the pine cones are coming! the pine cones are coming!

No matter which way you walk up - you cannot miss the 40 foot white pine that towers over our home. Outside of the annoying roof scraping in a windstorm & loudly dropping pine cones; it's kinda pretty.

I've forever been fond of pine cones and their little 'bug apartment layers.' (that's what I thought when I was 6..) They're neat, complex little bits of proof that nature is pretty damned majestic.

When it's time to clean up ... the pine cones are annoying.
When it's time to craft .. the pine cones are made of awesome sauce. :)

In line with my simple/budget friendly Christmas theme - I decided to make use of the little buggers. Despite the 30 degree weather - we slapped on coats, gloves & hats to brave the cold and gather our 'supplies.' ( By "we" .. I mean everyone minus the teenager. She was on a really good chapter and couldn't be bothered. *insert semi-eye roll here* )

After we grabbed what I thought to be sufficient pine cones; we laid down newspaper on the back deck & spread the cones out to be 'Christmasified!'

"Let's paint!"

Spraying them turned out to be a lot easier than I anticipated. The 'force' of the spray rolls them around on the paper & you can use science to help yourself :)

I used a nice shiny gold spray, instead of glitter; because glitter is evil. It invades your home and won't go away like Dr Oz, on a lazy afternoon.

We had to go out and grab a few more cones, because the first bunch wasn't sufficient. (By 'we' I mean I made the teenager put down her book and go grab 20 more ...*evil grin*)

We let them dry/air out as well as took some time to recover from the fumes. It was a lot of 'up close and in your face' spray-painting and I'll use a mask next time. I found some containers & displayed them throughout the house. That's it ... 30 minutes .. easy peasy :)