nuts around here!

What we hope ours look like...
The one thing that was always hard for me when I was a children's librarian was coming up with fun crafts. I'm not a crafty person. And I don't really enjoy doing crafts--I blame this on my bf Kim, who used to force me to make jewelery and neon bracelets during our middle school years.

Prairie Dawn loves coming up with crafts and art projects and loves Pinterest and scouting out great ideas. And what great idea did she come up with for this fall? A buckeye necklace.

People in Ohio (at least my part of Ohio) take football very seriously, and the college team to root for is the Ohio State Buckeye (go Maize and Blue!--what? I'm from Michigan!). I didn't know what a buckeye was until I moved here...I mean growing up and watching sports I was dumbfounded...their mascot is...what the hell? Anyway, buckeyes are nuts--poisonous to people!!--replicated by Ohioans in a dessert which is basically a chocolate covered peanut butter ball that looks like the damn nut. They grow on buckeye trees all over the place. They were given to me during my first week with a note that said, "Poisonous to humans!" You get the point...these nuts are kinda a big deal to these people.

Well, it just so happens that Prairie Dawn's sister has buckeye trees dropping buckeyes all over the place, and so a craft project is born! This past weekend Prairie Dawn, her sister, nephews and I trekked through muddy fields of beginning wheat and into the woods to where the buckeyes drop!

Because of the recent rains the fields were
a hot mess...I felt like I'd done Zumba for 3 hours
just walking through the field to get to the trees!
We spent a hot and humid hour collecting buckeyes, having run-ins with poison ivy and mosquitoes, and those things aside, still enjoyed ourselves. Now we're letting our buckeyes dry out a little before we take them to PD's dad who will be drilling holes in them for us. Eventually these buckeyes will be strung onto necklaces with red and silver beads (OSU colors) and hopefully look something like a necklace!




Buckeyes! The one on the left still has half it's shell on.

Comments

Walt Lessun said…
Go Michigan! Crush those Buckeyes!
October 10, 2013 at 1:54 PM
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