I hosted a Saint Patrick's Day Party for my mom's club.  I did not do invitations since it was listed on our monthly calender. I also kept the DECORATIONS rather simple.  I purchased several posterboard Shamrock, rainbows, pot of gold, mushrooms, and four life sized leprechaun wall mounts. I purchased green tableclothes for the craft and eating table. For the dining table, I used my own cream tablecloth and sprinkled green easter grass along the middle and among the plates of food.  I then strung green beads from the chandlier. I then blew up dozens of green balloons and scattered them. My children also colored Saint Patrick Day pictures for me that had been printed off the internet. Plates, cups, and napkins were green or shamrock decorated.  As for FOOD, I tried choosing some that were green such as grapes, celery, and cucumbers.  In addition, the dips were also green along with the punch and shamrock shaped cookies. We also had the traditional fare of chicken nuggets, corn dogs, pizza rolls, pinwheels,chips, and veg. platter. I also had green beads for the children to wear in case they did not have anything green to wear.  I then hired a couple of babysitters to dress up as fairies and assist with the various ACTIVITIES.  First we set up our puppet theater and had a show about leprechauns. Next station was an ARTS and CRAFTS station. 1. First the babysitter teaches the children about leprechauns.  Then children make three crafts. First they decorate their own white goody bags with stickers and colors. Next they decorate their own "blarney" stones. For a dollar at walmart, I purchased a pack of smooth stones & then have the children paint them.  They are to use these in a latter game. The last craft is making leprechaun traps out of film canister which they can decorate with stickers, glitter glue, and oriental trading shamrocks.  They are also to place a small amount of lucky charms inside as bait. They are to set it out at night on their kitchen table and moms and dads while throw out the bait and replace it with pennies.  Thus, children are unsuccessful in catching a leprechaun, but he still had to pay his way out of the trap. Moms and dads can say that they saw the leprechaun should they wish too. 2. Then another babysitter paints the childrens faces for good luck. 3. The children then play hot potato and whoever is holding the potato is out, but gets a leprechaun kiss before leaving (Hershey Kiss). 4. Then have a plastic snake round up, since after all Saint Patrick is credited with having driven out the snakes from Ireland. 5. Then we have a plastic good luck coin hunt (coins purchased from Oriental Trading). 6. Then once all kids have coins we talk about how leprechauns made shoes and then we try to catch one to make him tell us where his pot of gold is. We start by taking a boot which unknown to them has a baby monitor inside and dropping one lucky coin inside. Once all children have placed a coin inside. I have them rub their blarney stones to help them have eloquent speech to help us convince the leprechaun to give us his gold. Next,I say to the boot, while holding a walkie talkie, that everyone has placed a coin inside and we are waiting for a leprechaun to tell us where his gold is. One of the babysitters hiding in another room with the other walkie talkie and baby monitor then says in a disgued voice that this is the leprechaun, but they can't catch him or find his gold which he has hidden under a rainbow. 7. The hunt is then on for the rainbow.  We go to each one until we find the pot of gold hiding under the rainbow which I already have in the nursery. Inside an old witches cauldren (now a pot of gold) are bags of oriental trading chocolates. 8. Then has a final activity we have a rainbow pinata.  After all the games have been played and everyone has a chance to eat, we then can have free play.  Since we had the potential of 30 kids, I broke the activities down into four rotating centers of six or more.  One center was crafts, the other face painting, the other eating, and the last the coin hunt, snake round up, and hot potato.  The boot game, gold hunt, and pinata were done as a group.  We did not have any goody bags to hand out. Children simply used their own white decorated bags to collect their two crafts, snakes, lucky coins, chocolate gold coins, and beads, and pinata stuffing.