I’ve been trying hard to bring more of the assorted holiday spirit into our home. The Older learns about them at school (which is great!), and while pulling projects and homework out of his bag after coming home, he’ll ask if we celebrate an upcoming holiday. Sometimes I explain the day is to remember someone – or a group of people – who did great things. If that’s the case, we look online to learn a little more together about person or people. For example, on MLK Jr. Day we looked online to learn more about Dr. King together, then talked about what he did and how he helped others.

However, other times it’s like he knows something is supposed to happen or we need to do an activity to celebrate the day. Apparently St. Patrick’s Day is one of these holidays. So I started to ponder… and drew a blank.

Just to clarify I’m not talking about Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years or Birthdays. I’m talking about the other ones, like Valentine’s Day or Chinese New Year, or maybe throw in Boxing Day – very important and significant, but ones that I have to consciously remember to do something. And I’m not talking about dressing up and fly our family’s freak flag each time something rolls around. It’s just something, hopefully small, to acknowledge it. There’s always something on the calendar, which can make this overwhelming. Then I’ll look at Instagram only to discover it’s National Doughnut Day or Kiss Your Local Fish Monger Day. “Where did that come from?” is my first thought. And then the second thought is more like a really long string of questions, “Who declared this? Where is this magical calendar located? Is there a secret handshake to get one? When was this announced?” I have a hard enough time remembering the actual date; how am I suppose to remember all of these national sweet and other VIP-like days? (Seriously though: where did National Doughnut Day come from? I mean, high-five to the declarer. You’re top dog in my book. I’ll eat a doughnut whenever, wherever… but how was the day picked and why isn’t it automatically on my phone’s calendar?)

Anyway, back to present day and my head-on-keyboard brainstorm session…

Thank the heavens for some great inspiration found in the form of a St. Patrick’s Day Banner on Nearly Crafty. Kate made a really cute banner using fleece and fabric glue (no sewing!). I dug through my supplies and, while no fleece was found, I have a huge variety of 12×12″ paper from the Cricut challenge I did last fall.

And from that surplus of paper, little lucky pots were created.

Creating and putting these lucky pots together was lickity-spilt fast. Once everything was done cutting on the Cricut, I used the black pot as the backer for the gold so the letters would pop a little bit more. It’s also easier for the double-sided tape to stick to regular paper instead of glitter. I ended up cutting extra shamrocks and strung a few together for another window. I also purposefully left the holes off the shamrocks – I didn’t know how I’d want to string them while creating the file. For the PDF version, i kept it a little more simple, but if you happen to have a gold sharpie or crayon, color over the letters to make them pop.

Supplies:
String
Scissors
Hole-punch
Double-sided tape or glue
Cardstock
— for the Cricut: black, gold and green 12×12″ paper, 1 sheet of each
— for the printer: white 8×11″ paper, cover-weight paper would be ideal, 1 to 4 sheets depending on size of prints

Link: Cricut Design Space

PDFs: Individual Lucky You, Individual Lucky Me, Individual Lucky Us, Mini Pots (all three on 8×11.5″ sheet), Multiple Shamrocks (9), Individual Shamrock

For Cricut Users: once everything is cut, roll double-sided tape to or glue the backside of the glitter paper and stick the black pot. For the O in “you”, take the negative center and place it in the middle of the O. If you don’t want to hole punch by hand, add in small, round holes on the shamrocks in Cricut’s Design Space.

For Printers: after PDFs are printed, cut out the items from the sheets and punch two holes along the top of each item if you plan to hang on a string.

Once done, pull the string through the holes, separating the pots with the shamrocks. After hanging them up, congratulate your crafty self for getting something up in time! Another option is just to stick a small piece of rolled tape on the backside and stick them on a window or door. Zero judgement on your choice of displaying holiday spirit.

What about you? Do you try to do something special for all holidays? Or just certain ones? Do you know who declares those really special holidays, like the aforementioned Doughnut Day? Please share below!

By the way: looking for a way to cure the Mondays? Check out Sparrow’s Facebook or Twitter page every Monday morning, by 9am PT, a video is posted in hopes of getting your toe tapping and allow you to shimmy the Mondays away from your desk. Better yet, just follow along; it’s easier.

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