Where I grew up there were no fireflies. Instead, we had metallic winged, schizophrenic June bugs that dive bombed us at twilight and gave me nightmares.

I always envied those who waxed poetically about how they grew up chasing fireflies around.

Ask me about my childhood, and I will tell you to walk to the edge of the woods with a choir of crickets chirping from every direction, a hot, humid breeze brushing through your hair, your feet, bare and callused. Stand there, unmoving, and watch the dance of ten thousand fireflies blinking on and off in the darkness. Inhale the scent of cured tobacco, freshly plowed southern soil, burning leaves, and honeysuckle. Swallow the taste of blackberries, picked straight from the bushes, and lick your teeth, the after-taste still sweet in your mouth. Now, stretch out on the ground and relax all your muscles. Watch nature’s festival of flickering lights.

Brenda Sutton Rose

A few years ago I bought these adorable little solar garden statues of a boy and a girl with jars of fireflies to try and capture some of that magic. I’ve had them for about six years now and they are still going strong, night after night, despite being left out all winter long a couple of times (oops!). Even on the coldest nights and often buried in snow, they still light up, though!

Every spring I find them a new place to live out in the garden beds and each night, right at twilight, they faithfully light up for me. I just love them so much! I may have to order a second set from LTD Commodities while they still have them.

I also noticed they have these cute, wall hanging mason jar “firefly” lights and thought to myself, “hey! I can make those!”. So this morning I decided to get creative and make my own version with things I already had in the craft room.

They are super easy to put together, all you need is a mason jar, twine, fairy lights and fake flowers (and a glue gun helps). They came out pretty cute, I think.

I needed somewhere to hang them so I dug out these doorknob coat hooks I bought a few years ago but never got around to using and screwed them to some barn wood I had leftover from another project I did recently with an antique coffee grinder and, voila!

I have more of these coat hooks so I think I’ll order some more fairy lights to make one more of these firefly mason jars to go with them.

I may play around a bit with different flowers, too, since I have loads of those packed away. It’s always satisfying to create new things out of old things. 🙂