GolfCat
Active member
So for years my mom comes up with some type of unusual way to give her grandkids and great grands their Christmas gifts. A couple of past methods have been purchasing the larger packs of doublemint gum and taking all the gum out of the wrappers and replacing it with various amounts of denominations. Another time after is snowed on Christmas day she collected a mess of snow balls and placed them in her freezer until the next year when my dad drilled holes in them and they rolled up money and stuffed them with it and resealed the holes. Then she wrote a riddle for each child once one of them figured it out all of them ran to the garage and got a snowball out. Then they all ran outside and threw them against the brick and busted them open. One time she stuffed straws full of money and the kids had to push them out. One year, being the teacher she found some old books and put the money between the pages throughout the books. Another year she collected medicine bottles and rolled up 100 one dollar bills and stuffed them inside. It was always a fun way for her and my dad to take care of the grands and great grands. With a total of 20+ it became a hassle to purchase actual gifts. Especially, at 93. Well, this year she had the bright idea of stuffing one $100 bill into a walnut. So she asked me if I thought it was possible. I said the only way to find out is to try. Let me tell you splitting a walnut in half and getting the "meat" out, folding a bill up small enough to make it fit inside and then gluing the halves back together is a little tedious. I found the best way to split the nuts were with a rather hefty fillet knife. I tried a small cut off wheel on a Dremel but the cuts were too wide and the nuts wouldn't go back together right. I tried a utility knife with a razor blade but the razor just didn't have enough heft. The fillet knife wouldn't actually split the nut at the seam and they would just crack down the sides. This was actually a blessing and the the nuts pieced back together nicely with a little gel super glue ran along the edge of the two halves. Ended up doing 17 for all that will be attending her house on Monday. All the kids have come to expect something unusual and know it is coming. I told her this year that she should take the leftover Walnuts and wrap them in green paper and give those out first. Then when they go outside and either stomp them or find a hammer to open them then they will just make a mess and be shocked when there is no money. I also created her a nice list with all her adult children on it and a naughty list with the grands and great grands. Then wrote out a little instruction sheet on how to find the red wrapped ones. Should be really funny when they realize that there is no money in the ones they get first. If you look closely at the middle pic you can actually see the cracks in the walnuts.
