Wonder-Fall

Fall has recently become my new favorite season. I think moving to Virginia and having kids had a little something to do with that. For us Fall brings: 1) A break in the nasty humidity which means more time outside 2) Halloween which means creating super fun costumes for the kids 3) The obvious changes in the trees, which brings me to the subject of this post.

We recently went to the Prince William County Fair and were walking through the arts and crafts building. A hall full of fun little crafts entered by children from the area. One kid had entered an acorn wreath. Just your basic foam wreath form with acorns haphazardly glued all around it. I saw it and had to recreate it! 

For fun I searched pinterest to see if there were any pinned with no luck and then I googled it and found this tutorial. I switched things up just a bit on mine. So here's how it went. 

I made this a family affair. Wrapped up the baby in the gira my new favorite wrap. Brought the mister to reach the high branches and Enolah to scavenge on the floor, she had a blast by the way, "collecting nuts," as she put it.

For reference it takes almost a full produce bag full of acorns to cover a standard size wreath form (sorry didn't get a picture of that). The straw wreath form suggested in the tutorial worked great but it does cost $5.99 regularly at Michael's without a coupon. 

I used my sweet $5 salad spinner from Ikea to rinse and quickly dry the acorns. 

Baking them is seriously a MUST considering I left mine to sit on the deck for a day (because with a newborn my crafting time can be cut short at any point) and found a creepy worm thing had crawled out of one of the acorns. I suggest you use a foil baking sheet. These things can leak a sap of sorts and I'm glad I didn't get it on my beloved Pamered Chef stone baking sheet. Bake at 350 for 15 mins and try not to forget about them because they'll split in half. They can be safely baked with the caps on and it is easier to remove the caps after that have been baked if you have to pick any from the trees like we did. 

I attempted to glue mine on in a spiral which proved more difficult than expected. I also left several of mine acorns capped and sprinkled them in with the uncapped ones. I the acorns it natural. I didn't want to paint it because I wanted you to be able to tell these are acorns, after all this is a Fall wreath. Because we picked some from the trees and some from the ground the acorns really vary in color. I'm so pleased with the way it turned out!

 

Points to note if you plan to create one of these: 1) This thing weighs a ton! 2) You need about 10+ glue sticks. 3) Pick extra or keep your extra acorns because some are bound to fall off due to the weather or basic handling. 4) Consider sealing with lacquer and using it for a few Falls to come because it is very time consuming.