Good morning! Happy St. Patrick’s Day! We’ve had a wonderful morning, with a little leprechaun magic, a surprise or two, and a prank. Those pesky leprechauns. We always think that the party we lay out for them should please them enough not to play a trick on us. But inevitably they do something prankish.

Here’s the little party we set up for them late yesterday afternoon.

While we decorated in the slanted golden sunshine and put out milk and honey and flowers, the brownies were baking in the oven. Asher poured a very generous amount of green sprinkles on top, and then we went in.

This morning, Asher discovered they’d left some rainbow colored gems and gold wrapped packages filled with candy: Skittles and some sour rainbow sticks.

Candy first thing in the morning! (There were four little packages of candy. Asher put a package on each of our breakfast plates, assuming that we all got presents from the leprechauns. So sweet!)

It’s a school day, of course, so we had to get on with our routine. Getting dressed was a little tricky, for the leprechauns STOLE ALL THE SOCKS. ALL the socks. Every pair of socks in the whole house was missing! After some frantic searching, we found them all in a huge pile behind an armchair in the living room! Pesky leprechauns!

We had green buttermilk pancakes and eggs for breakfast. I sent the boys with a few Skittles in their lunches today. I made so many pancakes I invited my parents over for breakfast after the kids went to school.

Now I have socks and gold glitter everywhere! And I have a smile on my face. I know all this is silly. I know getting up at 5:45 for shenanigans in the dark is ludicrous. I do it anyway because the world needs more whimsy, more silliness, more joy.

Tonight we’ll have shepherds pie and brownies with green sugar topping … because why not? WHIMSY! (I promise to read about the Irish famine too.) After dinner, we’ll read one or two of our favorite St. Patrick’s Day books together.

For more whimsy in your day, head over to Little Acorn Learning’s blog and enter the St. Patrick’s Day Photo Scavenger Hunt, for a discount on cool curriculum and festival e-books.

May love and laughter light your days,
and warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours,
wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world
with joy that long endures.
May all life’s passing seasons
bring the best to you and yours!

With love and whimsy, and Irish blessings aplenty, Sláinte!

Asher and I baked vegan sugar cookies yesterday. I always forget how long you’re supposed to chill the dough to make rolling and cutting the cookies easier.

Lucas, Asher, Daddy, our dinner guest Kimmie, and I decorated the cookies after supper. I think we all enjoyed it.

Aren’t they pretty? Icing made from coconut oil is delicious, by the way. We made these treats to leave some out for the Leprechauns (and for us to enjoy!).

Here is the little party we set out for the Wee Folk last night. Shamrock cookies, hot mint tea, honey, and cream.

Early this morning, we found the Leprechauns had eaten up all the goodies and left the boys presents. Two pots of gold! With five gold dollar coins each and rainbow sour candy wrapped in gold paper.

It wasn’t until later, when the boys were getting ready to leave for school, that we realized the Leprechauns played a prank on us after all. They duct taped all our shoes closed! Those wonderful, pesky Leprechauns!

Tonight we’re going to dinner at our friends’ house. We’re bringing cookies!

Faery Riders

When the moon is round and white

The Faery Riders shake the night

With song and laughter going by:

I love to hear the noise they make,

The pine trees hear it too, and wake;

It fills the room in which I lie.

I hear the trumpets long and loud,

I hear the voices of a crowd,

I hear the horses prancing by:

All night they pass, and pass, and pass,

But not one little blade of grass

Is trampled down or turned away.

If I could see their faces plain,

Or run beside the bridle rein

Of Mab the Queen, as she comes by:

I might know all the Faeries know,

And follow, follow where they go

Before the sun climbs up the sky.

But though I hurry might and main

To look out through the windowpane,

I never see them passing by.

Just when I reach the window sill

The music stops and all is still:

Only the wind is passing by.

—Ella Young

“It is summer,” said the fairy,

“Bring me tissue light and airy;

Bring me colors of the rarest,

Search the rainbow for the fairest

Seashell pink and sunny yellow,

Kingly crimson, deep and mellow …

Bring me diamonds, shining brightly

Where the morning dew lies lightly …

With an art no fay discloses

I am going to make some roses!”

—Mary F. Butts

May your pockets be heavy and your heart light.
May good luck pursue you each morning and night.

Yesterday afternoon, on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, we did some fun things to prepare for the coming of the Leprechauns. Asher and I made brownies together. We happen to know for a fact that Leprechauns LOVE to eat brownies, particularly if you cut them into shamrock shapes!

Then we set about finding natural materials in our yard from which to make a Leprechaun house. Is it hard to see there, up against the “rock” wall of our house? It has a flag on top of the roof.

