paint cut paste

i adore january because it has my favorite holiday in it: my daughter’s birthday on the 26th! all month long we indulge in party planning fun. maybe i’m just cheesy, but we always roll party-theme style for her birthday parties.

when N turned one, it was just a pink & green cupcake theme – from the birthday girl’s outfit and bib to, well, the cupcakes:

one

N’s second birthday fell on the chinese new year. it worked out great because she was OBSESSED with only reading the grace lin books at that time. (our copy of fortune cookie fortunes got completely ripped apart from overuse.) so, naturally, we did a chinese new year theme that year — with origami cranes tied the the end of each balloon string, fortune cookies, take-out boxes full of party favors, lanterns, etc. fun stuff!

two

when N turned three, her birthday party was all about fairies: every child (and some grown ups!) wore wings, enjoyed fairy cake, played in a fairy tent, and were given homemade magical fairy wands.

three

last year on N’s fourth birthday, she requested a “rainbow art party” so we went all out. i created this juicy, hefty blog post showing the execution of all the party details.

four

so far this year, we’ve engaged in our annual tradition of bringing out and decorating her birthday ring with little fairy friends. N chose the color of beeswax for her five birthday candles from our assortment.

she then got busy rolling five beeswax candles for the ring.

she was so excited to place them in the ring and begin the countdown to her fifth birthday!

this year, i’m doing my best to fulfill N’s fifth birthday theme request, and it’s proving to be lots of fun! stay tuned for all the fun party details – i’ll dish here at the month’s end!

do your children have themes for their birthday parties?

in the past, we’ve done our fair share of beeswax candle making – usually of the rolled variety, like we did for N’s birthday ring and for michaelmas this fall. but when i saw this idea for cutting beeswax with cookie cutters on family fun, N and i had to give it a whirl!

this was one of the activities in our advent calendar, actually. we were both excited when N opened that envelope! first, N chose 5 colors of beeswax from our wax stash. (yes, we have one of those. is that weird?) i love the color scheme she ended up with!

then we tried to cut them with a cookie cutter… and tried… it was hard for a 4-year-old (and for mom!) to push through our wax (even one sheet at a time) with our metal cookie cutter.

puuuuuuuush

so we found another way and held each sheet up individuall and pressed through it on the backside.

then N stacked the 5 layers in the order she wanted them to appear.

we sandwiched a piece of wick (leaving about an inch at the top to light) between the layers, and pressed them together. we used our teeeny tiny cookie cutters (shown in bottom photo – i heart these!) to cut out a wax star for the top of this tree.

it made for a really cool candle!

here is our wax sculpture posing by the real thang… it’s so madame tussauds.

though after this one was made, N decided to use the rest of these sheets of wax in an old, familiar way instead of cookie cutting more of them.

maybe i’ll cookie cut more later — they make cute gifts for any season or holiday!

this fall we got to learn about the michaelmas festival at waldorf school. it happens close to the autumn equinox and marks the beginning of the receding light. the parenting passageway has a great post all about it here, so i’ll leave the describing up to carrie because she does it so well, but in keeping with our woodworking theme this week (check out the giveaway – winners will be drawn tomorrow!) i’d love to share what N made at her school’s michaelmas festival.

on this special day, all of the children wore orange and yellow to school. there were many autumnal activities and presentations. N’s kindergarten class worked on sanding pieces of wood and drilling holes into them as candle holders. N was so proud to show me hers after school that day.she wanted to create her own candle to put into her new holder, so we got out our beeswax.

she had a hard time deciding between red and purple wax (her favorite colors,) but loooved examining the honeycomb shapes on it. eventually, she settled on red, and we cut an 8″ x 8″ piece of wax. N put the wick alongside one edge of it and simply rolled it up with even pressure across.

…as even as she could.

she pushed the candle down into the hole in her candleholder, and was psyched that it fit. (we totally didn’t pre-measure any of this, so i was glad, too.) that night we lit it for dinner, and N was “in looooove” with the candle.

before snuffing out the candle (and cutely whispering “thank you candle for your light”) N said (and sang) her meal blessing song from her kindergarten class:

autumn just might be my favorite season for nature-inspired art-making! i’ve been wanting to make teeny acorn cap candles for a long while, and it’s so easy i’m not sure why we’ve not gotten around to them before now.

as for supplies: we scored a little bag of 10 short candle wicks from N’s waldorf school store (my new favorite art supply and toy store!) for just $1. i already had some wax around the house from the last time we made candles, and we’ve got acorn caps stored up over here like nobody’s business. we even added in a few shells from our summer OBX trip, just to mix it up.

