SarahWagner – I Am Your Target Market

October 22, 2016

Melt and Pour Crayons

One of the side effects of having children is that you end up with bags and boxes full of broken crayons, crayons from restaurants, crayons from school year’s past. I really hate to throw away useful things and so, I had a shoe box full to the brim of crayons. With Halloween fast approaching, I finally figured out what to do with all of the discarded crayons.

Melt & Pour Crayons

Supplies:

– silicon molds – generally these are ice cube trays. The Dollar Tree carries shaped molds for nearly every holiday. For this project, I have two molds – skulls and spiders and webs.
– Crayons – separated by color
– Old pan
– Old mason jar
– Water
– Canning tongs
– Wooden skewers
– Paper towels

Remove all the paper from the crayons. I’ve found that it is easiest to do this with a razor knife or box cutter. Break the crayons into pieces (I used a hammer for this).

Put the crayon pieces in the jar in a pan of water and heat it to boiling. Keep watch over the process but it generally takes me 40 minutes to melt a half a cup of crayon pieces down. If you want to hasten the melt, you can stir it but that will result in no swirls in your final product.

Using the canning tongs, lift the jar out of the water and carefully pour the melted wax into the molds, careful not to overfill them.

Allow to cool but remove from the molds while still slightly warm.

I’m making these crayons for The Teal Pumpkin Project, so my house has something for kids who have allergies, sensitivities, or who are diabetic. Fortunately, my kids aren’t allergic to any foods but a lot of my friends have children who can’t eat sugar or nuts or milk. The Teal Pumpkin project ensures that all kids can have fun on Halloween. If you have a non-food option, place a teal pumpkin on your stoop so families know your house is an allergy friendly stop. Kids who stop at my house can have either candy or a set of Halloween crayons.

My teal pumpkin is a plastic pumpkin bucket I'll be hanging from a post outside during Trick or Treating — My teal pumpkin is a plastic pumpkin bucket I’ll be hanging from a post outside during Trick or Treating

October 15, 2016

Halloween Wreath DIY

I love decorating for holidays, and I love making things for said decorating. The problem with holiday crafting is that, if you aren’t careful, it can get pretty expensive. This wreath isn’t like that. I spent less than $10 on this wreath, but your cost may vary a little bit because I happened to have a handful of unused rubber snakes on hand thanks to my children.
Supplies for Halloween Wreath
You need:
Wreath Form – I chose wire, but you can use other forms just as easily, though I’d recommend spray painting grapevine wreath forms black before you begin.
Black Tulle (my roll was 6 inches by 25 yards and I used almost all of it)
Six or so plastic or rubber snakes
Battery operated lights
A rubber or plastic spider
Optional: various acrylic paints, spray paint

Step one: Prepare the Snakes
My experience with plastic snakes is that they are generally comically fluorescent. You can leave them the color they come, spray paint them black, or go the more time-consuming route and attempt to paint them in the style of various venomous snakes. The Cobra did not require painting and the Rhinoceros viper ended up much too pink.

Step Two: Tie the Tulle

For the bottom fluff, I cut 2-inch strips (maybe 200) and tied each one to the rings of the wreath form. This is the most time-consuming portion of this craft.

Step Three: Attach the Snakes

I used strips of Tulle to attach the snakes where I wanted them. I tried it with wire but the wire showed too easily. The only wire I used was for the spider in the fluffy Tulle.

Step Four: Wind the lights

I used Tulle to attach the battery boxes to the back of the wreath and wound the lights around the form, tying with Tulle when necessary.

Step Five: Weave the Tulle

Using most of the rest of the Tulle, I wove it through the wreath form, the snakes, and the lights. The more tension you use here, the tighter the weave and the more Tulle you will need. Alternatively, you could also do this with black ribbon.

Step Six: Tie the Hanger

I used a six-inch length of Tulle tied to the top to hang the wreath.

I keep this as an indoor decoration as the lights are not rated for outdoor use and I don’t really see my front door that much and want to enjoy it so it hangs in my kitchen where I can enjoy it for the whole of Halloween.

July 20, 2016August 24, 2016

PokeParenting

It’s summer time. School is out, kids are everywhere, it’s ridiculously hot, and usually my house is full of the bickering that brothers do. Not today. Today there is talk of Pikachu and Squirtle. Today they’re trying to decide if our dog Mojo should have been named Growlithe. Today there is peace among the ranks. They’re excited, tired out, and have something interesting to share, which is really hard when one is a teenager and one is a few weeks from ten. Even better, it is something I can share with them too.

I missed the original introduction of Pokemon. I was too busy with Magic the Gathering, marching band, drama, and being a “mature” high school senior to have time for my little brother’s video games (not to mention I was truly terrible at anything that wasn’t Diablo or Gabriel Knight). It wasn’t until I had kids of my own that it got interesting.

My oldest child watched every series he could find, played all the games, collected the cards, and had a stuffed Piplup. I was so glad that particular critter ran out of batteries after three long years of hearing “Piplup? Piplup.” In the middle of the night. Because my oldest son loves Pokemon, my youngest son loves Pokemon. If I couldn’t play along with my boys, what kind of geeky mama would I be?

Pokemon Go collected Pokemon — Gotta Catch ’em All!

I played the oldest child’s games on his Nintendo DS but it wasn’t until Black and White came out that I got my own game (mostly because I finally had a DS to play on). I caught everything I could, hatched everything I could, did the best I could to complete it all. It’s more addictive than people think, and it’s not just about finishing the game.

It goes without saying that Pokemon Go is pretty big in my house right now, and it is awesome. The kids and I are taking walks around the neighborhood and actually saying hello to our neighbors! We’re learning our city, competing with each other to see who can get what – my oldest child caught a Rhyhorn but I have a Cubone. My youngest child doesn’t have a phone of his own as he isn’t old enough for that, but I let him catch them, learn their stats, and evolve them and that’s really all he wants to do anyway. He’s just happy to get out and do stuff.

I have to admit, I’m not exactly sure how people are getting hurt playing this. Common sense is a great thing, and you really don’t have to be right on top of something to catch it, spin it, or otherwise interact with it. Yes, if you’re walking around staring at your phone, you’re likely to run into things, but the app has this really great vibrate feature when a wild whatever appears. Playing this particular game is no more dangerous than texting while walking.

There are always those who don’t have anything nice or supportive to say, but I’d really rather my kids play Pokemon with me than a lot of other things they could be doing. I love this app. I am hoping we can continue it in some way after school returns as it’s great at getting some of that pent up energy out, and we don’t walk in silence; we talk to each other about a little bit of everything. To me, that’s the best part. Even better than catching a Meowth (which I did). Besides, there’s a handy dandy distance monitor under the awards, and we’re now 5.1 km closer to Rivendell.

Editor’s Note: Check in with Sarah a month into the Pokémon GO journey at her blog.