NEW POSTS!

On the family blog [17].


*Plus this bonus post written by the Mr. 

More Pins. I Can't Help Myself.

February Fun Food Plates

Crayon Melting

This post is subtitled, "The Day My Camera Was In My Oven and My Freezer in Less Than 30 Minutes".

I read a bunch of "how to melt crayons to make new crayons" tutorials online.  I took parts from each and this is what I came up with:

Supplies:

• Crayons
• Muffin tin (preferably an old one)
• Muffin liners
• Non-stick cooking spray
• Bowls to put crayons or wrappers in
• garbage can

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Put muffin liners in tin.
3. Spray liners with non-stick cooking spray.
4. Unwrap crayons.  This is the worst most time consuming painstaking part.  Especially if your crayons are over 10 years old.
5. Sort crayons.  By same color.  Mix up colors.  Whatever you want.
6. Fill each hole to the top
7. Put in oven for 15-20 minutes (bake time may very - just keep an eye on it)
8. Take out of oven - put tin on stove top or baking rack.  *Transport VERY CAREFULLY.  Hot wax is very sloshy.
9. Stir with toothpicks / straws / little dispensable items
10. Put in freezer.  Again, transport with care.
11. Wait an hour or more.  Keep testing to make sure they're solid.
12. Take out and pop out.  Use your discretion on whether you think you should wait for them to get to room temperature.
13. Buff off the ridges
14. Use and enjoy!

NOTES:
Some tutorials do not use muffin liners.  Liners create ridges around the crayon (the brown one looks like a Reese's peanut butter cup).  Some said melting wax ruined their bakeware - especially silicone bakeware (so they say).


On Step #9 - I stirred the crayons and on the surface it looked like the crayons had all mixed together and were one new color.  It wasn't until I popped them out and saw that the colors had separated during cooking (probably due to variances in their waxiness) and the lighter crayons (in property, not in color) stayed near the top and the heavier crayons sank to the bottom.





The waxiness of the crayons determines how fast they melt.  More waxy = faster melting.  Make sure all the lumps are melted before you take them out of the oven. Crayola melt slower [they must be less waxy?].  The size of crayon also determines melting speed.  Fat crayon = slower melt.

It does smell.  Like wax.  Nothing worse.  Just wax.  It just smells like crayons.  Waxy crayons.

Use candy molds or shape molds for fund crayons.

Metallic is not meant to be melted.  We had a silver crayon in our mix.  It did not make our 'new' blue crayon metallic or shiny.

I have heard that crayons don't work as well once they've been melted.  Ours work just fine.

See it in pictures:

THE.WORST.PART.

We did some similar color & some crazy color combos.

melting...

melting...

melting...

swirled, time to cool

in the freezer

muffin liners + cooking spray = easy out

YAY!

Fun "new" crayons!

Colored Ice Cubes

The weather has been so nice this February.  I made food-dye colored ice cubes, in hopes we could use them to decorate a snowman or something.  Alas, no snow storm came, and the ice cubes were starting to shrink in the freezer.  So on an as-warm-as-it-gets day in February we took our ice cubes outside and watched them melt.

HOW-TO:

1. Fill ice cube trays with water
2. Put food coloring in the water
3. Put in freezer
4. Wait
5. Play

HINTS:

• Buy a super cheap pair of gloves to throw away when you're done.
• It's best to have them melt on a paper towel - then you sort of get a tye-dye effect and you can really see how the ice is changing to liquid.
• They dyed my white ice cube trays.  Especially the red and orange.    :(
• We tried to build with them.
• Would be fun to try in the summer when the ice cubes would melt faster.

Preschool Outside Chalk Fun

Line-to-shape color coordinated criss-crossing mazes: 

  Animal Tracks:

*Also fun, draw numbers around the yard (even on the house!) and have the kids go find them in order.

The HGTV Rustic Themed Dream Home

The HGTV Dream Home 2012 is in Utah.  In Midway.  (I don't think that's actually the mid-point of Utah).  I got too excited about it being in Utah and I entered the contest.  I laughed at how in the TV special the girl kept saying how "rustic" everything is.  The interior designer is a New Yorker - and since the home was in Utah it had to be RUSTIC, because that's how we do out here, yeah, sure.  Well, send good vibes my way - out here in good'ollllllll Utah.

Preschool Programs

Preface to this post:  I know - I worry about silly things.  :)

When my daughter was younger I was thrilled to find a cable channel playing older seasons of Sesame Street.  Episodes that I remembered.  I didn't mind watching them with her because I enjoyed the flashbacks (12 Pinball, Ladybug Picnic).  Then I got thinking - these are MY memories.  I'm glad to share them with her, but what are the memories of her/their generation going to be of?  Not that Sesame Street has run it's course - it's still going strong - but with so many channels and options, there is probably something else out there.  AND .....  The new obsession in our house is Yo Gabba Gabba.  YGG has not replaced SS.  We've tried many preschool programs in our house and YGG & SS are the top two.  I'm just glad that I've found her generation's preschool program so that when she is grown up she and her adult friends will reminisce... "yeah!  I used to watch that silly show, too!  Good times!".

December NEW!

New posts.... TONS OF STUFF.  December was VERY BUSY!!!!!!!  There's so much this month - just keeping hitting "older posts" until you've reached the proverbial end of this blogging madness.  Prepare yourself, it's a lot of scrolling! ...  There's so much ... if you get lost just pull down the Blog Archive menu list under "December" on the right sidebar to see all the kazillion posts.

