It was a big time, of course. St. Patrick’s Day was fun for all of us, I think. We crafted. We decorated.

In between epic puddle splashing and a during jolly good time in the heavy rain, we set up a Leprechaun party complete with shamrocks in a vase of water, table with acorn cap cups, hyacinth flowers and bird berries.

The path we lined with white stones was very inviting to the wee folk.

I had made some secret presents: wooden clothespin Leprechauns. A boy and girl for each of my sons.

Even though we made that lovely party space and put out brownie treats for them, the Leprechauns couldn’t help themselves. They pulled a small trick on us anyway and piled all of our shoes in the entry, blocking the front door. It’s in their nature, you know. They’re tricky!

They did, however, leave the boys some treasures. A set of rainbow gems for each and a note.

“Thanks for the goodies, and thanks for the laughs!

On your way outside today, did you trip over our gaffes?

We’ve enjoyed your hospitality, and so we’d like to say,

We’ve left a little gift or two to brighten up your day!

We know you like bright jewels, so shiny and so fine,

Nearly as much as we do. So, we’ll share a few this time:

A rainbow for your pockets, to keep and hold and share.

Our gold we’ll keep for now! Try to catch us if you dare!”

Apparently, Leprechauns think they are very clever.

I didn’t snap any photos of our green shamrock pancakes or piles of golden eggs. I was too busy tucking in with and enjoying my fellas. It turns out that clothespin Leprechauns are great for homemade zip-lines. Then we readied our home for a  fun party with our friends. We enjoyed a yummy lamb stew, kale salad, and soda bread (from a mix). Today, Asher is talking about his Leprechaun friends.

Hope you had a festive holiday, too!

There is a deliciously long list of fantastic things in my life lately. And because I have a moment or two, I’m savoring them. What’s not to feel grateful for?

~ Hosting friends for a kid-friendly St. Patrick’s Day party, complete with my first from-scratch lamb stew. Yum!

~ Cleaning our home for this party. A party is the best reason to clean.

~ Reveling in a surprisingly work-free weekend, when I expected to have to buckle down.

~ Watching my boys play with total concentration with their “cousins,” who are so very dear to us all. They are so comfortable with each other.

~ Observing how these children are all growing, growing, growing in myriad beautiful ways.

~ Brunching with friends most of Sunday, complete with a skip out to a nail salon with my girlfriends for a pedicure and pink/purple iridescent polish. First one in … years. So luxurious and fun.

~ Inquiring into the health of parents, backs, workouts and …

~ Listening, witnessing, offering friendship and support.

~ Having enough home-raised eggs to give some away.

~ Choosing the prudent path of getting home before it was too late to ready ourselves for a busy, exciting week. It’s a little sad when the fun ends, but letting go feels good, too.

~ Studying spelling words (Norse god names) with my son, who it going to nail them, I think.

~ Preparing for Lucas’s special week of one-on-one time with the Waldorf school’s farmer. Five extra-early mornings to greet and care for the animals of the school farm—a rare opportunity for any child.

~ Realizing that it’s OK that all the rain boots are still wet on the insides from Friday’s splashing and galloping in rain puddles. It was worth it.

~ Painting for an hour or so in my home until the daylight fled and I could no longer see the colors well enough to continue.

~ Eating a simple, delicious, fulfilling dinner with my tired, happy family.

~ Getting everyone in bed early to rest up for Monday and the early alarm.

~ Signing up for my first plein air painting workshop next month—at an iris farm, no less. SQUEE!

~ Thinking—hard—about getting more exercise. Yes, I’m slowly warming up to the idea. Mustn’t rush these things.

~ Noticing buds on my lilac, tons of new growth on my clematis vine, morning glory seedlings popping up, and growth on my new-this-year irises.

~ Balancing our many social opportunities with our need for downtime, hopefully in the right proportions, for the next few weeks.

~ Feeling excited and grateful that Lucas got the part he wanted in the fourth-grade play. It’s so wonderful to see him reach for something and catch it!

~ Rejoicing to see my little guy’s imagination blossom with Leprechauns and sweet mischief. “Shhh! Mama, do you hear the Leprechaun laughing? I think he’s over there, under the couch.”

~ Loving my husband more and more every day.

Here’s some more simple, impromptu St. Patrick’s Day kid crafting. We made pipe cleaner (they’re called “chenille stems” nowadays) leprechauns, shamrocks, and rainbows yesterday.

