Christmas Presents

We started working on Christmas presents every once in awhile. I enjoy (and he does too) having Kadin make presents for people as opposed to just buying everything. He has a lot of fun doing it and picking what he wants to make for different people. I think it teaches him more about giving then just taking him to the store.

Today we worked on crayons for his birthday party and for his cousins for Christmas. Ridiculously easy and a great way to reuse all those broken crayon pieces. We went through his crayons and found all the ones that had broken or the tips were broken off and he helped me chop them up into smaller pieces.

 Then he put them in heart tray and we cooked them at 230° for 15 minutes and let them cool.

 This is what they look like out of the oven.

 All ready for the goody bags. 

 Next we worked on some candles. It's an idea I've had floating around in my head and figured we may as well try it. We brought some sand home from the beach one night just for these. 

We started with a container filled with damp sand. We used another container to make the hole. And then heated the wax. We used soy beans, but there are other kinds that would work. Just make sure they don't have to be poured into a glass container as some do. You can heat them in the microwave, but my microwave decided to kill itself half way through so we used a double-boiler type thing. (Meaning I let my small container of soy beans float around in a pot of water until it was melted. Don't laugh it worked lol.)

Let it cool completely. Time will depend on the size, but small ones do not take long. And remove it carefully from the sand. Brush off any excess sand and trim the wick. Super easy project. This was the first one we did and it came out great!