Wednesday Thoughts

Yesterday I stumbled across a project that looked like fun, and would make a unique little gift for my youngest niece and nephew. The project basically consists of melting a bunch of crayons into a tin pan, resulting in a fun multi-colored crayon. Today I thought I'd give you a little tutorial. It's very simple. (Here's a link to the original post. Mine is better.)

To start, you have to peal the wrappers off the crayons. This is BY FAR THE WORST PART. If there is someone in your life who has offended you greatly, and has been begging to do something - anything - to get back in your good graces, now is the time to cash in on that favor!!

I really do.

Once you've pealed the wrappers off the crayons, and you're completely fed up, now comes the time to get out your frustration by chopping them into pea-sized pieces with a butter knife. This part only takes a couple minutes. After that, you arrange them in your mini cake pan in whatever shapes you have! I have a snowflake tin, so that's what I used.

Next, you bake them at 150 degrees for 15-20 minutes, until melted. My oven won't go down to 150, so I baked them at 170, the lowest it would go. I still ended up baking them for closer to a half hour, but it just depends on how hot your oven is. If you're not sure, just peek in every now and then.

When they're melted, remove them from the oven, and let them set until they harden.

Once they've set, you can remove them from the pan. If they don't come out of the pan easily, pop the pan in the freezer for little bit and they'll fall right out. And finally, this is what you end up with!

The whole process takes less than an hour - depending on how many you do and how many helping hands you have.

Give a couple of these to a kid with a pad of paper, and they'll love you forever. Or until they get bored 10 minutes later. But still. They'll be pretty happy for those 10 minutes. And if you involve a child in making them, you can give them the task of pealing the paper off the crayons! Mwahahahaha!!! I'm going to be a great mom.

Happy Wednesday.