N and i picked through the acorn caps to find ones that would lay relatively flat, or ones that would lay flat after we picked off the stem. if you can’t find ones that are flat enough on top (candle bottom) that’s okay — one fun way to display these are as floating candles in a pretty bowl with lovely autumn leaves!

the N put the wicks into each cap and shell…

…while i melted the wax in our double boiler.

good thing i had everything on top of wax paper on my counter because pouring the melted wax into such tiny nature containers was tricky — but made us smile

now we’ve got a sweet collection of tiny candles for our autumn nature table and to gift to friends. (and i’m gonna go grab some more $1 packs of wicks this week at kindergarten pick up time!)

oh, this is one of my favorites so far… i’ve been wanting to try this springy little idea ever since i saw it years ago (from martha???) but haven’t gotten around to it until now. we made beautiful springtime candles inside of eggshells. we LOVED every minute of this colorful quest on this rainy, gray spring day!

i began by piercing a dozen white eggs with a needle, breaking away a small opening around it, and dumping out the egg. (make yourself a coupla nice quiches!) make the opening large enough that it doesn’t trap smoke inside the shell when candles are lit. (and if you would rather put a tealight candle inside the eggshell than the melted wax method we’re about to show you, make it open enough to fit that in there.)

then we set out to dye the eggshells. i know it’s not very creative to just bust out the paas kit, but we had one left over from last year in the art cabinet, and i wasn’t feeling up to embarking on naturally dyed eggs this morning, nor the food coloring method. because N and i decided we wanted subtle pastel colors, we used the directions that just require the tablets to dissolve in water (instead of vinegar or lemon juice) so they aren’t so saturated.

we had to be very careful with the delicate shells as we did this, but they turned out so beautifully!

i liked how the insides of the shell were dyed a bit darker than the outside with this method.

N was loving the shells as they were! but they were soon to be candle holders…

next i melted soy wax in the double-boiler on the stove. you can use beeswax, too. (i happen to have a stash of lots of waxes from my old natural bath product biz.) you can find the soy wax shavings at michael’s for about $7.

we bought some 2.5″ candle wicks at michael’s for this project, and they worked out perfectly. when the wax is warm but not yet liquified, i spooned out a little dollop of wax into each eggshell and used it to stick the wick base to the bottom of the shell.

then i carefully poured the hot wax into each eggshell, about halfway full — or maybe more on some. we let them sit in the egg carton until they were hard and cool.

we displayed some of them in egg cups. you can get these at the dollar store, craft store, or grocery store. i found our solid colored ones at safeway for $2 each.

these cuties are from a local antique shop. love their expressions!

hilda & hulda

there are so many variations to this project – you can keep the eggs white and dye your melted wax different colors, use brown eggs instead of white for a natural look, dye only the insides of the egg by pouring the dye only into the hole, etc… use your imagination.

these make a beautiful addition to your springtime dinner table, spring nature altars, easter brunch table setting (serve up the quiches from the eggs you dumped out,) or a wonderfully creative hostess gift, packaged in little baskets with natural grass. how lovely would that be?!

hatch a little springtime light of your own!

about 11 years ago, for a few years, i was the proprietor of my own small business (on the side of my “real job”) making and selling natural bath products. once graduate school got underway, i had less time for the business aspect of it, so i dissolved my LLC. i’ve always retained the love of making my own natural products. it’s so fun now to pass this on to N! recently we created lipbalm – just in time for all of the puckering up people do on valentine’s day!

if we could have made it cake flavored, N probably would have been psyched, but we went with one of N’s second most favorite flavors for the lipbalm – peppermint. here’s my old recipe that we used.

ingredients:

• 1 tbsp beeswax (i like the small pearls – easier to measure)
• 5 tbsp sweet almond oil (due to nut allergies and because of its healing potential, i used coconut oil instead)
• 1 tbsp grapeseed or jojoba oil
• 20 drops of essential oil of choice (we used peppermint on this day, but other favorites of mine are cinnamon, lemon, lime, vanilla, ginger, tangerine… i like to mix them in fun ways. ginger-lime was the most popular lipbalm flavor i used to sell.)
• 1 tsp honey

instructions:

• melt together oil and beeswax in double boiler just until melted. remove from heat. add honey and essential oil. stir to blend. pour into lipbalm pots and let it stand to solidify.

although we LOVED making crayon hearts for her class last year, we decided that these would make awesome valentines for N’s preschool class this year. same group of kids = different gift. N picked out some heart stickers she wanted to put on the pots.

i added the following label to the back of her homemade valentine cards so that the parents would know the ingredients in the lipbalm incase of allergies or concerns.

we packaged the lipbalm and the valentine up in cute little bags we found at michael’s (intended for lollipops.)

happy valentine’s day! MWAH!

it seems fitting to post this on imbolc/candlemas, as today is the celebration of the light shifting and spring nearing. one of the rituals for candlemas is to create candles. while we did this a coupla weeks ago, it is a nice day to share our eeeeasy (and satisfying!) candle-making activities.

we bought some sheets of colorful beeswax from a local waldorf-inspired toy store called playstore. i think it was $3 per sheet, and we got a few colors of wax, and they threw in wicks with the purchase. (each sheet we bought could easily make 6 candles the size you see pictured, which is about 4″ tall.)

N wanted to make her own candles for her waldorf birthday ring this year…. in her favorite color of course – purple!

all you do is cut the wax to the size you want the candle to be, and cut the wick to the height of the candle (plus a centimeter or so at the top.) then roll the wax around the wick.

and also super-pretty lit in a birthday ring! happy one two three four candles, my shiny daughter.