Friday, January 25, 2013

Christmas Walnuts

Before Christmas, I was thrilled to find unshelled mixed nuts at not one, but two local grocery stores.  I hadn't seen them in a number of years, and remembering how much fun my youngest son and I had feeding them to the neighborhood squirrels, I bought several pounds of them.  But looking at the walnuts brought back memories even further back, of "helping" my grandma make the prettiest decorations for her Christmas tree.



I could not have been more than five or six years old when Grandma Lill sat me down at the dining room table with a stack of walnuts, a paintbrush and a cup of thinned-down glue, and several packets of pretty glitter!  We never got glitter at home, and rarely got it at Grandma's, as there were always little sparklies of glitter to be found around the house months afterward, no matter how thorough the cleanup seemed to be.  But this time was an exception.  Grandpa Bill had put a metal hanger into the top of each walnut, and Grandma "painted" them with the glue, and I sprinkled glitter on them.  To my knowledge, the one pictured above is the only one of these ornaments to have survived that wonderful afternoon almost 50 years ago.

So one day last week, I went about putting gold ornament hangers into the walnuts, and gluing them in place with craft glue.  This morning I did the fun part - sprinkling them with glitter - gold, silver, red, green, blue, and a shimmering opalescent.  My husband may roll his eyes, but I think next year we're going to have a Christmas tree decorated with sparkly walnuts.




6 comments:

  1. Happy Blogiversary! I've been a member of Geneabloggers for about five months. This is a great blogging community.

    Regards, Grant

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  2. Happy Blogiverary!! Old traditions are so wonderful. I think your walnuts will make beautiful decorations.

    Betty

    http://hooverhistory.blogspot.com/

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  3. I have two glittered walnuts, in that exact same shade of pink. Must have come from the same batch! I'm glad to hear the back-story behind them. I knew they came from Gramma's, but I didn't remember making them myself.

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    Replies
    1. I'm so glad there are more than one that survived! You must have "helped" make them as well. Love that shade of pink glitter - haven't ever seen it in stores.

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