Tonight we’ll be soaking the rainbows in a Borax solution to grow crystals on them. This is an idea I first saw on Pinterest, then traced it to here. It’s originally from Sweet and Simple Things, and this is where I first saw the shamrock shapes, too. Holiday science!

Lucas decided to weave his pipe cleaners to make little woven rainbow diamond shapes.

Solstice helped by looking handsome and providing moral support for our creative impulses.

Here’s Lucas’s invention. He bent in all the ends to keep it from unraveling.

We hung our little creations with sewing thread on a twig with several branches. If our crystalized rainbows are successful, we’ll hang those here, too. I think it will be festive for our little party we’re having tomorrow.

And since it’s still raining around here, here’s a sweet Irish blessing I love.

May the blessing of the rain be on you—
the soft sweet rain.
May it fall upon your spirit
so that all the little flowers may spring up,
and shed their sweetness on the air.
May the blessing of the great rains be on you,
may they beat upon your spirit
and wash it fair and clean,
and leave there many a shining pool
where the blue of heaven shines,
and sometimes a star.

We are sick. Well, Lucas and I are, and we spent the day at home. This afternoon we rallied a bit and managed some impromptu crafts for St. Patrick’s Day. So, these kid-friendly St. Patrick’s Day paper ornaments were born. I offer these in the spirit of using what you have on hand for some low-key fun.

Materials

• 2 paper plates
• watercolor paints and brushes
• watercolor paper (optional)
• scissors
• ribbon or yarn
• compass and hole punch (optional)

Tutorial

Insert your scissors into a paper plate and cut along the outer ring and cut out a shamrock shape from the center of the plate, leaving the bottom of the shamrock’s stem attached to the outer circle. I cut out a three-leaf shamrock and a four-leaf. If you get ambitious, you can cut out the figure of a standing leprechaun, leaving both feet and one hand attached to the outer circle. This is harder to do, but give it a try. You can choose to draw your design on the plate first, or just eyeball it, start cutting, and see what happens.

Now get your kids to paint your design. Painting is such a great activity when you need to rest or cultivate calm in your home.

If you have the type of paper plates with a coating on them to make them less absorbent, then you will probably also want to paint a circular background on watercolor paper. Do you know where your compass is? If you have one, it makes this step a lot easier. Draw a circle that will fit inside your paper plate. I painted rainbows on some circles to use as backgrounds. I love rainbows.

Your children should also paint the back of a second paper plate. Be sure to wait until all the watercolor painting is completely dry before you assemble your ornament.

With hot glue, glue your circle background into your bottom plate. It will cover any design on the plate and compensate for that water-resistant coating.

Like so. The design that is still visible around the edges won’t be visible in a minute.

Now stack your front cut-out design on top of the bottom paper plate. Using hot glue, seal the outer edges together. Press them firmly to make them stick nicely. You might have to apply glue in six or seven spots around the circle.

Finally, punch a hole in the top, thread a piece of ribbon or yarn through the hole, and hang your ornament.

Late Winter, Early Spring

Busy gnomes chip away
At the winter’s hard ground,
So that bulbs may burst forth
And spring’s beauty abound.
In the woods, damp and dark,
They must labor below
Crooked roots and cold stones,
Pushing stalks through the snow.
Undines melt snow until
Water can flow again,
Filling the leaves growing
Green with spring rain.
Sylphs, they are dreaming
Of winds softly streaming
Through petals all yellow
And purple and blue.

—Eugene Schwartz

I have a deep and abiding love for mobiles. Holiday decorations that hang can be very festive without taking up too much space or cluttering your nature table. Here’s a St. Patrick’s Day leprechaun mobile that is easy to make and quite whimsical.

Materials

• foam base and needle-felting needle
• wool roving in gray or black, green(s), and skin colors
• low-temperature glue gun and glue sticks
• one twig approximately 18 inches long; ideally it will have a 6-inch straight section in the middle
• gold ribbon, gold foil, or gold tissue paper
• 1-inch ribbons in rainbow colors, approximately one yard of each color
• yarn or string, approximately 2 yards
• needle, thread, and scissors

Money-Saving Alternatives

• Narrower ribbon in rainbow colors costs less. Although I used 1-inch ribbon, you could use several strips of the same color ribbon to create a 1-inch band of color for each color of the rainbow.
• Instead of 1 yard of each color, you could use only a half yard. Your ribbons would be a single layer, not double as in the photos below.
• Check your gift wrap stores. You may have some gold tissue paper or ribbon left over from a package.