We found some lovely squarish sections of bark that worked beautifully for walls. Then with short sticks and long pieces of bark found in our garden beds, we roofed the house. Lucas came home with Daddy just in time to help with the construction.

He carefully cleared an area for an outdoor picnic table, and gently placed small stones that Asher gathered to make a cobblestone pathway leading from the door of the Leprechaun house to the picnic area.

Asher especially enjoyed gathering items to use for our project. He gathered stones, spiky balls from our liquidambar tree, flower petals, and clover. He even found a small fairy jewel that we set into the cobblestone path. The spiky balls became a kind of garden fence.

Asher picked lots of “salad” clover for the Leprechauns to eat. We all thought the flower petals gave everything an attractive, magical ambience.

Isn’t that a handsome house? We thought it looked very cozy and perfect for little fairy folk.

This is the picnic area, complete with bark table and tablecloth, plenty of salad, and bark benches for sitting on.

Our Leprechaun house is right beside our “shamrock” plant and right where we always leave out treats for the Leprechauns. So we knew they would check that exact spot. We hoped that they’d enjoy the house and have a party there!

Then we feasted on a greenish dinner of sausage and egg wraps (green, spinach tortillas) with green (brown) rice and salad. The boys enjoyed the wraps a lot! Fortunately, the Leprechauns never eat all the brownies, so there were enough for us to enjoy for dessert.

We always give the Leprechauns milk, honey, and a brownie on the night before St. Patrick’s Day. Leprechauns can be so tricky, and we find that if we leave them yummy treats, they don’t pull pranks on us. Usually, they leave gifts in return.

We were pretty confident that they would be nice this year. Doesn’t that venue look inviting?

This morning, Lucas and Asher found GOLD NUGGETS on the cobblestone path. The milk and honey and brownie were all nibbled. Only crumbs and drops remained on the plate outside. But inside! The boys found Leprechaun dolls on their breakfast plates, with new notebooks for writing in! So I guess the Leprechauns liked our treats and the house we made for them. It seems, however, they couldn’t resist being a little bit tricksy after all. We found all of our shoes in a huge pile by the front door!

I figure we got off lucky, though. Leprechauns can cause all manner of mischief. In fact, Lucas was excited to get to school to see what naughty pranks the Leprechauns did there during the night! (I confess, I think they looked around in our messy house and figured, what’s the point? It already looks like a tornado hit this place!)

Tonight we’ll be having an Irish stew for dinner with some Irish deedly-deedly-dee music. We have some fun Leprechaun stories to enjoy after dinner, too. How will you celebrate? How will you invite magic and good luck into your home?

May good luck be with you wherever you go,
and your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow.

I decided I wanted to make a new decoration for St. Patrick’s Day this year, and since Lucas was home sick for a couple of days, I took some time to work on it. Although it’s probably too late for anyone to make this for this year, I’m going to walk you through the steps to make a jolly ring of dancing leprechauns. Because this project has multiple pieces to it, this will be long.

I would say that anyone with a medium amount of needle-felting experience can make one of these, as I consider myself to be an intermediate-level needle-felter. So, without further ado, let’s get started.

Materials

* wool roving in plain white and multiple greens and browns; you may also want scarlet (leprechauns in some Irish stories wear scarlet caps or scarlet vests)
* foam base and felting needle (any guage)
* chenille stems for crafts (aka pipe cleaners)
* multiple-needle felting tool (optional)
* carding brushes (optional)

Step 1: Fashion a round mat of white wool. Use your multineedle felting tool if you have one, for it will make the creation of the wool mat faster. You want your mat to be a good 1/2 inch thick, when it’s firmly felted.

Step 2: Now add thin layers of colored wool in any arrangement you like to the top of your white mat. I used a mix of greens and browns to create a realistic patch of earth.

You’ll get more realism if you card some greens and browns together to create a blend of colored wool for your mat. Occasionally lift your round mat off the foam felting pad and needle it from the back for a while. Flip it again, working the wool from both sides to felt the fibers together.

Keep felting until the whole mat is fairly firm and holds together when you lift it up. Here’s how my mat looked when I felt it was done.

Step 3: Begin your first leprechaun. Bend one whole chenille stem (I like to use white) in half gently. Now hold it about an inch down from the top bend and twist the top using your other hand. You’ve just created a loop at the top. Open it out into an oval shape of wire. Cut another chenile stem in half. This will be your figure’s arms. Just where the neck is, twist your small chenille stem so that it anchors onto the neck like you see in the photo below. Now you have a wire skeleton. Bend over the ends where the feet and hands are a tiny bit so that there’s no pointy wire sticking out. Roll a small ball of wool and place it inside the wire oval. Begin felting it into a nice head shape.

