How to Recycle Crayons ~ Valentine’s Day Kids Craft

This project has it all – it is fun, inexpensive, quick, green and just plain cool. Since Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, I decided we would share our fun craft in the form of Valentines. Who wants to place bets on which kid has the coolest Valentine’s in preschool?!

Restaurants dole out crayons by the handful. I try to refuse them when I can, but more often than not we wind up adding crayons to our collection. Since I can’t bare to throw anything away, we have more crayons than any kid can use. In addition to restaurant crayons galore, we have an ever growing collection of broken bits. The craft gives all of those extra crayons and broken bits new life.

What you need:

• Crayons – lots of them
• Silicone candy mold

Remove the wrappers from your crayons and break into bits. Fill your mold with the bits. Place your mold on a cookie sheet (for support – trust me on this), and melt in the oven on 230 degrees for 12 – 15 minutes. (I put them in for 12 minutes, but they needed a bit more time so I watched until they were fully melted.)

TIPS

• If making crayons with little ones who won’t be able to help in the label removal process, remove the labels before inviting them to “help.” It is a process.
• For my mini heart mold, I used approx 2 1/2 crayons per heart. (So for a 12-hole mold, plan on 30ish crayons)
• Want bigger crayons? This mold makes 2 1/2 inch hearts.
• After you make crayons in your mold, you won’t want to make food. Some of the cheap crayons will stain the mold.

Once the crayons cool (several hours) pop them out and ta-da! You will be amazed how cool your new crayons look – I know I was! I’ve been wanting to do this with K for some time, and now that we finally got around to it I want to do it again with different shapes.

To make your own Valentines, download this printable. You will get six Valentine’s per 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper. I printed mine on white card stock and backed with red card stock that I edged with fancy scissors, but I added red boarder to the printable so you don’t have to.

Hint – use rubber cement to adhere your crayons to the paper so the crayons will come off easily and cleanly.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Scott Naturals 4-Week Test Drive Week 4 ~ Giveaway

This is the fourth and final installment of the Scott Naturals 4-Week Test Drive post series. (If you missed previous weeks, learn more about the Scott Naturals 4-Week Test Drive, how to learn to green your outdoor play with the Scott Naturals Week 2 post or how to teach your kids to be green with the Scott Naturals Week 3 post.)

This week, let’s look at how you can upcycle your “trash” into art projects and treasures! (How much greener does it get?)

As a life-long pack-rat and wanna-be artist, this topic is the definition of my office/craft room. When it comes to art projects for kids, there is no need to go out and spend a lot of money on supplies and kits. All you really need are some basics and a little imagination. But the key to upcycled art projects is that you have to think ahead. You can’t just decide you want to make a project today, if you haven’t started gathering supplies. Here are some of my favorite things to upcycle into art:

• Toilet and Paper Towel tubes
• Empty Canisters (like formula and coffee can)
• Ribbon & Elastic Cording (from gifts, packages, etc)
• Tissue Paper (from gifts, store purchases, etc)
• Tissue Boxes
• Odd Socks
• Clothing (that is ripped and can’t be passed down)

Yes, it looks like a pile of trash. But with a little imagination… poof… a project to keep little hands busy and crafty!

Let’s look at a few of my favorite ideas for this “trash.” Toilet and paper towel tubes easily become telescopes, binoculars, a vase for “flowers,” and much more. Here is a project my daughter came home from school with this year. When they studied the nursery rhyme Jack be Nimble they created this “candle stick” to jump over.

Empty canisters make excellent drums. This adorable drum uses upcycled fabric, popsicle sticks and bottle caps too.

Oh I could go on and on… which might actually inspire me to start blogging about some of our crafts…ummmm.

The point is, that you can keep trash out of landfills by using things found around the house to create art and entertain your kids. A win-win.

For those who think they aren’t creative enough to come up with projects on their own, check out the book Scrap Kins Build-it Book or any of these other books about recycled crafts for ideas.

For the final time, I want to remind you about the Scott Naturals 4-Week Test Drive and encourage you to try swapping your household paper products with the new Scott Naturals paper products made out of recycled and sustainable fibers. Scott Naturals products are made with recycled fibers and sustainable materials instead of 100% virgin fibers, and if we all swapped our current products for Scott Naturals for four weeks we would save 2 million trees.

And remember, just for clicking this link to learn more about the 4-Week Test Drive (and hopefully sign up), Scott Naturals will donate $1 to the National Wildlife Foundation — now isn’t that worth a click? Oh, and you can grab some coupons while you are there.

Last week’s winner – Congrats to Terra H who won last week’s month supply of Scott Naturals.

WIN it – Finally, to help one reader take the 4-week test drive challenge, I am giving away a Scott Naturals prize pack that includes paper towels, napkins, toilet paper and flushable wipes.

Mandatory Entry – Tell me your favorite art project made from things around your house.

