My husband and I spent the weekend with friends at a family lake cottage in Northern Indiana where the oak trees were dropping acorns so fast and furiously that I thought we needed helmets!
One of our friends came up with a great idea for entertaining the kids: Offer $1 to the little one who collected the most acorns. In the end, the winner had some 550 of these fall favorites and the group of four collected more than 1,500 of them.
I couldn’t wait to scoop them and bring them home to decorate for fall. Except… I forgot them. Can you believe it?
Still, I was inspired enough to think about what I’ll do with the acorns once I am able to collect a bunch more.
My favorite is just to pile them up in glass vases or bowls, as Pottery Barn has done in the photo above right. I know…these Pottery Barn acorns look awfully gorgeous. And indeed, when you make them out of plastic – as the store has done – you can get that perfect look (which can be yours for $14 for a pack of 54 faux acorns).
But why do that when you can collect hundreds for free!
You can create the look above and the one at right (also from Pottery Barn) with the real thing. Look how beautiful they are in these glass jars with candles.
You could use the same idea to create a centerpiece. Just pile a shallow bowl with acorns, insert a pillar candle and you’ve got a great focal point.
Of course, Better Homes and Gardens has lots of great acorn ideas.
At bottom right, acorn tops are used to decorate a discount photo frame. At left is a great looking napkin ring made with acorns. You can get the full directions here, but generally you just drill tiny holes through the sides of the across and wire them together, BHG says..
I also found the interesting centerpiece below at BHG. But I’m not really sure what I think of it.
You can read some instructions for this centerpiece here but I’d love to hear what you think of it below.
