, a set of large wiggly eyes (or draw your own eyes) and some scraps of black, yellow and orange construction paper.

You will create your leprechaun on the BACK of the plate. Depending on how you look at the pictures, you might think we used the front, but we didn’t. 😉 Use the peach or tan crayon to color the back of the plate. It’s rather hard to see in the picture because the color is so light, sorry.

It’s time to make the leprechaun’s hat. Using the green construction paper, cut out a simple hat.

Use a strip of black paper to add a band to the hat.

Now we’ll make the buckle for the hat. Cut a square from the yellow paper that is a little bit larger than the height of the black band. Cut a small square from the black paper that is smaller than the yellow square. Glue the black square in the center of the yellow square.

Glue the buckle in the center of the black band on the hat.

To glue the hat onto the leprechaun’s face, apply glue to the top portion of the plate where the hat will touch.

Press the hat onto the plate.

Next cut 2 eyebrow shapes from the scrap of orange paper. Glue them on just below the bottom of the hat.

Glue on the wiggle eyes or draw on some eyes with the black marker.

Now draw on a bit of a nose and a mouth.

Cut a bunch of yarn pieces around 3 1/2 – 4″ long. You will need a lot of them! Lol This bunch is just a start. 😉 I used 102 pieces of yarn.

Put a small line of glue on the plate where the leprechaun’s chin would be. Lay the ends of the pieces of yarn on the glue, lining them up evenly.

Continue adding pieces of yarn until the leprechaun’s beard is as full as you want it to be.

And you’re finished! Great job! Your leprechaun is now ready for St. Patrick’s Day! Better keep an eye on him because leprechauns can be pretty sneaky and they love to play tricks on people! 😉 Happy St. Patrick’s Day! 🙂

Making a Super Simple Shamrock and a Four-Leaf Clover

St. Patrick’s Day is tomorrow! Do you decorate your house in green four-leaf clovers and shamrocks? Maybe some leprechauns and pots of gold? Here is a super simple way to make some greenery for tomorrow! All you need is a piece of green paper, a green pipe cleaner, scissors, a pencil and some tape. Start by making a square piece from the green paper.

First we will make a four-leaf clover. Fold the green square in half.

Then fold the paper in half the other direction.

Use your pencil to draw a heart shape on this little folded square. Keep the folded side at the bottom.

Use your scissors to cut on the line you just drew.

Open the paper up and you have a four-leaf clover! 🙂

Turn your four-leaf clover over and tape the pipe cleaner to the back side.

Turn the four-leaf clover right side up again and there is your finished project! Great job! You can go on to color or decorate it if you want to.

Now, using the same idea as we did for the four-leaf clover, we can make a shamrock with just a couple of cuts with the scissors. Cut on the fold lines and remove one heart shape.

There is your shamrock! Tape the pipe cleaner to the back to have a stem for your shamrock. If you would like to, you can cut on the folds where the heart shapes meet, but only cut about half way. Then the leaves on your shamrock can separate a little.

I hope you will have lots of fun making four-leaf clovers and shamrocks for St. Patrick’s Day! 🙂

Taste Testing Tuesday #69-Healthy (Mostly) No Bake Cookies

For today’s taste test, we’re bringing you some Healthy No Bake Cookies! It says “Mostly” healthy because the cookies themselves are pretty healthy, but then it depends on what you add to them how healthy they end up. 😉 For instance, if you add raisins, you’re all good. If you add mini M&M’s, well, not quite so good. Lol My daughter shared this recipe with me after her kids gobbled up a batch in record time. (Thanks, Megan!) Their batch of cookies looks awesome!

Here is the ingredient list:

In order to make this a taste test and to have some different types of cookies to choose from I made 4 kinds. But I’m getting ahead of myself! First, let’s gather up the ingredients.

Add everything to a medium sized bowl. Remember to melt the coconut oil.

Mix the ingredients together with a spoon. I didn’t add the “goodies” to begin with, but just mixed up the cookie dough.

I divided the dough into 4 small bowls and then added a different special ingredient to each bowl.

Mix the dough in each bowl and then make 3 or 4 cookies from each bowl by using a teaspoon to scoop out the dough onto a plate.

#1.) I added raisins.

#2.) I added mini M&M’s.

#3.) I added mini chocolate chips.

#4.) I added candy sprinkles.

Put the cookies into the fridge for a little while to help the cookies set up. I wonder what things you will add to your cookies? You could try some chopped nuts, peanut butter chips, butterscotch chips or maybe some tiny candies that match the season or holiday.

What type of cookie is your favorite? How about which one is your least favorite? I hope this will spark some ideas and fun for your family! 🙂 Happy Taste Testing Tuesday to you!

It’s Time to Hunt For Leprechauns!

