Showing posts with label candles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label candles. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Bees Please

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It's not really a New Years Resolution because I usually break those in the first week of January. But I'd like to think of it more as a good intention. This year ( amongst other things) I am intending to be a lot more frugal and where possible make my own things rather than buy them.
Last year my husband and I made our own candles which turned out to be a whole lot of fun. We tried making our own bread ( which was a little less successful but we are persistant). We had chickens laying an abundance of fresh eggs for us and of course we made some homemade Toys for the Toy Society. Last year I got out the knitting needles and made a whole slew of scarves for Christmas gifts and for my children to weather the particularly nasty winter we are experiencing in the Pacific NW this year. There is our family blanket that I knitted and my hopes are to again plant a vegetable garden come the spring.

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But something else that I would love to try is making my own honey! I doubt that I will ever actually get to do it due to our suburban location and the hazards of kids with bee allergies...(I can already hear my neighbors letting out sighs of relief)....but maybe one day.

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While we were on vacation we stayed with my husbands brother who kept bees and the honey they produced was magnificent.

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Apart from a few bee stings here and there...(which I admit could present a few problems)...the bees seem like the perfect pets. They produce mountains of honey and once you have their hive set up they do everything else themselves. You don't even have to feed them! (My dogs who are currently fast asleep lying on my feet will have to pick their game up this year if they don't want to be replaced by bees)

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Candle Making

We are candle people at our house. We usually have at least one candle burning at any given time of the day....bathrooms, kitchen, living areas. I like the scented ones. They help remove cooking smells from the air and freshen up the house. And because we tend to go through a lot of candles we decided that we could probably make our own candles so ....

For Matt's birthday I bought him a candle making kit. I bought it online from Lone Star Candle Supply. There are a lot of other great candle supply stores but we found this one to be affordable and great for a beginner! The kit came with the wax, molds, wicks, instructions and some sample colors and scents.

The kids decided that they wanted to make some green colored coconut lime verbana scented votives. They helped with the measuring of the wax, the scents and the colors. I was surprised at how easy the process was and how little mess we made considering we had so many "helpers".
We melted the ingredients in a double boiler on the stove and then Matt poured the melted wax into the molds.


We chose votives but you can really make whatever you want as long as you have the right mold.




We were very happy with the final result. And the best part is it cost us only about half the price of the "professional" ones ...and it was SO much more fun.