Thirteenth Day of Adent - Candles

WHY did I pick "candles" today? Oh my! We were kinda excited about it. Read the story out of the book. Three candles for Joseph, Mary, Baby Jesus - the poor Irish priests, all that. (Sorry, it's hard to be gushy after what I've been through.) Then, on to the project - which was to make a Crayon Candle.

So, we started peeling the paper off of old crayons. Mostly the icky colors, and a few broken pink ones. Most of them were "off-brand" and the paper didn't come off too easily. My nails are now shot! SHOT!! I just finished filing what was left of them off - they are nubs. Anyway, we get a pretty good size pile and stick them in a plastic bag to set in a pot of boiling water. Hey, I'm just following the directions here. I think - "wow, these are melting fast, I better get the candle ready." So, I pull the bag out of the water, with tongs, but still get a steam burn on my hand. I leave that and make sure Princess M is nowhere near the stove. I cut the top off an old OJ carton I've been saving for this project and place a small white pillar inside and surround it with ice. The idea sounds so nice so far, doesn't it? It's going to make a beautiful lacy candle. Yeah, right.

Back to the stove. I carefully put the crayons, which are now pretty much a solid glob, back into the water. I swish it around and think I've got it melted. Don't you just love "kid's projects?" I pull the bag back out of the boiling pot, and the thing springs a leak. This purplish goo is going everywhere - all over the stove, the granite counter, the hardwood floor, down between the range and the cabinet - everywhere! Did I mention our house is on the market and I have been even more of a clean-freak than normal lately? Yikes! What do I do now? I start letting the goo squirt down over the ice and it's just freezing on contact and splintering off all over the place. M advises me, "I don't think that's what it's supposed to do." Really, sweetie? I'm not supposed to have molten purplish goo and little bits of frozen purplish fragments all over the kitchen? That wasn't in the book? No, I didn't say that to her, that's why you're here!

So, of course, it wasn't enough wax to fill up to the top of the candle. Did I throw in the towel (which also has purplish crayon goo on it)? No, I went back to the drawing board and peeled more crayons to melt! Genius, I tell ya! That's when my nails really just fell apart. I put the new bag in the water and it promptly turns into something resembling the brown gak dough for the ornaments we made last week. I'm just not crafty enough for this ADVENTure. But I poured that brown gak into the OJ container, over the melting ice, over the now dried and frozen purplish goo and M and I watched the ugliest candle you've ever seen set up.

I peeled the carton off so we could view our creation. M says, "That's not much of a magnum opus." What?! "You know, like in Charlotte's Web?" OK, it's funny now, but at the time I was ready to ban her from reading. Little bits were breaking off all over, and M declares that it looks like a castle, and now she loves it. She convinced me to light it, and we had a little kumba-ya moment before she blew it out.

Then I set to picking hardened crayon deposits off every surface of my kitchen. Wait a sec - I thought - these are washable crayons! Things got very wet and sloppy there for a while, but it finally all came up. Except for the part that dripped down between the range and the cabinet. T will gladly pull out the range and clean that up when he gets home next week. He told me so. (He called during the project - I think he would have said anything to keep me from hysterics.)

So, yeah, that didn't really point us to the true meaning of Christmas. But we sat on the couch afterwards and listened to the Kenny G Miracles Christmas cd while M read aloud to me. That was nice. And, no, we didn't read by candlelight!!!