My Latest over at CAGW: Wooden Pallets and Sydney's Latest Moneymaker

My latest over at CAGW:

a round-up of DIY wooden pallet projects

and a way to store melted wax between uses

The kids had SO much fun with their melted wax play--scooping it, pouring it, melting crayons in it, spilling it, scraping it up--

You get the idea.

Sydney, my entrepreneurial child, had another idea, as well. With her sister's help, she set up "Sydney's Beeswax Crafts" on our front sidewalk, directly on the frequently walked and biked path to our neighborhood park:

Here's the first dollar that she earned:

She sold her hand-dipped beeswax candles and her poured beeswax shapes (still warm!), all for $1 each. Including the elderly gentleman who paid her $1 to go inside and go to bed that first evening--it was 8:30 pm, getting dark, and I had long ago despaired of getting the kid to come back inside, myself--my child earned eight dollars selling her beeswax crafts.

This is better than I have done at some craft fairs.

This Week on CAGW: Beeswax Candles

poured beeswax candles in recycled containers

and hand-dipped beeswax candles

Sydney, especially, had a huge amount of fun with a crock pot full of melted beeswax in the past few days, making candles with me:

She used to be my kid who gagged when she felt oobleck for the first time, but now she loves nothing better than a huge, messy, elaborate, free-form, all-day art project. Will used to be very much that kid, and she'll still immerse herself in projects, but much of her energy and creativity is internalized these days, into reading and absorbing what she's read. Syd used to want to sit on the couch and be read to, or look at picture books, or listen to audiobooks, all day, but these days she's a hands-on girl, ready to jump into an activity and stay there. The two types call for very different learning styles, it seems. Willow's intellectual focus is good for reading, memorizing information by rote, learning languages and grammar, and computation. It's less suited for handwriting, art, mastering math concepts that call for manipulatives, and science projects. Syd's hands-on focus is great for handwriting, art, learning math concepts such as measuring and graphs, science projects, dance, and other physical skill-building. It's less suited for learning to read, math computation, memory work, and knowledge building by rote.

I still require them to do all of the above, of course (learning to read commences, regardless of our inability to get through a reading lesson without exactly one tantrum at some point, because Syd continues to improve, and screw the haters), but these trends are good to notice, because they help explain some things, and help guide me to better methods. Of COURSE Willow likes mental math these days, and resists learning how to carry (which I've been explaining using Base Ten blocks), I finally realize.

New math strategies coming up!

My Latest Over at Crafting a Green World: Wood Painting and Soap Carving

a round-up of non-toxic methods to paint and seal wooden toys

and a tutorial on setting up a soap carving activity for your kiddos

Just One Candle

The schedule in the past couple of weeks has become that end-of-the-school-year-hectic thing that I always forget it does, what with ballet recital rehearsal twice a week (have I mentioned yet that the pre-college program is doing a kiddie version of Swan Lake for their recital? It's either brilliant or mad), and fashion show rehearsal three times a week (The Trashion/Refashion Show is TOMORROW!!!), so although it's been weeks since I snapped the photos, only this morning did I finally manage to get the long-promised One Rolled Beeswax Birthday Candle listing up on my pumpkinbear etsy shop:

I'd planned to publish the One Rolled Beeswax Waldorf Candle listing, too, but I discovered that when I did the photo shoot of COURSE I forgot to snap pictures of the single Waldorf candle, especially since I had a million Waldorf candles out for the shoot and DID manage to get photos of the single birthday candle...

Sigh.

A Full Set of Waldorf Ring Candles

I don't actually own a Waldorf ring. It's on my to-do list to make one (someday...), but the idea of candles specifically designed to fit into Waldorf rings wasn't even on my radar until several customers asked me for them.

And now I FINALLY have a full set of Waldorf ring candles listed:

The lighting isn't quite what I'd like with these--it can be VERY hard to accurately render such a wide variety of colors--but you do your best and move on, you know? If I decide later that I simply can no longer live with the purple tint to the photos, then I'll reshoot, but I'm surprised at how much I can live with if the alternative is putting forth a great deal more effort.

The Rainbow Fairies' Favorite Candles

Are anybody else's kids as rabidly into the Rainbow Magic series as my kids are? Willow's been reading them since back when she first began to read, which means that my Sydney may very well have been weaned on them, and is now just as obsessed as Willow ever was.

The Rainbow Magic books are notorious between the adults in our family for putting the both of us straight to sleep when we read from them. Syd, who can't yet read, of course, checks out piles of them every time we're at the library, and since there are no audiobook versions of the Rainbow Magic series yet (GRRR!!!), Matt and I find ourselves reading them out loud to her. Every day. For hours. It was our little joke that in the summertime, I'd always read to Sydney out in the backyard in the hammock, with a nice pillow and a summer-weight blanket, and when I'd finished the book, Syd would climb out of the hammock, give it a little push, and send me off on a nice afternoon nap.

Everything is rainbow around here again these days--the fairies, Syd's design for this year's Trashion/Refashion show (more on that later), the play dough that we're making today, the Kool-aid-flavored bubble gum that we're also making today, and all our candles. As I was out in the yard last week in the suspiciously mild weather, taking photos of some new etsy listings, I took a second to update my rolled beeswax rainbow fairy candles listing:

For no other reason than that taking yet another photo of these little fairy candles is one more excuse to bask in their yummy, tiny rainbow-ness.

Rainbow Rolled Beeswax Waldorf Ring Candles

Completing a custom order a couple of weeks ago, I was called upon to research the diameter of candles used in traditional Waldorf birthday rings.

Having FINALLY discovered the right number, I whipped up a set of rainbow rolled beeswax candles the perfect size for a Waldorf ring:

These Waldorf ring candles are twice as thick as my birthday candles, and twice as long as my fairy candles. I'm hearting them so much that I'm starting to think that I my girls REALLY need a Waldorf ring to put them in.

Rolled Beeswax Rainbow Birthday Candles

I've had it in my head to make a simple set of birthday candles in rainbow colors for quite a while, and I do believe that I've had them made for nearly that long, but winters are so grey in Indiana that it can seem a long time between those sunny days that I love so much for product photography.

And although these unseasonably mild, warm, sunny days that we've had lately have given me nightmares of a post-apocalyptic global warming collapse in which we're all forced to migrate south on foot, pushing shopping carts full of canned goods in front of us, these entire days that the girls have spent playing with toy ponies and Duplos outside, or kicking a soccer ball around with me at the park, or having the kind of mid-morning playground playdates that we've haven't done since summer sure are making me very, very happy, as is the opportunity to get plenty of product shots done.

And that's why I've done something nearly unheard of this Fabruary: I put a brand-new listing up on etsy!

rolled beeswax birthday candles, rainbow set of seven

At least Global Warming is productive!

What I've Been Busy With

Whew! Now just two more orders to make tomorrow, and then I'm going to do something entirely non-productive.

Beeswax Ornaments: Honey on the Tree

For a couple of days it seemed the crafts-only crock pot was always hot, keeping beeswax melty, spreading that honey scent throughout the entire house, while we all took our turns (many turns!) making beeswax ornaments for our Christmas tree, and the trees of our family and friends.

So simple, so satisfying, so sweet(!) to make:

To make your own, check out my beeswax and fabric scrap ornament tutorial over at Crafting a Green World.

Beeswax Paper in Bee Culture Magazine

One of my favorite things about writing for Crafting a Green World is the fact that I retain ownership of my own work. That means that when the editor of Bee Culture magazine, having seen my beeswax paper tutorial posted at Crafting a Green World, writes me to ask if I could submit that tutorial to their magazine for publication, I may say yes!

I wish that getting my work in print was ALWAYS this easy!

Pumpkinbear on Pinterest

Do you pin?

Oh, my goodness, do I pin!

I have my own little Pumpkinbear Pinterest land right here:


On it you can see my seemingly millions of boards, all neurotically categorized.

I have board for projects organized by theme:

  

I have holiday boards, with projects and recipes and crafts and homeschool unit studies:

   

I have recipe boards, some for recipes that I want to make--

--and some for recipes that I make all the time:

I have boards for projects that are imminent to-dos:

 

 I have homeschool boards:

    

I have idea boards:

  

 I have boards for projects organized by material:

 

And those aren't even ALL my boards.

Also, because I'm a big nerd with a library science degree, I curate my boards, which means that I go through them, perfect the links, cross-reference them to relevant boards, and edit the commentary to be descriptive, accurate, and informative.

I can't believe how useful Pinterest has been for me. I use it to brainstorm for homeschool activities within the girls' areas of interest, and for holiday projects and kid crafts. I try new recipes from Pinterest (I've got these cranberry sauce meatballs in the crock pot right now!), and if I like them, then I move them to my Favorite Family Foods pinboard so that I can find them again easily.

Didn't people used to use file cabinets for stuff like that? Geez, wasn't that a fire hazard?