It’s that time of year again! St. Patrick’s Day is getting close! Have you noticed anyone causing mischief around your house? This time of year they say there are leprechauns lurking about and they like to play tricks on people. They are so quick and small that they are hard to see. But here’s a trick for you – make some leprechaun binoculars to help you look for the leprechauns!

You’ll need 2 empty toilet paper rolls or 1 empty paper towel roll (cut in half), some construction paper, scissors, glue, markers, a piece of string or yarn and whatever you want to decorate with like mini pom poms or stickers, etc. First cut a piece of construction paper the length of each empty toilet paper roll and long enough to wrap around it.

Glue one end of the piece of construction paper to the empty toilet paper roll, then wrap the paper around and glue the other end.

Hold it in place a little bit till the paper holds together on its own.

Do the same thing for the second roll.

Glue or use double sided tape to hold the 2 rolls together so they look like a pair of binoculars. Decorate them in ways that might be appealing to a leprechaun. They seem to like green, white, black and gold or the colors of the rainbow. Here I added some mini pom poms.

I added a rainbow and a shamrock to my leprechaun binoculars. What will you add to yours?

Poke a hole at the top of the binoculars on the two outside edges. Tie one end of a piece of string or yarn to each hole so that you can wear your binoculars around your neck.

And there you are! You’re ready to go looking for leprechauns! Happy Hunting!! 🙂

Let’s Do Some Riddles!

I realized today that we haven’t done any riddles on here in quite a while. So try these riddles and see if they make you laugh. 🙂

#1.) What did 1 waffle say to the other waffle?

Answer: “I like you a waffle lot!”

#2.) What do you call an alligator wearing a vest?

Answer: An investigator!

#3.) What did the horse say when it fell?

Answer: “I’ve fallen and I can’t giddy-up!”

#4.) What do you get if you put 4 ducks in a box?

Answer: A box of quackers!

#5.) What do you get if you cross a pig and a centipede?

Answer: Bacon and legs!

Well, what do you think? Are those riddles funny? Did you guess any of the answers right? I think my favorite one is #5. 😉 Be sure to try these riddles on your friends and family! 🙂

Looking For Hints of Spring!

It’s only 10 more days until the official first day of Spring!! Are you getting excited? Whoohoo, I am! It’s going to feel like winter and it’s supposed to snow this weekend, but Spring is really just around the corner! It’s time to take our annual walk around outside (bundle up if it’s cold where you are!) and look for hints of Spring. Here’s a few that I found today!

Look at the trees. Are they starting to get buds on them?

Violas are some pretty dainty, but really tough flowers and I found one blooming today!

The daffodil flowers are pushing their way up through the ground.

I can’t remember which flower this is at the moment, but, hey, it’s green and it’s growing! 🙂

This may look like a pile of old dried up leaves but look closely and you can see some green leaves growing down inside there! Can you spot any?

Some of our favorite birds are showing up at the bird feeders again! I counted 15 different kinds of birds here the other day. 🙂

Our dog, Rusty, found this chipmunk hole today. He’s on the lookout now for the occupants of that hole. 😉

Now it’s your turn! What signs of Spring can you find outside close to where you live? If you get some snow this week or weekend, don’t get discouraged because Spring is almost here!! 🙂

Taste Testing Tuesday #68 Sausage and Cabbage Soup

Hello, again! Last week for Taste Testing Tuesday we talked about ways to try eating cabbage. For this week, I wanted to share a recipe with you that I’ve eaten ever since I was a little girl. It’s original name was a bit off putting, so we will simply call it Sausage and Cabbage Soup. Now that the weather has turned colder again, it’s a great time to try some hot soup to warm your family up! Let’s start with the cabbage. Cut up about half of a large head of cabbage into small to medium sized pieces.

Place half of the cut-up cabbage into the bottom of a crockpot.

You will need about 1 pound of your favorite ground sausage. You can use rope sausage too and just remove the casing. You can use whichever level of spiciness in your sausage as your family likes.

Peel around 6 or 7 nice sized white potatoes. I used a few more than that because some of our potatoes were pretty small.

Chop the potatoes into small pieces.

Layer half of the cut up potatoes on top of the layer of cabbage.

Break half of the uncooked sausage into small pieces on top of the potato layer.

Make a second layer of each thing…cabbage, potatoes and sausage pieces. Now my crockpot is full.

Add salt and pepper or other spices to suit your family’s tastes. Pour water over all until the water comes up about halfway in the crockpot. Cook on high 4-5 hours. Stir once or twice while it’s cooking. When the cooking time is done, you will have a warm hearty soup! The ingredients will cook down and will look like less than you started with.

