Nanny Pine-cones is a name given to me by some of Morgan's middle school friends. I have posted many times about how I picked her up from school every week on G.S. meeting day. Somehow, I would arrive to get her and "magically" have a car full of friends as well. I knew some of these girls from scouts and others from Morg's elementary school days so it was always fun to hear of their latest tales on the trips we made delivering them to their homes.
I don't like to be late nor do I like to sit in long lines for car pick-up, so on those days I would arrive well before the bell was due to ring and would park further down the street and walk up to the school. And oh how I loved to do that in the autumn...especially after I noticed the most beautiful pine-cones falling from the trees that lined the street and the school property. I have pine cones in my yard but all they produce are a mess! The squirrels nibble on the cones and the "leftovers" drop all over my drive way and, if a cone should fall, it is tight and ugly-but, I digress!
In any case, one year I decided to grab a few cones while I was waiting. I found so many ways to use them that the next few weeks I carried along a basket and gathered a large harvest each time. Of course, when Morgs and her friends came out and "caught" me, they came up with the nick-name. Of course, Morgs was duly embarrassed-or so she said-but did that cause me to stop? Of course not! My three girls were grown and not around for me to embarrass any more but I saw no need to waste my finally honed skills so, when the event warranted, I broke out everything I had ever learned on the subject of embarrassment!
And so, that somehow leads to this very long and wordy blog. You may have noticed the wooden bowl holding all of my goodies in my last post.
Do you see it down there under all of those goodies. I picked that up the other day in Target. I have been wanting a dough bowl for years but have just never succumbed to the temptation. Even when PB offered some "found" ones at fairly decent prices I held firm. I think the reason I haven't given in is just that they are so large that I would lose a lot of prime decorating space-after all, I already have my fabulous sugar mold that I can't display simply because there is no more room!
And so, when I saw this, I knew I could use it in many of the same ways as a dough bowl just in a smaller scale.
I knew immediately where it was starting out...
When first you saw these pumpkins this year they were in my LARGE and TALL copper bowl...too big for the coffee table but where I put it never-the-less. I think I knew all along that it would be moving-just not how, where or when!
I like the pumpkins so much better here...and I better like them while I can! The first few years after making them, I always stored them in the house. But, as space became more and more limited, I finally gave in last year and stored them in the garage-albeit in a Rubbermaid, sealed container. When I opened it this year, there was a small amount of "dried bean "sawdust"" in the bottom of the container. Since these pumpkins have dried beans as a bit of weight, I am guessing some bug got in there. I shook the living daylight out of them and laid them out on a white towel for a bit before bringing them into the house this year but I will be watching them very carefully for more bugs. This is Florida so we have all of the bugs we need without providing a banquet for some new ones!
Of course, I was now left with a big, empty copper bowl. What to do-what to do??
See, aren't they beauties? This is only a small portion of the pine cones I collected those years back. Maybe it's time to go fine some more...always new "victims" ready for some Nana embarrassment! Stay tuned.
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