Case in point:
Me: Honey, when you were a little boy, what did you use to color with?
Cory: Crans.
Me: As in, cranberries?
Cory: No, crans. Like... crans!
Me: Uh-uh.
Case in point numero dos:
Me: Keish, when you were a little girl, what did you use to color in my coloring books with?
Keisha: Crowns.
Me: As in, the Queen of England?
Keisha: No, crowns. Crowwwns. Right? Crowns!
Me: Nope.
Call me old school, but I prefer the two-syllable pronunciation. Cray-ons. It's phonics, people!
Onward.
I found the best craft idea from "Whatever", a blog that is near and dear to my heart. This craft just spoke to me, for some reason. I decided that Calvin's upcoming birthday was the perfect reason to try it. I had the epiphany that I might as well start early, while it was cold and grey and I was spending countless evenings decaying on the couch. It's a good thing I started early, because it ended up being quite a task. A fun one, but a task all the same.
First, I went to Walgreens and bought the gigantic box of cray-ons that has the built-in sharpener. It harkened me right back to being a 7 year old and yearning for such a box, although I was also partial to K-Mart brand cray-ons, because they rendered a darker, waxier color.
Now, I have no pictures of this next and most important step. But here's what I did: I broke these bad boys up, put them in ABC sillicon molds, then baked them until they melted at 300 degrees.
I let them harden for an hour or two then I started peeling/popping them out of the molds. So fun! Until I got to M. And N. And S. And K. Some letters were just not designed to be melted into molds and then popped out in one piece. The problem was, I planned to make a set of these for each of Calvin's class mates, spelling his/her name. And there is a Macy and a Markuz. And a JerraN. And an Aaron. And Saige. And Sophie. You get my drift. The most popular letters were also the most impossible to forge.
At the same time, it seemed silly to scrap the whole plan. I was bound and determined to make a stinking M! I even consulted Meg over at Whatever. She said she had the same problem, although she was probably just trying to make me feel better.
I labored on. I think I finally did get a solid M and one, lone S.
For the others, I called in my favorite handy man, and he welded them back together for me. My motto is always that imperfections add character, so why the heck not? Plus, hello, they are 3 and 4 year olds.
Finally, it was time to pack them up.
The party was a success, though the teachers seemed more excited about the cray-ons than the kids. They are probably all lost or broken up by now. Or their little sisters have stolen them. But it was a fun project and it gave purpose to roughly 158 hours of my cold, Winter nights.