This simple craft project has been around since my oldest kids were little, which is longer than I want to admit. When my oldest daughter was 2 or 3 years old she was afraid of dark holes, no matter how large or small. Even a tiny crevice was threatening because you never could be sure what would come out of it. One day she found some black walnut shells that had been spit open and the nut removed by either squirrels or insects. She began talking to me about “scary nuts.” I could not fathom what she meant so she had to take me to see them. I chuckled when she pointed to the walnut shells. I tried to show her that the holes were empty and therefore harmless, but logical reasoning doesn’t get you very far with a toddler. Perhaps she did see a worm crawl out of one of them? At any rate, black walnut shells have been known as “scary nuts” in our house ever since them. Unfortunately, our present property has a plentiful supply of scary nuts. They get dumped onto the outskirts of our lawn every fall. If they fell down looking like these, it wouldn’t be so bad. But they come down as huge green balls (the size of tennis balls) and ooze out smelly brown liquid if you let them sit too long.
Not long after we discovered the “scary nuts,” someone pointed out to us that they look like an owl’s face. We learned how to put two half-shells together to make a pretty convincing little barn owl, especially with a dab of white paint to accentuate the owl’s facial features. Of course, after that, the nuts were never scary again, but we still jokingly call them by that name. We made a few of these owl craft projects (whether to sell or to give away I can’t remember) and I think this is the last remaining craft from that batch, years ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment