I'm Stealing It #5

This is not a new concept or even a hard one. This is more like an "I'm executing something" than I'm Stealing It. It is something I have heard for years but being the unorganized person I am, I have never gotten around to doing it - until today!

After the umpteenth time my little guy dumped the box of 36,000 crayons on the floor this morning I was very close to throwing all of them into the trash. That is until I realized how many broken crayons we have. I figured if I could get rid of all of the broken ones that would significantly decrease the amount of crayons I would have to pick up in an hour when he dumped them again.

I gathered up all of the broken ones and went online in search of the recipe for melting them. Shows you what a great cook I am - I have to get a recipe to melt things.

I put the little guy down for his nap and my daughter and I began peeling the paper off each broken crayon. This took quite a bit of time and was fun for us to have a chance to do nothing but peel and talk. I learned all sorts of things - like were you aware that chocolate comes from trees? And apparently I was never little; I was always her mommy and never anything else. No photographic evidence to the contrary was going to sway her today. And lastly and most importantly, I should start going to bed when she does and that way I will never be tired again in the mornings.

We only peeled about 1/3 of these neglected crayons because there are so many - but that leaves more for a project on another day. When I was researching how to melt them I found all sorts of fun ideas for broken crayons.

Next we sorted the crayons by like colors, sprayed muffin tins, heated the oven to 200 degrees, loaded the crayons in the tins and put them in to cook.

It took about 10 minutes to melt them and as you can see by the "after" photos, the really thick crayons didn't cook as well. My daughter got impatient so I left them as they are. Next time I do this I'll make sure and cut them all down to smaller pieces.

Some of the colors turned out truly beautiful. Each way you turn the new "crayons" you can see swirls of different shades. This was a fun little craft for us and it was about the easiest thing I've ever done.

Now that they are cooled down, my daughter is happily coloring with her crayons and is "oohing" and "aaahhing" about all the cool colors she is able to make. And I just got a "mom, these crayons are stupendous!" - So I think they were a hit.