A Scarecrow For The Garden

After all those serious posts last week, I'm going to start this week off with a fun summer-time craft. I decided that we needed a scarecrow to help control some of our problems with little critters at night. Too many times, our cantaloupes get nibbled on just before picking time. Yes. Bites taken out! We've also had some tomatoes mysteriously disappear during the night. Doesn't that just frustrate you to no end? You have patiently waited for your veggie to grow for weeks, you can almost taste it's deliciousness, and then poof, it vanishes! Ughhhh! So in hopes of intimidating these active little critters, I thought that maybe a scarecrow would work. It's worth a try anyway! So I set out around the house and yard to gather supplies to make a scarecrow. The best part about this guy was that I made him for FREE. We all love free, right? Everything I needed was already laying around somewhere. That's a win-win. 

Here's What You'll Need:

1. A 6 ft. fence post or landscape timber
2. A 2x4 cut to a 4 ft. length
3. 2- 3 inch nails
4. 4- 1 inch nails
5. About 8 safety pins
6. Hammer
7. Scrap piece of burlap fabric for the head
8. Twine
9. Old pair of jeans
10. Old men's long sleeve shirt
11. Old straw hat
12. Hay for stuffing
13. Any craft supplies you want to use to fashion a face

First, place the smaller piece of wood across the larger, in the shape of a cross. 

Using your 3 inch nails, secure these two pieces together. Go ahead and use your twine to secure the ends of the sleeves and pants, this will keep the hay from falling out. 

Next, place the shirt onto your scarecrow form. 

Now, take the pants and begin stuffing with hay. You are then going to place them on top of your scarecrow form and using your 1 inch nails, secure the stuffed pants to the form.  Then, secure the bottom of the shirt to the pants using your safety pins. You're just getting your scarecrow dressed to look like a good and proper man.

Now open up some of your shirt's buttons and fill the shirt, arms and all, with hay.

At this point, you can also stuff your burlap fabric piece into a head shape and secure it onto the top of the scarecrow form using twine. Now my daughters began cutting out fabric scraps to form a face. 

Your scarecrow should look something like this now- minus Chi-Chi of course ;)

Since every good, proper man needs a hat, our scarecrow got one too. He looks mighty fine in his spot guarding the garden, don't you think? 

Hopefully, the critters will think twice before stealing our cantaloupes this year! So, what do you think? Will our critters run for the hills? Maybe your garden could use a simple little scarecrow too? 

I really hope that you all enjoyed this easy scarecrow craft. Thanks so much for joining me this morning. Happy Monday everyone and have a wonder-filled week!