Crayon Pucks!

Today was a day to clear out the craft drawers and make stuff.  I decided to make Crayon Pucks after reading the tutorial on a blog named, "Wanna Make Something Of It?".  While my son played video games, my girls and I decided to clean our house out of all the crayons we can find and recycle them.  We peeled the paper off each of the crayons (which was extremely tedious yet therapeutic), melt them in a mini muffin tray and viola!  I call them Crayon Pucks.  Call them whatever you want, I love this idea!

MATERIALS:

• Old crayons (Crayola works best)
• Muffin tray - keep in mind you'll be melting crayons in this so don't use something you'll use for food.  I purchased a disposable mini muffin tray.

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Peel the paper off each of the crayons.  This may take some time so be sure to have some great conversation starters for you and your kiddos!
3. Break each crayon in quarters.
4. Decide which color combination suites your taste and fill the tray - Please note that in my muffin tray, the two center cups didn't heat the crayons too well so I left them empty on the 2nd and 3rd batch.  I kept my color combination to two colors per cup.
5. Bake for 6 minutes total but checking after 3 minutes (checking at 1 minute intervals).  The total time here refers to the mini muffin trays I got.  Your baking time may vary based on your oven and the size of the muffin tray.
6. Remove after baking and let it cool completely.  After they cooled off a bit I placed them in the freezer to speed up the cooling process.
7. When completely cooled off, carefully pop them out of the tray onto a soft surface so they don't break.

 Peel them suckers!

Organize the crayons into what ever color combination fancy's you :)

Look how nicely they marbleize (real word?) when melted.

Oh no!  We lost one... goodbye my sweet... wait, we can still use it!  If they break, that's ok.  They're crayons for goodness sakes.  They work.

Ok now go makes some!  I'm going to purchase muffin trays in different shapes and make more for the holidays.  Our school is going food-free for treats and rewards (yay!) so this will be great giveaways for V's birthday!

Enjoy!

Thanita

This project was submitted to:

Wordless Wednesday - Follow Mama

Except Mama's looking the wrong way.

A Funny Thing About A Not So Funny Movie

It was Saturday evening and I had a migraine...again :(  I felt well enough to switch on the TV.  Well, it was on, but just for companionship.  V crawled in bed with me and loaded me up with hugs and kisses as she, what I thought, drifted off to sleep.  In the background played a Discovery Channel show about sharks.  I feel a tug on my back.

"Mom", V calls out.

"Yes?" I answer

"I THINK WE NEED A BIGGER BOAT!" she replies.

She has perfect comedic timing this one.

By the way just so it's clear, a movie rated PG in the 1970's would not be considered PG now.  FYI.  Jaws is as scary now as I thought it was when I saw it as a kid.  Definitely NOT PG.  Snow Dogs is PG.  Race to Witch Mountain is PG.  For goodness sakes, Madeline is PG.  Jaws...not so PG.  I think I scarred V for life.  She may never enter the ocean to swim again.  Lesson learned.  1970's PG movies = bad for 7 year olds.

Wordless Wednesday - Cherry Pie-Cake

God Bless America...and pie err...cake

Knit Washcloths

Some of you may know that my youngest daughter has multiple life threatening food allergies (among others).  This past Thursday we took her to the allergist to undergo what's called a "food challenge" for her soy allergies.  During this appointment, small amounts of soy will be digested to see how she reacts.  It's a long, drawn out process as the doctors administer tiny amounts at a time and slowly increase the amount of soy if she doesn't have a reaction.   After almost over 4 hours of this, she passed her challenge.  She is officially not allergic to soy anymore. :)

To reward her, we went to get her nails done but we arrived much too early for the appointment.  So we browsed AC Moore Craft Store and found a lady, knitting at a table in the back of the store.  On the table were a number of small, square, knitted and crocheted washcloths.  I inquired about them and she said she was accepting donations for the Gulf oil clean up.  The volunteers will use them to clean off oil from the wildlife.  She will ship them out and have been doing so for a few weeks now.   She also teaches a knitting camp for kids at the store :)  I may sign Victoria up for this!

So what do you think I'm doing now?  I'm making washcloths!  It's very easy and fun to make as it's a quick knit.

Here's one that's done.

Another view (and a terrible picture at that!)

This is one I'm working on.

10" x 10" Washcloths

MATERIALS:

• 1 skein of Lily's Sugar and Cream yarn or the like (I used Lily's Sugar and Cream for the blue washcloth and Lion Brand's Organic Cotton for the cream.  Both work fine)
• Size US 8 straight knitting needles
• Row counter

DIRECTIONS:

1. Cast on 3 sts
2. Increase in the first stitch by knitting in the front and back of the first stitch
3. Knit to the end and turn
4. Repeat #2-3 until 50 rows have been completed
5. Decrease by kniting the first 2 stitches together at the beginning of the row
6. Knit to the end of the row
7. Repeat #5-6 until 3 sts remain
8. Bind off
9. Weave in ends
10. DONE!

If you need help deciphering stitches,  KnittingHelp.com is a great website for knitting resources.  They have a video tutrial of the increase here (see KFB).  See a video of the decrease here (see k2tog).

Now go and make a few washcloths!