Being a Little Bit of a Martha...

Stewart that is. In the past year and a half I probably purchased $100 worth of candles from Pier 1 Imports. I couldn't help myself, they just smelled so good and they looked perfect on our candle holders. The only problem is that after the wick burned all the way down it left a whole lot of wax. Being that I spent about $6 each on the candles, I couldn't bear to throw the precious leftovers away. So basically this resulted in a box full of about 25 misshapen candles in colors of red, yellow, orange and green. I knew I wanted to do something with them, but time for a craft project is a little scarce for me.

Well yesterday was one of two nights off for me this week at the Gap, so I thought what better time to do my craft project? I haven't made candles since the 4th grade and even then, we just repeatedly dipped long wick strings into hot wax. This time around Ms. Latimer wouldn't be there to help. Using the Internet as my resource for how to recycle candles, I bought a cheap saucepan from the Dollar Store and wicks and canning jars at Michaels. Chopping the wax into smaller pieces was a little time consuming, but I had an hour to spare since my laundry had 45 minutes to be in the washer, the pork chops I was making for dinner had an hour to marinate and my roasted potatoes would take about 55 minutes to bake (yes, I want you to be impressed by how well I can multi-task). Anyway, after Ben abandoned me for his studies after dinner I made a little double boiler with my cheap pot and started melting the wax. The pot was a little small so I had to make about 10 batches of melted wax and about half the time when I’d pour the wax into the jars it would miss and get wax on the outside of the jars, but it was better than spending $14 at Michaels for the special candle making pot.

Overall it probably took me about 3 hours + to make 5 candles; mind you I was watching So You Think You Can Dance and doing laundry at the same time. Thanks go to Karie for providing a little company too. They’re not the prettiest of candles, but at least now I can use the box they were sitting in for something more useful… like to move all the jars to Rochester in a month!