Valentine’s Day Crafts and Other Lazy Day Fun

Steph taught our Zumba class Tuesday morning and my friend drove Wildman to preschool.  So, I got to lounge around in my PJ’s all morning long.  It was wonderful!

Cutie Pie spent some time reading while I folded and put away Wildman’s laundry.

Then he created a masterpiece on the back porch while watching our pool guy try to fix the hot tub leak.  It’s not fixed yet…  Grrrr.

We worked on those darn heart-shaped crayons again!  I found a proper silicone pan at Walmart.  Woo hoo!  Round two was a total success.

Cousin B came over while Steph went to Zumba around 10 AM.  We made some cute shakers with a Valentine’s Day theme.  I found the inspiration here.

The boys had so much fun embellishing…

…and filling the shakers!

But they enjoyed shaking their creations the most!

Shake, shake, shake!

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Valentine’s Craft: Heart Crayons

Okay, so, I found a set of adorable heart-shaped pans and my gears began turning.  I envisioned melting crayon bits to make heart-shaped crayons for the boys to give out to their classmates for Valentine’s Day.  The pans have been sitting around the house for weeks now waiting for the right moment.

Today seemed like the right moment- Cousin B was staying with us because his parents had to work, B dropped by with Moose, Cutie Pie was game.  We had a full house of preschoolers ready to peel some old crayons that we’d inherited from J’s aunt.

The kids were very focused on peeling the wrappers off of the crayons.  It was so cute.

They enjoyed breaking the naked crayons into small pieces and tossing them in the bowl even better!

They took turns filling the hearts with crayon bits while the oven preheated to 250 degrees.

They went into the oven for 15 minutes.  Well, not exactly 15 minutes…  I checked on the crayons halfway through and discovered a melty, nasty mess in my oven!

It turns out that the cute heart-shaped pans that I had purchased for our craft were not silicone!!!  They were regular old plastic.  ICE CUBE TRAYS!!!  No where on the label did it say “plastic” or “silicone” or “do not put in oven”.  I just assumed they were silicone since most things are silicone these days.  Crap!

The whole house filled with a waxy, plastic-y smoke.  Luckily I had the sliding glass doors already open.  I quickly turned off the oven and flipped on the vent fan.  Ugh!  It was such a mess.

Once the oven had cooled, B was able to pry the half melted ice cube trays from the oven rack.  There were little puddles of crayon wax all over the floor of the oven.  I warmed the oven back up to remelt the wax.  It was very easy to wipe up with paper towels.  Thank goodness!

I was able to salvage 9 heart-shaped crayons from the 24 we started with.  That’s enough for Wildman’s class.  I think Wilton makes a silicone heart muffin pan.  I’m going to try to locate one so I can make some more crayons for Cutie Pie’s class.

When I attempt round two of this project and actually assemble the Valentine’s cards, I’ll post again.  Stay tuned.  You have not seen the last of the heart crayons!!!

Valentine Sun Catchers

Today I was inspired to do an art project with the boys.   This morning I took them to the pediatrician for a wellness check-up.  Both Wildman and Cutie Pie had to get shots.  They were less than thrilled by the time we left the doctor’s office.  I was looking for something to help perk them up and figured a fun craft just might do the trick.  Moose and B ended up coming over for a play date and lunch so they helped us create miniature masterpieces too.

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and the sun has been shining brightly all week.  Given these facts, I figured a heart sun catcher would be perfect.  I rummaged through some drawers and managed to find all the materials I needed.

Materials List

• Wax paper
• Construction paper
• Red and pink crayons with paper removed
• Box cheese grater
• Glittery paint
• Paint brushes
• Glue sticks
• Iron
• Scissors
• Hole punch
• Ribbon

I found some old/broken crayons in Wildman’s art supply stash.  We removed the papers and set to work grating them into colorful confetti using the cheese grater.  While Wildman grated the crayons, I cut out heart-shaped frames from pink construction paper.  I just folded a rectangle of paper in two and cut out a heart in the center with scissors.

I set the kids up with Valentine’s glittery paint that I picked up at Michael’s.  They painted all over a big piece of wax paper.  I made sure to cover the table with a vinyl tablecloth to keep spills and crazy paintbrushes from getting out of control.

Next, the kiddies sprinkled the red and pink crayon shavings onto the wax paper.

The kids took a break to run around on the playground while B and I worked with the iron.  We placed a fresh piece of wax paper on top of the kids’ artwork and sandwiched the two pieces of wax paper between two dish towels.  With the iron on a low setting, we melted the crayons and the wax from the wax paper to seal the sun catchers.  We allowed them to cool for 10-15 minutes then cut the wax paper creations into rectangles that were slightly larger than the heart cut-outs in the construction paper frames.  We adhered the wax paper between two frames using a glue stick.  I punched a hole near the top of the frame and tied some ribbon into a loop so we could hang the sun catchers in the window.

Viola!  A craft that meets my three requirements: cheap, fun and easy!