sooo. . . had a few folks ask me if I was going to do the whole Black Friday thing to which I said calmly- are you nuts??
I can't really even remember the last time I even attempted something like that,and it was probably for some craft supplies. Now I did have to think twice when I saw my local yarn shop advertise a hefty sale for this morning, and they tried to tempt me more with cinnamon rolls, but something about sleeping in and not getting out of my jammies till after turkey leftovers for lunch seemed like a much better decision!
Making time is now in overdrive and we had fun making some sweet little gift boxes just right for hmm let's say:
*a marble or two
*mini wood acorn
*chocolate kiss or hard candy
*coin
*ring- hint for my hubby!
So here is a quick tutorial on how we did it:
1-find the biggest Jumbo walnuts that you can. Experiment with roasting some in the oven and leaving some out. We found this article on how to get clean halves. Seemed to work pretty well, but maybe shorten the roast time a smidge so the shells don't become too hard- i.e. brittle.
2- open the walnuts along the seam, we actually did not use any of out nut crackers for this. Clean out the nut meat inside and save for cooking or snacking.
3- Jasper used a sanding attachment on my dremel tool to smooth the inside roughness.
4- use a very small drill bit to create a hole on each side of each walnut shelf half. I held the halves together to place my holes. Drill slowly and patiently and be prepared for some of the shells to crack.
5- create a inside hinge by tying bakers twine inside, then use another piece of bakers twine, this time stringing through the holes so that your bow is tied on the outside so your gift receiver can see where to open the walnut.
6- fill and give!
Now a note on breakage, be prepared to have many cracks discards. We would say started off with 15 nuts, and between the opening and hole drilling we ended up with 5 little surprise nut boxes- not too bad for odds. Not sure if I am up to making these for all the boys classmates this year, but for the cousins maybe!
Best part- you still have the yummy walnut meat to make something delicious with. Hope you like the tutorital! And just for the heck of it I will give away one little surprise nut box that my boys and I made today, I will surprise you with what is inside!
Leave a comment between now and Sunday at midnight and you will be entered to win- good luck!
