Popping Pine Cones For English Cottage Gourd Birdhouses

It's time to get busy again pulling pine cone petals for " Our Pine Cone Roofed English Cottages ". It takes a lot of time and patience to do pine cone roofs .

It takes cutting them all to different sizes, your fingers and hands get ALL sticky from the sap on some of the pine cones and the pine cone petals . It will wash off after you wash them a few times but take note to plan on sticky fingers and  the glue sure doesn't help  with the fingers sticking together.

These have pointed tips 

You have to pull the petals all the way off the stem so you get the whole petal, Don't worry in the process you will break a lot of them  ( which means they would not have worked in the first place they were to thin ) Luckily we have trees with pine cones that for me work out pretty good. I would LOVE to get my hands on some of those big hearty pine cones. 

 A Closed Pine cone of course these won't work

After we pull all the petals off the pine cone we just fill up gallon size baggies, zip them shut for further use. It takes an amazing amount of pine cone petals to fill a gallon size bag, Also it takes many many to do one roof on our " Old English  Cottage  Pine Cone Roofed  " Gourd Birdhouses .

I always start off by painting the top of the gourd black where I think I want to start the roof. The reason for doing this is so of course none of the white will show through , You could actually paint it any color you may want too, I just prefer to use black or brown ,

This is what they look like when the roofs are done , of course I'm still doing the roof on the one on the far right. The two in the middle are base coated with the colors I am using for the birdhouses, one is a Slate Grey and the other is Itilain Sage.

Yes these are the finished birdhouses. you can see the Pine Cone Roofed Old English Greyatone Cottage Gourd Birdhouse here at Our Etsy Shop :  https://www.etsy.com/listing/493177808/unique-pinecone-roofed-old-english?ref=shop_home_feat_4 As you are reading this I am getting  to list the Itilian Sage Cottage Gourd Birdhouse .

 Of course We are NOT done with only these two ,,,,we have many more to come and a New way of making our Pine Cone roofs will be popping up in our Etsy Shop soon, So keep on checking back ,
We  would LOVE for you to give us some ideas on :

What colors shoud we paint some of the next birdhouses ?

Any other suggestions you might like to contribute ? We would Love some feed back ...

Thank You for stopping by . We sure hope you enjoyed reading what we LOVE to do  !

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READ ALL ABOUT IT !!! NEWS FLASH !!!

Our Etsy Shop has GONE International !! We are now open to sell our items from our Etsy shop over seas  to Canada, United Kingdom & Australia !

So come check  us out ! Hope to see you soon !

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32nd Annual " Dickens Of A Christmas " 2016 - Franklin Tn

Well off to the 2016 - 32nd  annual Dickens Of A Christmas Festival in Franklin Tennessee ! It runs the weekend and this year it falls on Dec 10-11.  I was unable to attend the festival last year as I had just gotten out of the hospital. So this year I was bound determined to go  ! I had gone with my sister a couple of years back and she was not able to go with me this year , my husband had never been..... so guess who went with me ..... He LOVED it !  It's like stepping into the past .. Beautiful period of time, towns people dress in the Amazing dresses of the past with the large hoop skirts and the proper sometimes whimsical hats .The theme of Christmas Past, Present and Future.

The whole downtown of Franklin is shut down and the streets are lined with crafter's selling their goods .

It seemed like every time I turned around to take a picture, a Dickens Character would be walking by or standing on the street talking to somebody or taking pictures with someone ....That must be why they call it   A Dickens Christmas ....

Bob Crachet , his wife and Tiny Tim

Lots  and lots of people and crafters ! More than I remember from the last time I came here .,which was only a couple of years ago.

 They had the old fashioned  English policeman  which are called "Bobby's" and yes we saw a few of them walking around and standing on street corners ....but nobody really knew if they were present day police dressed up as a "Bobby" or if they were just dressed for the  " Dickens " Festival ....hummmm

This young mother was walking with her little boy pushing him in an old fashioned sled. They were in front of us and I stopped her and asked her if I could take a picture of them and she was just so happy that we wanted to take a picture of them.

A Group of Carolers

Jacob Marley

A Snow Opp picture !

Christmas Future

Just getting to the Dickens Festival

English Bobby's

Bronze Chimney Sweep

Caroler's

I hope you liked walking around with us and enjoyed the videos
of  the " Annual  Dickens Of A Christmas "  in Franklin Tennessee. It is so much fun to even just go to Historic Franklin on any given day just to walk around downtown . They have so many Unique Crafter's and yes there is definitely something for everyone !! Lots of live music from up and coming singing artist to old time Christmas caroler's  standing on corners. Dickens character's asked if you would like to be in the picture  with them.Being my husbands first time he had so much fun , he couldn't believe how the Historic town of Franklin goes all out at Christmas time and Yes he said he would be coming back next year with me !! I could see about setting up our booth there but I/We really enjoy walking around and looking at other crafter's goods.

                                                       
                                                       Until The Next Time ,

                                                         

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