Soot Sprites

Julio has been busily playing with the dried fruit pods from a Liquid Amber tree.  I collected a big pile of them last winter, and he has been putting them into and taking them out of an old glass pickle jar, rolling them on the floor, and covering them up with a shoe box.  He might even love them more than his pine cone collection.

According to  Wikipedia, the Liquid Amber fruit is nick-named: "space bug", "monkey ball", "bommyknocker", "bir ball", "gumball", "conkleberry", "cukoo-bir" or "sticky ball."

Around here, we call them "soot sprites," after the creatures with that name in our favorite children's movie, "My Neighbor, Totoro."  When I noticed that Julio had spread them out under the couch, they looked so much like soot sprites, that I had to try adding some stick-on eyes.

If any of you Totoro fans want to make your own soot sprites, you could paint them black and then stick eyes on them.  I think they would make the best decorations!