Each person can add more salt or pepper or other spices to their individual bowl of soup. I hope you will make this soup and your family will give it a taste test! 🙂

The Never Ending Laundry Pile

Do you ever feel like your laundry is never done? I mean, as soon as you put that last clean pair of socks in someone’s drawer, you turn around and there are dirty clothes in the hamper again! I shouldn’t complain because there are only 2 of us now but boy, do I remember what it was like when there were 6 of us living here! 😳 For a lot of people, Monday is laundry day. So I thought we could all use a bit of humor today to help us chuckle as we tackle the laundry mountain once again.

Yeeesssss, laundry will always be there for us! Our washer decided to quit working and so I made the trek to the laundromat today. So now I have 6 loads of laundry to dry! Soooo fun!! If today is your laundry day too, I’m sending you warm thoughts to keep you going! 😉 Just remember, one day your kids will be big enough to do their own laundry!

Yes, Sometimes My Experiments Fail

If you’ve ever thought that just because I have a blog, everything I try as an experiment has worked, let me set you straight! As the title says, sometimes my experiments fail! LOL I have had some MAJOR fails and I thought that today I would tell you about one that might tickle your funny bone and also help you see that things don’t always go as planned for other people too. 😉

I’ve been wanting to try to make the colored frozen balls I saw on Pinterest that look really cool outside in the snow. It’s easy, they said. Nothing to it, they said. One person said if you use food coloring gel, mix it in water and then fill up a balloon with it. Ummm…how exactly do you get colored water INTO a balloon?! (Fail #1) Another person said to put some food coloring into an empty balloon, hook the end of the balloon over your faucet and slowly fill the balloon with water. Sounds good, right? Everything was going along fine until it was time to remove the balloon from the faucet. I didn’t stop to think that there was PRESSURE inside the balloon and as I started to slip the lip of the balloon off the faucet….yep, it SPRAYED red food coloring/water all over the kitchen sink and the surrounding area. (Fail #2) I managed to shut off the spraying balloon and struggled to tie it closed. Finally, my first success! Time to clean up the sprayed mess before everything turned red…

Now for a blue balloon! This time I thought I would be smart and before I took the balloon off the faucet, I decided to twist it a few times so it would be closed. No spraying, right? Well, there was no spraying, BUT the balloon neck broke and stayed on the faucet and the rest of the balloon fell down into the sink. The blue water inside the balloon came gushing out and a tsunami came out of the sink, down the front of the cupboard and all over the kitchen floor. (Fail #3) Oh my, is right! Time to clean up a blue mess…

I decided I would just try 1 balloon since I was not having much success so far. I sat the red balloon outside on our little cement steps/porch so it could freeze overnight. The next morning, I checked the balloon and it felt solid! I thought I better move it into the grass before cutting the balloon off so I started to pick it up…aaaaand the balloon broke on it’s own. The best part was that the water was NOT frozen solid so when the balloon broke, the ice/water inside came gushing out all over the cement steps. (Fail #4) I grabbed as much of the ice as I could and dropped it into the grass. Where it, of course, broke into several pieces.

I ran back into the house to get a pitcher of water to wash the porch area off before it turned red. The end of that experiment!! Haha! But I still wanted to see the frozen colored shapes so I found some small containers and decided to use them.

I made 6 colors of water.

And put them outside to freeze.

Wouldn’t you know, the temperature stayed above freezing for several days. (Fail #5) Finally last night the temperature got down to 18 degrees. 🙂 Tomorrow is supposed to be a warm day, so I hurried outside this morning to check on my cups of colored water. They were frozen! (Well, kind of frozen…)

By now all the snow has melted, so putting my frozen shapes onto the dead grass doesn’t have quite the same effect. (Fail #6) I popped each one out of the containers and lined them up.

They did look pretty cool! (Just use your imagination that they are sitting in a nice white mound of snow.)

If you are an observant type of person, you might notice that the tops of the shapes have holes in them. Yea, not frozen completely. And now my gloves are very pretty colors and in the laundry. (Fail #7) Just for fun, before all the liquid ran out, I stacked them in a pyramid. (Does that count as something right happened?!) Lol The sun is shining today and the temperature is in the 40’s, so my colorful pyramid is now gone.

So if you try any of my project suggestions on this blog and things don’t go as planned, DON’T feel bad!! I’ve lost track of how many experiments I have tried that didn’t work for me and never made it to a post. 😉 But my husband and I had a few good laughs over my mishaps so maybe some good did come from it after all. 🙂

Quick Spring Decor Kids Can Make

Here is a cute and so simple way to make some great looking spring decor! You will need a pint canning jar (or other clear jar), some M&M’s candy and some artificial flowers.

Fill the jar with the M&M’s and cut the flowers to the size appropriate for your jar. Stick the artificial flowers into the jar with the M&M’s. And that’s all there is to it! 😃

How’s that for an easy and quick spring decoration?! So cute! 😉