FYI, the Christmas posts on the Elves' blogs are basically copy & pastes of the BIG christmas post on the family blog.  This is why combining the blogs next year will be so awesome.  No.More.Copy+Paste.  Huzzah 2012.


--->  Family [8]

--->  Elf #1 [6] - month updates, christmas, recital, brother's hospital visit, moving

--->  Elf #2 [5]   - month updates, christmas, hospital stay, moving, *and a finally updated bonus post --- professional pix! (from a few months ago that I finally got up)

Holiday Food Plates

Angel & sleeping baby Jesus

Rudolph

Santa

NEW POSTS and a Surprise

New Posts!
Family
One
Two

The Surprise...
Next year I'm combining all the blogs onto one family blog.  Leave a comment with an email address for an invite (comments will not be published).

The Unofficial Disney Princess Test

I worry about raising my daughter in a world inundated with Disney Princesses.  She watches Cinderella over and over and over AND over again.  She demands we address her as Rapunzel and comb her [sort of] long, long beautiful "yellow" hair.  The problem - she's not the blond-haired blue-eyed girl Americans associate with beauty.  What kind of distorted image opinions might she be gaining from being over-Disney-ed?

I purposefully do not make it a point to do her hair every day.  Yes, I love TO DO her hair when she will let me, but if it doesn't matter to her, then why should it matter to me?  She is still the same bubbly confident 3-year-old weather her locks are in a slicked back pontytail or in a frizzed out poof.  SHE is teaching ME that it's what's inside that counts, and as long the crumbs have been wiped off my mouth I'm good to go.

One day as I watched her play with her Disney Princess figurines I decided to give her a test.  I lined up Cinderella, Belle, Ariel, Aurora and Jasmine and asked my curly brown haired, blue eyed, uber-fair skinned daughter a few questions to gather an understanding of what she is picking up from the Disney media she has been exposed to.  I asked with the assumption that blond hair/blue eyes would come out on top:

• Which girl has the best hair color?  [Belle - brown]
• Which girl has the best eye color?  [Ariel - green]
• Which girl has the best hair style?  [Jasmine - ponytail]
• Which girl is the most stylish?  [Aurora, because she has a crown on her head]

So, is it possible that I've been over thinking and over worrying about this Disney Princess thing? 

What did I learn from this?  Well, that she's three.  A well adjusted 3-year-old with her own opinions (and believe me she HAS OPINIONS) based on her own judgement regardless of Disney's presence in her life.  Let the girl play princess and tea party as much as she wants.  Maybe the blond-haired blue-eyed American obsession phase has passed.  Perhaps we, as a society, have grown and are more accepting of many different flavors and combination of flavors.  (Let me hope, okay - for as long as there is hope there is joy in living.)  Looking at all the figurines in my "test" I saw a wide range of variety and believe that Disney is trying to do it's part in recognizing differences (you did notice that Tiana is not blond haired/blue eyed, right?).  I DO think that some parents allow it to go too far -- Is it appropriate for a 3-year-old to know the lyrics to, and dance like Lady Gaga?  In my opinion, it is not - but blame the parents, not the media. Maybe it's the parents who need to stand up for their kids and be their protectors - and not blame the outside sources, like Disney, for ruining their kids and distorting their views.  As for me in my little world - I think the option for me right now is to save the worry for when she's a [gulp] teenager.  If I worry too much right now I might talk myself into believing my son will want to get wheel transplants from watching too much Cars.

Lessons From Leaves

While walking into church the 3-year-old picked up three leaves that had fallen from the tree just outside the door.  She choose the biggest leaves with the move vibrant fall yellows and reds.  She walked into the building proudly displaying her the new found treasures clutched in her little hand. We sat down and still had fifteen minutes until the meeting was to start.  "Mommy?"  Yes?  "I'm gonna give a leaf to Grandma Faye, okay?"  Okay.  And with that she sprinted down the pew and to the back of the room.  She came back and gently ran her finger over her two remaining leaves.  "Mommy?"  Yes?  "The old lady in the purple looks sad.  I think she wants a happy leaf."  Okay.  With that she was off in the other direction, leaf in hand.  She returned to the bench and twirled the last leaf between her fingers.  "Mommy?"  Yes?  "I think my Teacher wants this leaf.  It would make her oh so happy."  Okay.  With only a few minutes to spare before the meeting started she jogged to her Teacher's bench and handed her the last leaf.  My daughter was beaming as she approached our bench, but her smile slowly faded as she walked down our aisle.  "Mommy?" she whimpered, tears beginning to well in her eyes, "Mommy, I don't have any leaves anymore!  I, I, I am ... SAD!"  I scooped my defeated 3-year-old into my lap.  "You gave your leaves away and you made all of those people happy!", I told her.  "But now I am sad!" she retorted.  I went on to explain that, yes, her leaves made her happy - but by sharing her leaves she was able to make more people happy than just herself.  "It is better to have no leaves and lots of friends than to have lots of leaves and no friends", I told her.  And after church was over we stopped by the tree just outside of the door and shook LOTS of trees down for her to dance and roll around in.

Fun Food Halloween Plates

Am I Jill Dubian?  Ha, not hardly.
Are my kids fed and happy?  YES.

Fall foliage

Ghosts in a pumpkin patch w/hay bales

Bats & a bonfire

Happy apple witches

Spider Web

Haunted Forest (the banana stars were really hard to cut)

Spooky pumpkin patch

Three Jack-O-Lanterns