I can never find flat surfaces in my house. The dining room table might get cleared off over the course of a [good] day, but by the next day it’s nowhere to be found. So here are some of the projects that have been keeping me so busy over the last month or two:
- My biggest projects of the last month has been preparing inventory, shipping materials, supplies, and a million other things for Renewed Remnants. In the midst of preparing myself for making the graphic to head the Renewed Remnants shop: 
Two messy desks (there are actually three chaos-collecting desk tops) plus a pesky desk cat.Oscar enjoys laying in wait, until a writing utensil begin scribbling, then he’s ready to pounce. While I can’t consider him a recent project, it was certainly a mission to get him acclimated to being around kids. He showed up at a friends’ house out in the country, and with not a clue to where he came from they had to find him a new home. Oscar’s finally been settling down into his new house cat status after a couple of weeks here. (Although, he hides so darn well, we’ve already had a lost kitty scare!)
And onto the kid crafts:
-Pony bead sun catchers, magnets, pins, and wind chimes! This project is everywhere, but I enjoyed the write up by Jean at The Artful Parent. She also says to use only transparent beads which certainly would have made ours turn out better, but I work with what I’ve got. 
-We made this play dough recipe, which uses Jello. The post claims it to be the best play dough ever so I had to try it out. My conclusion: no other homemade play dough will ever compare! It’s a fun recipe to make that’s easy for kids to help with, there’s no need for extra dyes, and it faintly retains the fruity scent of the Jello. 
– Melting down my stash of old crayons into new colorful crayons is one of my favorite projects to do with the kids. It took what felt like ages to find the perfect crayon making mold, until I was browsing Target’s seasonal section last Halloween. When I came across this finger cookie pan by Wilton, I knew it was exactly what I needed for revamping my hoards of discarded crayons.
(The edges are only bent up so my toaster oven could accommodate the pan.)
If you have any experience with crayon melting, you may know how the off-brands produce more of the colorless wax than Crayola’s and once hardened, this part is separated as a top layer. Well this part makes the tip of the crayons colorless, so I had to do away with it. After plenty of finger crayon batches and lots of wax shaving I needed to figure out what to do with my bowl of wax slivers… (seriously, nothing goes to waste here anymore)
So they went into the mini cupcake tin, then came out as an ugly chunk of wax, and I tried my hand at wax carving. But now what to do with these little carvings? Hmm….
