I only put out a modest amount of food for the birds each day, and feed them daily only during the cold months. They always eat it all by the end of the day. If your peanuts sit for days in the feeder, then you could put less out when you fill the feeder.

I use a peanut wreath style feeder. I bought it with the hope of slowing down the BJs. They haven't tried too hard to figure it out, yet. The woodpeckers are the only ones that use it, which is fine with me. I put out whole corn kernels that the jays take. I also put out a hand full of whole peanuts every couple of days, which they take and cache as fast as they can. Basically the Jays are on a schedule, they come by every morning and check for peanuts. If there are no peanuts, they have a couple kernels of corn and move on. But I hear them every morning at about 7:45 looking around. If I cut off the easy food they may spend more time to figure out the wreath. Although, most of the time the woodpeckers, break them open in the wreath, rather than pull a whole peanut out. I'll probably move the wreath to a quiet location away from the other feeders so the woodpeckers can enjoy it more.All my feeders have squirrel baffles, so they dont bother them. I also feed our one squirrel and trying to get him on a schedule. The squirrel lives in a box I provided and defends the area from other squirrels. Here is a link that might be useful: peanut wreath

I don't remember the store.....but I remember a peanut butter machine when I was a kid, Don't think it was a supermarket....but more of a deli place. I remember it had a window that was completely filled with peanuts in the shell,,,,and they had a roaster and you could buy a brown paper bag full of warm peanuts or get a carton of peanut butter squirted out of a machine which looked a little like a soft serve ice cream machine.... This was more than 60 years ago in northern New Jersey. It was on the south side of Bloomfield ave in Caldwell.... on a corner. Linda C

Another idea is to purchase a Kopykake projector and project an image of your favorite mosaic or other picture and paint or for the new artists, project and make a stencil. There are some wonderful dry paints on the market to stencil with and believe it or not anyone can do it and they are easy to work with and to blend with a big brush for definition. You could then cover with glass or you could make it so that your art could be framed behind glass on display behind your range for an easy change later. Once you get the large formate projector you can do whole walls in other parts of the house.