Use What You’ve Got Birdfeeder

Last week the girls were asking to make a bird feeder, remembering back to my young years I thought about the pinecones my mom would let us paint in peanut butter and then roll in birdseed. Well we have no pine cones at our house and I didn’t want to go buy them just for a bird feeder. I’m the “use-what-you’ve-got” type of girl. We have two huge trees in our front yard, I’ve heard them called sweet gum trees, gum trees and spikey ball trees (my kids and I). They drop these small spikey looking balls every fall and winter, they are literally everywhere. 

Now with these all over our yard I had to make a choice to embrace them and find ways to use them in crafts, decor, etc. or hate them and let them drive me nuts. The first winter we were here I decided to choose the former and made my first craft with them, a wreath for my front door. I hot glued them to floral wire cut into 3 in. strips and then stuck them in a straw wreath form. Then I spray painted the whole thing silver (my Christmas decor is blue, white and silver).  I loved the finished product and use it every year now.

OK, so I got off on a tangent… Where I’m headed with this is I decided to use these spikey looking balls to make bird feeders out of!  We covered them in peanut butter.

Then we rolled them in birdseed.

The girls loved rolling them in the seeds, and then we used twine and a large stick we found in the yard to tie them up and then hang outside. The girls asked to hang it close to the house so that they could watch the birds eat so it’s under our back porch awning, please excuse the dead garden, trees, yard, etc. it is winter

Well that’s it! Simple and easy using the crazy seed pods from our yard, a large stick that fell from a tree in the backyard, some peanut butter, birdseed and some twine from my gardening supplies. It was a fun afternoon craft for me and my girls. Thanks for stopping by 🙂

Johanna