Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Homemade Crayons

What do you do when Daddy's carpool isn't running and he has to take the car to work, leaving you home all day? Begin by gathering all your broken crayons, or "leftolas," and sort them into color piles because you are obsessive like that.


Some of mine were this washable kind, which may or may not have impacted my final product, but more about that later.


Was this one chewed on?


Then spend 20 minutes peeling off all the paper. Some of it comes off in big satisfying sheets, some of it fights to the bitter end.


During this process, your toddler will quickly lose patience with this project and start wondering where the "big crayons" you promised are. She'll probably start sticking the non-broken crayons in between her toes. Also, she won't be wearing pants because you keep putting them on and she keeps running upstairs and taking them off.


Aren't they pretty?




The instructions say to chop them up into pea-sized pieces. This worked just fine, although if you want a fancier end product, I would chop them up smaller. Also, just do one crayon at a time; trying to cut more than one causes little bits to fly dangerously around the kitchen.


More obsessive sorting. Tyler will ask you why you had to dirty every bowl in the house. He doesn't get it.


Put the little bits into a regular cookie tin. No need to grease or anything. Lillian liked this part except she wanted to put each crayon bit in individually.


This one reminds me of The White Stripes.


Then put them in a 150-degree oven for 15-20 minutes. I have digital oven and it doesn't go lower than 170, so I put them in for 12 minutes, which worked just fine. Your toddler will find your sunglasses and keys and proclaim that she is going to go find Daddy. She'll accidentally open up the garage door when playing with your opener fob and get really excited that Daddy has finally come home and her tortuous imprisonment with you, her mother, is finally over. She'll run excitedly to the garage to find it empty and collapse into a sobbing heap.


This is what they look like when you first take them out.


I don't know why the colors separated after they cooled. I'm suspecting it's the washable feature.


Mine did not just pop out, as promised.


I put them in the freezer, snuggled nicely next to the chocolate chips. The bag is open because I ate some.


After about 30 minutes in the freezer, just pop those suckers right out. By this time, your toddler will have gone down for a nap so she'll have to enjoy these crayons later when you're making Spinach Pesto Pasta.


7 comments:

Bridget said...

Fancy! Too bad I have no patience for crayon bits. I am militant about throwing them away. But I think you've changed my mind.

krissiecook said...

More online instructions should read like yours. I mean, too many people leave out the part about the accidental garage door opening drama, and I like to be prepared.

michelle m said...

I have been having a really bad day and this post helped immensely. :)

Allison said...

Wow... this post was a whole new level of blogging for you. I felt like I was reading one of those fancy blogs where they take a picture of everything they do and serve for dinner.
The crayons idea is very cute and the post was really funny.

Cheryl said...

One day...maybe when we have more kids. Ashby just doesn't break enough crayons. It's quite unfortunate because the project seemed both entertaining and successful!

Bluebell said...

Owen and I made these once a few years ago. I thought it was fun making them, but coloring with them wasn't so fun. I liked your photographic essay. Very clever and funny.

Myriah Cohen said...

Ohh.... I like all the pictures. I want to try this out. I'll have to go to the store and buy crayons and then break them, but I'm pretty sure it's gonna be worth it.

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