Create your Own Bird Feeder Christmas Tree Ornaments

Christmas is for the birds, well the week after Christmas anyways!

The holiday parties have started and the family celebrations are only a days away. The house is decorated, the tree has been up for a week or two and is beautifully decorated and the scent of pine fills the house. A lucky member of the family has tree duty, making sure the tree doesn't get too thirsty and dry out before Christmas.

But after Christmas, who will care for the tree? Some people will recycle the tree through local organizations that do tree pickups and turn the trees into mulch, others will add the tree to their compost pile, and a small group of us will carefully place our now naked tree in the backyard for the birds to celebrate their holidays. This year instead of throwing away your tree, consider throwing the tree in your backyard for your bird friends to enjoy. If you have a place to prop up your tree that is best! It will give them shelter from those strong winter winds and storms we get, especially in the Northeast, and you can decorate your tree the second time around. In a great project for young and young and young at heart, the perfect project for a chilly winter day is designing "green" Christmas ornaments for your tree outside that your feathered friends are enjoying.

These ornaments are very easy to create-all you need is some pinecones, which you can collect from outside your house (be careful not to use the scented ones as some of these have been treated with chemicals), smooth peanut butter, a butter knife or popsicle stick, a plate, some birdseed and some string made from non-plastic (and hopefully biodegradable) materials. Spread the peanut butter onto the pinecone with the butter knife or popsicle stick. Then pour some birdseed onto the plate and roll the pinecone around so that the seed sticks to the pinecone. Repeat this until you have several pinecones all decorated and ready to go. After your creation is complete take a piece of string and attach it to the end of your pinecone and head out to your old Christmas tree. Tie the pinecones to the tree and then return inside to watch your new friends explore their ornaments. When hanging the ornaments, keep in mind that the higher up you hang the ornaments the safer your friends will be when they go to grab a snack.

The best part, when the ornaments become bare, collect the pinecones and "refill" them!

Have a Green Holiday Season!