Tutorial

To begin, tie two pieces of yarn or string (each about a yard long) to your twig, approximately 8 inches apart. Hang the twig from the two strings more or less horizontally (adjust the position of the two ties on the twig as needed). Then tie a knot in the two strings about 8 inches up from the twig. This will make a triangle of string above your twig. Tie your twig to something so that it hangs freely at shoulder level so that you can work on it comfortably.

Lay your ribbons over the twig in rainbow order. Their two ends should be even at the bottom. Make sure you like the position of each ribbon before you affix any glue. (You can use clothes pins to hold them in place while you decide on their optimal positions.)

With your glue gun, put a dab of glue on the inside of one layer of a ribbon and pinch the other layer over the top of the warm glue to fix the ribbon to itself. Repeat this for each color. See the photo above.

Now, take your gray or black wool roving, felting needle, and foam pad and needle-felt a pot. This will be your pot of gold. Mine was about 2 and ½ inches in diameter. If you wish to have a sleeker look for your wool pot, you can first shape it with your felting needle, then wet-felt the pot in hot water with soap. Gently rub your pot inside and out with soap until the fibers mat firmly together. Rinse it in both hot and cold water.) Shape it carefully into a pot and let it dry. You may still want to apply your needle again to perfect the pot’s shape.

With your green and skin-colored wool roving, needle-felt a leprechaun. No wire skeleton is needed for this project and since this figure will not be played with, you can attach head, hands, legs, shoes, and hat by simply needling the fibers together. Start with a torso and arms. Add legs. Add a ball of skin-colored wool for a head.

Your leprechaun can be as traditional or as unique as you like. Mine was a kind of Waldorf-inspired figure dressed in several greens, with a jaunty hat and dark green vest.

Stand your leprechaun on top of your horizontal twig. With needle and thread, sew your leprechaun’s hands to the yarn or string hanger. (Feel free to adjust the knot above the leprechaun‘s head as needed to make it possible for the hands to hold both strings.) Finish off the two yarn/string knots on the twig by tying them securely and cutting off the excess.

When your pot is dry, crumple your gold ribbon, foil, or tissue paper into a mound of gold and place it into your pot. You might want it to heap above the edge of your pot. With a long thread, sew up from the bottom center of your wool pot, through your gold, and back down a couple of times. On the way up again, extend your long thread all the way up to your rainbow-covered twig and tie your thread securely to the center of the twig. You’ll probably want to tie it in between the yellow and green ribbons. Cut of the excess thread tail. Your pot of gold should hang a couple of inches below your twig, at the end of your rainbow.

Find a nice spot in your home to hang your St. Patrick’s Day mobile with leprechaun and pot of gold, perhaps in front of a window, where fresh spring breezes will make your rainbow ribbons flutter.

* This article was originally published in the Little Acorn Learning March Enrichment Guide.

Oh, Saturday. How I love you! I swoon with love for you!

Any day that starts with an extra hour of delicious morning sleep is tops. Why does morning sleep feel better than any other sleep?

My day started with coffee and some new window stars. Both of these are first attempts at new patterns.  The red flower was tough because I had to trim my small 6 1/4 inch square kite paper into teeny-tiny rectangles with a particular height-to-width proportion. Like, with MATH.

It would have been easier with bigger paper, as the instructions call for. But I’m happy with the result. See the little red star in the middle?

The pink one with the open center is kind of a showstopper, I think.

This little darling accidentally flew into our window today. She stunned herself pretty badly, and allowed Ian to pick her up and place her into this tree. At first her eyes were closed and her eyelids were kind of twitchy. Later on, she was like this, eyes open but not ready to fly away. Then, she was gone. I hope she’s OK now. She might be a goldfinch, but I’m not sure.

We have four two-day-old chicks in our home again. Here they are at one day old. We got two Black Sex-Link chicks (who are certain to be female because the male chicks look different at hatching) and two Silver Laced Wyandotts. At first I was sure I’d play it safe and get four Black Sex-Link chicks to guarantee we were getting females, but then the Silver Laced Wyandotts wooed me with their gorgeous adult plumage and I succumbed to temptation. Let’s all hope together that they’ll turn out to be hens, OK?

