Crayon Hearts

This weekend the hubby went away and the boys and I had some Quality Time together. I would just like to say how much respect and admiration I have for actual single parents, especially those who have to work one or more jobs.  I knew my husband and I were a good team, but you just don't realize how much you depend on each other until your team mate skips town.

Anyway, we did do a few activities besides Netflix...  I had bought a silicone heart mould at the dollar store before Valentine's Day and the boys have a bucket of crayons they never use - they are straight up marker dudes.  I had seen lots of tutorials about melting down crayons and when I suggested it they were pretty excited.  I won't describe the whole process, since there are lots of tutorials online, but the essentials are:

1. Take paper off crayons: this is kind of tedious and your kids will abandon you and your nails will never be the same again.
2. Break crayons into little pieces:  or not so little, depending on your hand strength.
3. Put them in the silicone mould: if you want hearts that are actually shaped like hearts, you may want to skip the dollar store and invest at, say, Walmart.  (Our mould was promptly chucked in the garbage after this craft, and I am relieved to say that none of it remained in the oven.)
4. Back up 3 steps and set the oven to 200 - 250 degrees.
5. Once your oven has heated, put the mould on a baking sheet and pop 'er in.  Plug your nose and watch them melt, slowly, for about 15 - 20 minutes.  Open windows.  Wonder how many toxins are in crayons and look worriedly at your children.
6. Put them on the back porch to cool down.
7. Ooh and Aah as you pop them out of the mould and watch your kids colour diligently until they remember they don't like crayons, get bored, and go watch Netflix.

The weird thing was how the pigment sank to the bottom and all the extra (filler?) wax pooled at the top.  I assume that these were probably not top-of-the-line crayons... I didn't remember anyone mentioning this online.

Me being me, I took out a paring knife and shaved off the extra wax. Then I noticed the shaving were kind of pretty so I took photos.  Then I went and got my hair dryer and experimented with melting the shavings onto paper and canvas.  They looked sort of pretty until they got quite liquidy and the green overpowered all the other colours.  The result sort of looked like someone barfed on a canvas.  I didn't take photos.  But it was kind of fun to get my hands dirty and play around. I also noticed that the heart crayons made it into their stories and play for the rest of the weekend (I think at one point they were alien space ships) so I am calling it a successful craft.  :)

Weekend Update

Many of you have been asking for a basement report and I always oblige my dear readers.  These are photos of my basement on the 15th of November.  Should you photoshop out the heaters and fans, and add a lot of dust, you would have a completely accurate image of our basement as of tonight.  Did I mention that this is also our guest room and that my in-laws are arriving (with their beautiful white boxer Sunny) two weeks this Saturday?  Just checking to see if I had mentioned that...

Anyhoo...  Hopefully the nest two weeks will be FULL of basement reports!

Instead of worrying about our basement, we threw ourselves into family time this weekend.*  We had our last swimming lessons, made our way through Santa in the Junction (which was really fun) and went to see the Canadian Pacific holiday train.

The next day we all went to see Raffi, and the boys and I were so excited.  After the concert we went for dinner at the pub for a special end to a special weekend.  I wouldn't even trade it for a finished basement...

What about you - how was the first weekend of December?


*Actually, I threw myself into Mommy-Night-Out a little too forcefully on Friday night and felt the bruises thoughout family weekend...

An Autumn Weekend

This weekend definitely felt like fall.  For the first time in ages I was actually cold when I went to sleep!  We were supposed to go camping but bailed when the boys were up all night with miserable colds and Saturday morning it was pouring buckets of rain.  Oh, and did I mention it would be the boys' first camping trip ever?  Probably better to stay home and work on my list of project, wouldn't you say?

I am almost finished painting the dresser - I have tried to do it well, not just quickly (which is my usual painting method-of-choice) and have been at it for 5 days.  I am on my sixth super thin coat, with sanding in between each layer and a day for each to dry.  I suppose five days isn't much in the grand scheme of things, but when the piece of furniture in question is used for housing thousands of toys, and said toys are now randomly piled and scatted all over the first floor, and the piece has nine drawers and two doors that are also strewn about the same area, and half of your living room furniture are under a painting drop cloth.... five days is a loooong time.  I am hoping that tomorrow I can put it all together again, put the toys away, take some photos, and restore a tiny piece of my sanity.

Then on to something else, which I have decided should definitely have beautiful fall colours like the ones in the bouquet above.  Isn't it incredible?  The gold service is not-too-shabby either...

Photo from Honey of a Thousand Flowers - one of the best floral eye candy sites out there.

Arrangement is by Sarah Winward, photography by Green Apple Photography. 

Weekend

We spent a lovely time at the Royal Ontario Museum today, exploring dinosaurs and bat caves and seeing an exhibition of one of my favourite photographers - Edward Burtynsky.  I highly recommend a visit.