Partly because Lily was wired and partly because I was curious about my little idea, she and I embarked on an interesting adventure this afternoon.

I got it in my brain that it would be a great idea to take some heart-shaped molds, melt our already broken (by Ben…sorry to throw him under the bus but facts are facts) crayons and make new crayons for Lily and Ben to give away as Vday gifts at school. Genius, right? Ha…

See, but then I may not have realized that the molds I purchased were, well, made for freezing water. Yes, they are ice-cube trays. But they are those new “rubber” ones that seemed JUST LIKE the rubber muffin pans I have.

I mean, why would they make something that’s rubber that can’t be put in either the freezer or the oven, right? Come on people!

So, that leaves me to the part in the story where I tell you that yes, we melted the crayons and that yes, we also partially melted the pan. There was this funny smokey smell coming from the oven and I was like, “Hmmm, melting crayons sure do smell funny. Weird.” And then about a minute later I realized that the smoking was the bottom of the heart container melting to the metal baking sheet. Awesome.

I did not take a photo of that but you can probably see from the photo below that part of the edges are droopy. Poor thing.

Not too bad, right?

I like the one on the left in the below shot because it kind of looks like there’s a little tan/peach heart inside the bigger one.

Repurposed heart-shaped crayons…not exactly the easiest thing to hold but I thought it was a fun and FREE thing to do with the soon-to-be five-year-old. And I was right too. She wants to keep a lot of them for herself. The 2-year-old kept asking if he could eat them (always food on the brain with that child!) so I finally had to demonstrate that it wasn’t candy but a writing utensil. He immediately lost interest.

I will say that after the smoking incident, I tried it again on my hot plate and it was a success. Crayons melted. Pan didn’t.

So, if you have some broken crayons in your home, melt those bad boys down and do something funky with them! And if you do, please share a photo! Oh and make sure the mold you’re using is oven safe.