The chicks are much more sturdy on their pins now. Lucas is enjoying them a lot. We are debating about their names. Ian wants to name them after sci-fi space princesses. Lucas is in favor of Norse goddess names, although he also likes the idea of calling them Bear, Raven, Duck, and Chipmunk because, well,  that’s funny. Asher seems to want to keep with the theme of nature oriented names like our other hens. He has thoughtfully suggested Moon, Star, Rain, and Tornado.

My garden is coming alive again in small ways.

This new forsythia was allegedly a flowering quince when I bought it and planted it late last spring. I’m not sad because it’s gorgeous.

Asher received his first lessons in chess today. My heart skipped a beat when I saw this. Is he really old enough to start learning chess?

Lucas practiced piano and cleaned his room today. We also went to the library and got him his own library card.

And although I don’t yet have a photo, I spent some time today painting my kitchen door turquoise. I’ve been wanting to paint this door for twelve years now. Ridiculous, but true. And why turquoise? Well, why ever not?

We had yummy French onion soup and steak and asparagus for dinner. We read leprechaun stories at bedtime.

Life is good. I love Saturdays.

Yesterday we said good-bye to a favorite hen. Midnight passed away in the afternoon. She was a great hen with a lovely disposition and gentleness, and she laid gorgeous, huge brown eggs steadily for us for a year and a half. She was two or more years old when we rescued her. She seemed to have a steadying influence on the other hens. She was large and fluffy and her black feathers were soft and iridescent in the sunlight. She was Ian’s favorite of all of the girls.

Last fall, we noticed her belly was distended and so we researched online to find out what might be up with her. We found evidence to suggest that she was perhaps egg-bound, and although we did the things that were recommended to remedy it—ridiculous things like giving her a bath in warm water—nothing changed for the better. Yet, she didn’t die like the Internet said she surely would do within a few days. In fact, she lived another three months, ate heartily, grew her bottom feathers back in,  and …. then lost them again. Our theory is that she overwintered OK because she wasn’t laying, but now that spring has ramped up the hens’ egg-laying, she was egg-bound and it did her in.

Or we could be totally wrong about all of that. We’re just guessing.

Anyway, although I thought there might be great grief when I told my children about losing Midnight, they surprised me by taking it in stride. Lucas wanted to see her dead body, and then seemed to accept that she was gone. Asher was mildly interested but not upset. I’m grateful for Emily Mouse (our deceased pet), who paved the way for our experience of losing an animal. I also think that the addition of Solstice Dog to our family has given my children an understanding of what is a “proper” pet, and so the chicken seemed less important.

And while it’s quite silly to be very sad about losing our Midnight when we are a family who eats chicken three times a week, she was, nonetheless kind of a pet.

Rest in peace, Midnight. You were a great chicken.

Are you excited about Saint Patrick’s Day? I am because we can do anything we want to celebrate. I’m a big fan of “minor” holidays for this reason. We can be creative and silly and spontaneous, and even do something different every year, if we want.

I thought I would share this with you. I made up this shamrock window transparency, building on what I’ve learned from Magical Window Stars by Frédérique Guéret. Although there is a beautiful clover leaf design in the book, this is not it. This design that I’ve created uses the square kite paper that is most commonly available. The basic point I teach below is Guéret’s invention, but the configuration and the assembly of the shamrock was my idea. I hope you like it. In any case, I fully recommend this book if you love window stars like I do.

Materials

• 7 sheets of square kite paper in dark green
• scissors
• glue stick
• tape
• ruler or straight edge for making crisp folds

Tutorial

Fold your square into diagonals.

Now fold opposing corners to the center line (photo above). The top is now a horizontal fold that is parallel to your horizontal crease.

Unfold the bottom corner; the crease you made will be used later. From the top, folded edge, fold the right side down to meet the center horizontal line (photo above).

Do the same to the other side. Now you have a point at the top again (photo above).

Fold the bottom corner up to the horizontal crease line (photo above).

Now fold both sides in to the center vertical crease. This step looks like an airplane or maybe a sailboat. Do your best to keep the top point crisp.

Open those sides out again.

Now fold the bottom sides up so that the flat bottom edge aligns with the center vertical crease (photo above). Unfold those bottom sides again.