Additional Entires: (Must do the mandatory entry first)

1. Take the 4-week test drive. (Remember, just for clicking that link $1 will be donated on your behalf to the National Wildlife Federation.)
2. “Like” TheSuburbanMom on Facebook. (Already a do, that counts too, just leave a comment below.)
3. Sign up for my newsletter. (You must confirm your subscription – thanks.)
4. Follow TheSuburbanMom on Twitter (@SuburbanMomClub) and tweet about this giveaway. “Enter to win a #ScottNaturals Prize Pack and take the #ScottTestDrive and go green! #giveaway @SuburbanMomClub http://wp.me/pQHaE-32c”
5. Comment on any other NON-giveaway post.

Contest ends May 9, 2011 at 11:59 pm. Open to U.S. residents in the continental U.S. only. Winning comment will be chosen at random by Random.org and contacted for shipping information. Winner will have 72 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen.

Disclosure – This post is sponsored by Scott Naturals and TheMotherhood, however, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Recycle Your Flip Flops with TerraCycle at Old Navy

As a true Floridian, I LIVE in my flip flops. From about March – October, there is no other shoe for me. Can you relate? But, like all good things, flip flops don’t last forever. Some pairs are worn into the ground, others meet Jimmy Buffet’s problem, “Blew out my flip flop, stepped on a pop top.” (It’s a real problem, look it up.)

But I can’t throw things away! I hate making garbage, so I actually have (at least) 3 pairs of busted flip flops sitting in the bottom of my closet (taking up valuable space). I have been searching for a way to recycle these plastic/rubber wonders and recently found a solution that sends the flops to Kenya to be upcycled into art. I planned to write about that today, until I caught up on Ellen who shared this awesome info on her show last week. (I’ll pick up the Kenya story later this summer, but for now I have a FREE option for you to recycle your flops.)

I ❤ Ellen, I ❤ Old Navy, I ❤ TerraCycle and I am SO excited to tell you about this, I am giddy!

Old Navy has teamed up with TerraCycle to recycle old flip flops! The Flip Flop Replay program started on Earth Day and will run through May 21. In each Old Navy location, you will find a Flip Flop Replay collection box like this:

TerraCycle will then recycle your flip flops into playgrounds. Yes, playgrounds. And at the end of the campaign, four deserving schools will be given these recycled playgrounds. How amazing! My junk will make for play time for kids for years to come!

Rubber, leather and cloth flip flops are acceptable for this campaign, but no other sandals or other forms of shoes.

I’ll be headed to Old Navy this weekend to recycle my flip flops!!!

I am a Pillow & Mattress Killer

It is true. I don’t know how I do it, but I go through pillows more than any one person should. In fact, I Googled it. According to those who apparently know, you should be able to get two-three years out of a synthetic pillow (more for down), but in my bed I don’t think I even make it a year before the pillow bites the dust. And I don’t think the dip in my mattress where I sleep is normal since my husband (who is bigger) has a smaller dip than I do!

I don’t think I am an unreasonable pillow user. I like a modest pillow, a little fluffy and a little firm. Not so soft my head floats to the bottom, but not so firm as to cause a crick in my neck. I buy reasonably priced pillows. Nothing fancy, after all I have never seen one that lasts, but I try to go with name brands on sale. But they just don’t last.

Of course, I have no idea what type of mattress we have. It is comfy and pillow top, and we bought it when we moved into the house 5 1/2 years ago. I am sure it is not a fancy matress like a ComforPedic mattress or Simmons Beautyrest Black, but it does the job. Except now I have a dent… (Which part of me wants to blame on pregnancy (2 1/2 years ago), maybe the extra belly weight combined with terrible nightsweats killed it. I don’t know, but even that doesn’t answer my 2x a year pillow replacement.)

Do I secrete some strange pillow/matress killing oil? Or do I abuse pillows by sleeping mainly on the corners? I choose synthetic vs down because of allergies, and for the same reason have a special dust mite cover on my pillows and still… they go kaput. I thought perhaps the special cover would help, but alas… the same results as not having a cover. (Although I have noticed my allergies might be a bit better with the cover…)

So I have killed another pillow, and I back on the hunt for a replacement. To me the worst part about replacing the pillow is the waste of throwing away an old pillow… It makes me sad. I did read a suggestion about making old pillows into dog beds to donate to a local dog shelter, so I might look into that.

What about you, how long do your pillows last? And do you have any suggestions of what to do with old pillows?

CMP.ly/3

The Trash Picker Strikes Again

Yep, I did it again, and this time I got caught red-handed. It’s ok though because I was caught by a friend who would have done the same thing if she had seen it first. This morning there were 2 pink Pottery Barn Anywhere Chairs out with the trash across the street. WHAT!?! Who throws this kind of thing away? Of course, I had to save these from the landfill, so I hopped in the golf cart pulled up, piled them in and took them home. While I was there, I also found two orange throw pillows!

Don’t get me wrong, these chairs have been loved. But the covers are washable, so with a little stain remover I plopped those suckers into the wash. EVERY mark came off! And since they were not monogrammed, they are perfect. Check out the before and after pics of my find!

Before

After

Bonus pillows

Here’s to being green and reusing!!!