Back to the following whims thing.
My wife had a couple wood buckets she used for trash and such. I wondered if they could be dressed up a bit, and left out in the open.
To that end, I ran some potential firewood/kindling through the bandsaw, in this case cedar, then grabbed the pneumatic stapler, some 3/8" staples, a bit of baling wire and went for it.
It's short, sweet and simple.
ADDENDUM: Now, years in, the buckets with this wood around them are still going strong. The ones without wood have been beaten badly by the UV rays of the desert sun. All of those are quite brittle.