Now fold the left top side in again, allowing the corner to touch the horizontal crease you made in the previous step. Your top point is becoming more acute.

Above is a detail of this step. See where the left edge folds in and meets the crease? The corner touches the horizontal crease.

Now do the same with the right side.

Open out the innermost flaps of the top point, allowing their “wings” to extend beyond the edges of the sides.

From the bottom center, you have two diagonal creases. Fold the very bottom edge on both sides up, aligning the bottom edge with the diagonal creases.

This photo above is a detail of that final fold. Congratulations! You’ve make one point. Now— sorry about this part—you repeat that process five more times, so that you have six of these points. Two points will make one lobe of your shamrock.

Once you have six of those points, you can make the stem. Take another square of kite paper and fold and cut it in half. Now fold and cut piece in half again and cut along the fold. You should now have a skinny, rectangular strip that is one-quarter the width of the original square.

This long strip is the stem of your shamrock. Fold the bottom of the strip like the photo above.

And fold the top of the strip in the opposite direction, like so. This makes it kind of curve. You now have all the pieces you need and you can assemble the shamrock window transparency.

For each lobe of the three-lobed shamrock, you’ll need two points. The sharpest point—what I was calling the top in the photos above— goes in the center. The front side of each piece is the side with the points. If you run your fingers across the front, they will catch on the little triangles created in the folding process. The back side is smooth; your fingers won’t catch on any part. Turn one of the two points over so that the back side is up, as in the picture above. Run your glue stick along the right edge (where the glue end of the glue stick is in the photo above).

Align the points at the bottom as close together as you can, hold your two points up to the light, and align the darkest edges side by side, as you see in this photo above. They make a very dark upside-down triangle in the middle. The broad (formerly bottom) end of your two points will be overlapping. You now have one lobe of your shamrock done. Do the same thing two more times to make two more lobes of your shamrock.

If it helps, hold up each lobe to the light before gluing them together. You should see a medium green triangle in the center when all three points are aligned. Now put all the center points together on top of your stem. Glue them to the stem with your glue stick so that the points of the center are just barely touching and the three lobes are almost touching halfway up, just beyond the edge of that inner triangle. The stem should extend down in the gap between the left and right lobes of the shamrock.

Now you can hang your shamrock in the window. Make three or four loops of tape and put at least one on the back of each lobe to stick it to your window. Perhaps your window shamrock with bring you good luck!

The Dear Little Shamrock

There’s a dear little plant that grows in Ireland.
‘Twas Saint Patrick himself sure that set it.
And the sun on his labor with pleasure did smile.
And a tear from his eyes oft-times wet it.
It grows thro’ the bog, thro’ the brake, and the mireland,
And it’s called the dear little Shamrock of Ireland.

That dear little plant still grows in our land,
Fresh and fair as the daughters of Erin,
Whose smiles can bewitch, and whose eyes can command,
In each climate they ever appear in:
For they shine thro’ the bog, thro’ the brake, and the mireland,
Just like their own dear little Shamrock of Ireland.

That dear little plant that springs from our soil,
When its three little leaves are extended,
Denotes from the stalk we together should toil,
And ourselves by ourselves be befriended.
And still thro’ the bog, thro’ the brake, and the mireland,
From one root should branch, like the Shamrock of Ireland.

—Andrew Cherry

Or, What I Did on My Vacation

OK, I admit I’m completely obsessed with window stars lately. I think I mentioned that here a little while ago. Anyway, we had some time off last week and I took all my kite paper and window star books along with me to the mountains. I was determined to challenge myself to make some of the more complex stars. While I was there, in between working, eating, and playing outside, I made eight new stars.

I also accidentally wrecked one, but shed only a few tears about that.

The more you make them, the easier it becomes. I guess I got into a kind of flow.

Lucas helped me make this beautiful multicolored star. He did most of the white center. I’m hoping he’ll want to make some more with me. I think stars like these may be our birthday gifts for everyone this year.

I love the way the light shines through them and I confess I’m crazy about the colors.

My boys wanted one for their room in their favorite colors, blue and green. Now that we’re home again, the stars have all found spots on our windows here, sharing space with the Valentine window transparencies I made last month, which are still up because I adore them.

I’ve also been experimenting and will share my results very soon, if it all works out the way I think it will.