Valentine Crafting... or trying to...

Okay, so I am not very crafty./ When someone pulls out a glue gun, crayons, paint and/or construction paper I must admit I start to break out in a sweat. But this year I am trying to be more crafty and do more hands on stuff with the boys, so here was our experiment. We have tons of crayons and I mean TONS!! I don't know what it is so about two cute little blond hair boys that makes random people give them crayons, but they do. So I decided to make those crayons new Valentine presents...I know pretty original, regardless I was going to try this.

Materials: garbage bowl, crayons, and mold

Peel back the paper and break crayons into a bowl. 

 Make sure to have a handy helper to sort the colors to like piles.

We put the crayon pieces into the mold. Set the oven to 350 and waited...

and waited....

until they finally started to melt!

and these were the finished product!

another angle of the finished product

These were left in the oven WAY longer than the other ones and still turned out alright.

We are also making Butter/Sugar cookies for Luke's class. 

Here is the best Butter/Sugar Cookie Recipe I have ever used...

1 1/2 cups unsalted butter at room temperature (make sure it is room temperature it does make a difference)

1 cup sugar

2 egg yolks

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

3 cups unbleached white flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions:
With a wooden spoon or an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar until lights. Beach in the egg yolks one a a time, then add the3 vanilla and beat until smooth. Gradually add the flour and salt, mixing just until the dough is uniformly smooth. The dough is now ready to chill, shape, and bake or freeze.


Once dough has been chilled or at least a half hour. 
Preheat oven to 350
Using a sharp knife, slice the logs into 1/4 inch-thick cookies and place them about an inch apart on an un oiled baking sheets ( I use a silpat). Bake for 15 -20 minutes, until the edges of the cookies are lightly golden. Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes, then transfer to racks to finish cooling.