Acorn Garlands

Okay, I admit it. We did these back in October, when acorns were plentiful. But, we still have ours hanging for the Christmas season, and I still think they are beautiful. I have been thinking of adding a couple strands of cranberry garlands to hang with them. And, if you're anything like me, you very well may have a stash of acorns hanging around still that you collected in the Fall.

I first saw acorn garlands on The Magic Onions, and while I love theirs, we made ours a wee bit differently, for a couple reasons. For one thing, they were making theirs to hang on a tree, and ours we hung free, I wanted the acorns to hang upright and in the same direction. I didn't want big gaps between the acorns, because there would be nothing, like foliage, filling them in. The other reason I went with this method was that we had a lot of acorns, and I did not really fancy gluing all their caps on. In addition to that, many of the acorns were very fresh, and so their little hats were still very secure, but I knew as they dried out they wouldn't be. We made some to give as Christmas gifts, and I didn't want them shedding their fruit on unfortunate giftees. 

And so I drilled my holes through the caps, where they punctured through both the cap, and the nut itself. This way, once strung, the twine holds the acorns together. I can even say now that this actually works, since it is a couple months down the line and many of the acorns are loose in their hats now, but they are held fast. This also places most the weight of the acorn below the twine, so that they stay upright.

I set Kaia to work with a big, blunt embroidery needle, threading acorns with wooden beads between them. Make sure you have a good sturdy yarn if you want to use yarn, the acorns get awful heavy and our first garland snapped in the middle the night after we hung it up. After that, we used kitchen twine, and it has held fine.

At 3 years old, Kaia absolutely loved this activity. She liked that she was "sewing", and she really seemed to enjoy the challenge of getting the needle through the little holes. She put three beads between each of her acorns, and concentrated very hard on getting the right number in the right order each time.

She was so very proud of her work!

Katalin gave it the taste test, (not very good,) and of course the chickens had to come see what we were doing and if we would feed it to them.

Kaia even kept on going, threading away, all through me getting Katalin changed, nursed, and down for her nap. I am thinking that I may need to order some wooden acorns that I can drill holes through. A nice bucket of acorns, big wooden beads, yarn, and "needle" would probably go over very well. :)

We put some strands away for Christmas gifting, and hung one up over my kitchen window. I think they are so lovely!