So B started pre-k last year and before everyone gets started I know it is the middle of the year but she is in school and thats all that matters. Well she had an assignment to build a leprechaun trap. I originally thought why not just go buy a regualar trap for a racoon or possum and be done with it. Well obviously that was not going to work so I had to come up with something creative. The problem here is I've been told in the past that I do not have a creative bone in my body. Seriously I was told that. But what I lack in creativity I make up for with sarcassam. Anyway, so I figured what we could do is get us a shoe box and paint it and then put some glitter on it and some cotton balls for clouds and B could color some rainbows. Which at this point in the story I was starting to get a bit concerned with how fabulous I wanted this trap to turn out.
Well I had to run my ideas by B and see what she thought about it. She was on board. Her biggest concern was what we would do with the leprechaun once we captured him. I had some suggestions but she was not keen on them. So we needed to make a trip to Hobby Lobby to procure the needed supplies because unlike popular belief I don't keep a lot of glitter and such at my house. Whilst we are shopping for supplies we find what will make some good fake gold coins for the trap. Now I had already decided if I could fashion a pot out of construction paper that would be marvelous. After we got the "cons" B proceeds to hatch a plan for the capturing of the Green Bastard. We will put the coins in the trap, he will try to eat the coins because he is greedy as she informed me thus causing him to fall ill, and then we will be able to catch him.I told her I thought it was mean that we would try to make him sick to which she replied,"Well its better than your idea daddy. You wanted to kill him." Touche, kiddo, touche. So now we have gold glitter, gold coins, glue, and glitter clue. I am not sure why I purchased glitter glue when I just bought all the ingredients for glitter clue as well but hey thats what B said we needed. Oh and green spray paint.
so that afternoon we go to a birthday party and after it was over my buddy said we should work on the trap and his two daughters pinewood derby cars. Now last year he did this and his daughters did not do very well in the race. That was not going to be the case this year apparently because he had manuals for how to tweak the cars, axle finishing tools, and wheel smoothing mandrels. I am not making this up at all. Seems there is a whole section of pine wood derby car supplies at the Hobby Lobby as well not just Liberace decorating materials. So we have two stations setup in his barn. The leprechaun trap painting section and the derby car tuning station. The trap painting was pretty simple. Or so it wud seem but a four year old and a can of spray paint does not make a good pairing. There are portions of the trap that have a very good, thick coat of green paint on it. I didnt know you could actually mound up paint like that. The derby tuning was a bit simpler mainly because it didnt seem that we were actually doing anything. You just had to put each axle which looked a whole lot like a nail to me into a drill and one person started the drill while another held sand paper against it to smooth out any imperfections in the axle. See the imperfections cause friction and friction is a derby car's worst enemy. Same goes for the wheels. When they are popped out of the molds there are imerfections on them. So you go through the same type of process with them to make them as efficient as possible. I did not realize that this was going to turn into a derby car setup instructional blog but it seems to have done just that. You are all welcome. Anyway, it is getting late and its time to close up shop for the evening so we pack up the newley painted trap and head home.
The next morning its time to complete the construction of the trap. So B takes a paint brush and coats he inside with glue and then we pour in the glitter. While she does this I fashion me a cauldron out of construction paper. Lets just sa in my mind it looked a lot better. I guess I really don't have any creativity in me. B colors some rainbows to glue on the trap and I find some cotton balls for her to glue to it as well to simulate clouds because remember we are trying to lure a leprechaun into the trap. B starts on the cloud project and I step out of the room because why wouldn't you leave your daughter with a bowl of glue, glitter, and cotton balls? Well when I come back she is no longer working on clouds. Oh no. She is making him a bed in the trap because she wants him to be comfortable. Then she says I need to build him a stove. How am I supposed to build him a stove? She saw my pot. It wasnt very pot-like. And better yet, we are building a trap here not a lepre-condo! She said that he needed to be able to cook for himself in there because we were keeping him once we caught him. Well let me just say when she got done with his bed I think it was nicer than the actual bed I sleep on. Well we finally finsish the trap/apartment and let me tell you my living room looked like tinkerbell exploded in my house. There was glitter everywhere. I almost forgot, B also made a snowman out of playdoh for the apartment. He was glittered up aswell. Apparently everything had to have glitter on it to attract this fellow. You know how hard it is to clean up glitter? Pretty hard. My vacuum did ok except for that the wheels now have glitter all over them so there is a nice glitter path through the entire house. And i have it all over me too, looking like david bowie with glitter all around my eyes.
Anyway, here is a picture of the finished product
Happy St. Patricks Day
Oh and my buddy's kids placed 1st and fourth in the pine wood derby car race
peace out
all that's missing is the hot wire to electrocute him that bo wanted to add to hers.
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