Before you use those acorns indoors.....

Your Backyard Oak Tree...A place to find free acorns! What? Bugs live in those?

http://img.ehowcdn.com/article-new/ehow/images/a08/bb/hg/kill-insects-acorns-800x800.jpg In this article, E-How describes the process of killing bugs in acorns.

Well, it's Thursday here in Arkansas and fall is in the air.  Landon and I went on a nature walk yesterday to look for anything interesting and put those items in a pan to look at and discuss later. Along with a blue jay feather, a golf ball, tons of rocks and leaves, some  poison berries, we found several acorns along the tree line. 
 I remembered back to the last time I wanted to harvest acorns. I brought them in by the buckets and I  was so excited I didn't have to buy those little boogers, I could just get them for free in my backyard. With all my projects ready to take on, I set them on the counter after washing them & let them dry until I could get the time to finish.  Within a day, to my surprise, I looked closely and....there were  several "worm-like" things oozing out of the acorns, crawling up the inside of the jars and some were out on the newspaper and on the floor. I discovered they were maggots or some insect larvae (yuck, I can hardly even say those words) it was so disgusting. I am an OCD clean person, so this brought on some heavy duty disinfecting in the entire house.
  So, anyway, I had to throw out all my acorns and made no projects that year. However, with some research, I discovered that you need to wash, boil, rinse and repeat and bake those pretties in a 2-3 hour process to remove all bug remnants which tolerate a beating from nature to survive in those little acorns.

My plans are to sanitize my acorns and I will post my methods and pics of my later projects.  I am planning on using a wood stain on them to give them a nice polished look and possibly paint some of them for a wreath!  Just remember to read the above article before starting your projects with acorns. There are so many cute ideas, especially these from Pinterest. Just type in acorn wreath, acorn, and acorn vase filler.  Pottery Barn sells a bag of acorns for around $14.50. If you have the time and want to save money, then looks like you just found a bargain in your own backyard! Happy Fall Y'all!