Pine Cone Theft

Lil Man and I go for walks together, and we always head in the same direction - toward a little farm where our "best friend", the horse, lives. I'm not sure the horse knows we visit him, because he's in a barn, about 1/2 mile away from the road. But we like him anyway.

Along our route there's a house with a huge pine tree in their front yard. And we like collecting pine cones too. Now, I'm not so sure we're legally allowed to take pine cones, or if the neighbors would mind if we did. SO, I stand on the road, staring down at the top of my foot, so as to appear completely unaware of the lil man stealing collecting their  pine cones.

Of course, I cherish our pine cone stealing walks, so I decided to find a place to put them.

However, those things had been through a long winter, buried under a foot or so of snow. So you can imagine they were a little soggy. I simply placed them on the heat registers in our bathroom to dry out. (When they dry they also get nice and "fluffed out".)

However, there are two problems with this method of pine cone drying:

1. Stepping on a dried out hard old pine cone in the middle of the night with bare feet HURTS. (Sorry, honey).

2. Pine cones drying on the heat register on the floor look exactly like dog poop, if the light is just right. This can make you very angry with the innocent party.
*No dogs were harmed in the making of this project (but they nearly were).

At the end of the pine cone drying (2 days), lil man and I stuffed them into a big glass vase with twinkle lights, where we can see them every day.