You crafty thing, you.

For our last weekend of winter vacation, V and I got all ambitious and worked on Valentine's Day presents. Last year, I forgot about Valentine's Day until I dropped her off at school, and then ran to Target to buy crappy pixie stix for 24 unsuspecting classmates. This year, I'm gonna be prepared. Dammit.

I read this post on Frugal Family Fun blog (which is a spectacular blog that you really should be reading instead of this one). Hm, I said. Interesting. But I don't have a heart muffin tin, and I'm not about to pay $5.99 for a new one that I'll only use to melt down crayons.

So we went to the newest Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch, and lo and behold, there was a heart-shaped baking tin of some sort. It says "Wilton 1992" on it, so I don't know where you can get your own. Try your local thrift store. Ours was 99 cents.

Now that we had our tin, we peeled all the worn-down, deadbeat crayons we could find. Then we broke them into little-ish pieces. Then we sorted them by color. Then Barbie farted on them.

 V liked putting them into the tins. She liked picking color combos, and found this exercise totally engrossing. I preheated the oven to 275 degrees, and ten minutes later, wala!

 Hot wax! Aren't they pretty? If you look at the link to Martha's on Frugal Family's blog, she suggests setting the oven to 150 for 20 minutes or so, but I'm not patient enough, so I went with the hotter shorter time. Just be careful taking these things out of the oven. A spill would be...waxy, I'm afraid.

 After they cooled for about 10 minutes on the counter, we popped them in the fridge and then V took a bath. When she was done, these babies easily popped out of the baking sheet (with a few well-placed whacks). The crayon marks above are from us trying to figure out what color the little broken bits were (those dark blues and purples all look alike...) before baking.

Here, for scale, are V's blurry, excited hands, lining up some of the 48 new chunky heart crayons we've made. I figure 2 for each kid, with some sort of card that indicates these are not for eating, but for coloring.

What do you think? Is this better than last minute pixie stix? I sure hope so. Now I just need to remember to get them ready in the next month, and not wait until the morning of the 14th, as is my lazy, lazy way.