Step 4: Now begin wrapping your skeleton with small bands of wool roving, needling it down into place so that it stays together by attaching the fibers. Wrap more and more wool and continue needling until your Leprechaun has a “body” of white wool. The hands are the trickiest part, in my opinion. You have to wrap them enough so that the chenille stem is invisible, but not so much that you have big, puffy hands.

Here’s my lady Leprechaun in progress. She is just about ready for clothing. The more you needle your figure, the denser the wool will become. By focusing on certain parts, you can sculpt the wool to be dense and narrow where you want it to be, such as at the figure’s neck and arms.

Below is a male Leprechaun in progress. For male figures (or female figures wearing trousers), you have a choice: You can fashion the legs together (just like you would for a skirt for a female form) and then create the impression of separate legs by needling a line down the front of the figure, or you can wrap each leg separately. The advantage to creating separate legs is that your Leprechaun will look more like he’s dancing. The disadvantage is that it’s much harder to get the Leprechaun to stand upright and not fall over. (More about that later.) If you intend for children to handle or play with your Leprechauns, you should create a sturdy base by keeping the legs together.

Step 5: Dress your Leprechaun with bits of colored wool, needled down into the white body. I decided my Leprechauns would all wear greens, but in my reading about Leprechauns, I’ve found a number of stories that refer to little men in scarlet caps or red vests, too. Obviously, if you are making gnomes or fairies rather than Leprechauns, your “clothing” can be in any colors you wish to reflect their characters.

Step 6: Now give your figure some hair and/or a beard. My Leprechaun men didn’t look complete to me until I gave them caps for their heads also. It’s easy to create elaborate hairstyles for your lady Leprechauns, if you want. If you prefer your soft sculpture dolls to be in the Waldorf style, then leave their faces blank. Your child’s and your imaginations will fill in their features. If you’d rather give your Leprechauns faces, feel free to do so. Your needle can even sculpt delicate or bulbous noses, eyes, mouths, and eyebrows, if you like. Hmmm … I wonder what color eyes Leprechauns have.

Step 7: Repeat steps 3 through 6 until you have as many Leprechauns as you want! I managed to make four, two men and two women. I think I’d like to craft two Leprechaun children to add to my group, but I ran out of time this year.

Step 8: Now arrange your Leprechauns in a ring on your needle-felted mat, and begin needling their feet into the mat. You may have to do this a long time to get them to stand, especially if you made the male Leprechauns with separated legs. Mine wanted to fall over a lot (that’s the disadvantage I mentioned earlier). I opted to place “ribbons” or cords in their hands, to help complete the ring. My son Lucas enjoyed braiding bits of roving to create the cords for the figures to hold. If there were more than four figures, I don’t think the ribbons would be necessary. Once you get them balanced, you may want to leave them be! Will your Leprechauns face outward or face into the ring?

Here’s my finished Leprechaun ring. I also took a shot of them dancing around a pot of gold.

Now put on some Irish music and dance like your Leprechauns! Please let me know if this tutorial is helpful to you.

This beautiful book is by one of the most prolific and popular children’s writers of all time, Jane Yolen. Child of Faerie, Child of Earth is a sweet poem in which a magical boy meets a human girl, and together they visit each other’s very different worlds.

“He was a child of faerie folk.
A child of sky and air,
And she was a child of humankind,
Of earth and toil and care.
They met in the dusk of Hallow’s Eve,
When widows grieve
In widow’s weave.
They met in the dark of Hallow’s Eve,
She had flowers in her hair.”

The girl spends an enchanted night dancing among the faeries. The boy asks her to stay and be his elven queen; “Become a child of night, we’ll dance between the hollow hills bedecked in candlelight.”

But she knows better; it’s not her place. In turn, she leads him into her daytime world, and shows him the colors and textures of human life.

“He drank cold milk and ate brown bread.
He made a bed.
He cleaned a shed.
He followed everywhere she led,
Then round about again.”

“Oh stay with me dear faerie child,
And live here on the land.
We’ll till the soil, we’ll plow the field,
We’ll harvest hand in hand.”

He considers her offer under the cold, cold stars, but realizes this will never do. “You work. I play. I must away. I’ll keep the night and you the day.”

And so they part, but not without an exchange of gifts; she gives a fresh hen’s egg and with his magic, he extracts a feather from within it (“I give you this that comes from that”)—tokens for each to keep and to guide each back to the other. They are forever friends.

This book is so charming and full of magic. It’s perfect for little ones who believe in faerie folk and the magic of Halloween, but aren’t ready for the scary stuff.

“Be bold, be brave, be unafraid, and join that faerie ring.”

Jane Dyer is the illustrator of something like fifty children’s books, including Time for Bed by Mem Fox and When Mama Comes Home Tonight by Eileen Spinelli, two other favorites for small children.