Homemade Valentines…

Monday is Son’s Valentine’s Day party at school.  That meant that I had to find some sort of valentines for Son to hand out.  Last year, I went traditional, and bought him some Transformers cards, but not so this year.  This year, I stepped it up, and saved myself some money.

It began when Son and I started sorting through, and organizing his toys in the living room.  His birthday is coming up, and we need to make room for any gifts he may receive.  In a basket under the coffee table, we keep the coloring books, scratch paper, and all of Son’s art supplies.  It’s also where Son stashes everything that is on the coffee table when I ask him to clean up.  When we started going through the basket, I noticed that there were a lot of broken, and small bits, of crayons.  I decided to put them all into a bucket, and that is when I got an idea…

When I was little, my mother would melt broken crayons into rainbow colored nuggets.  They were all sorts of odd shapes, but I loved them just the same.  But I had a better idea.  I thought about those silicone, heart-shaped baking molds I saw in my local Wal-Mart.  Why couldn’t Son hand those out to his classmates?  They would certainly be healthier than candy.

I placed my molds onto a cookie sheet, and then filled them with my broken, and paper-free colors…

And then placed them into a 400 degree oven.  Is that temperature over-kill?  I don’t know, I just know it worked, and nothing burned.

Once they were all fully melted, I pulled the molds out to cool.

But just before they did, I draped the string of some white tags into the wax, and used a toothpick to make sure the string was nicely submerged.

When they finally cooled, I popped them out of the molds.  I couldn’t be happier with the results.  Truly.

And while I realize that most of the parents won’t know that Color My World is a song, it still makes me laugh at just how clever I am.  It was the song at my mother’s wedding, and I will never forget the title, although I couldn’t hum the tune if my life depended on it.

I hope your Valentine’s Day is nice, and if you have a child’s party, that your kids won’t return overly sugared.  As for me, I will be smiling at my own genius ability to save a ton, and make something so cool.