Candles and Other Creative Endeavors on a Cloudy Week-end

What made us decide to make candles on a Sunday afternoon?  Long term readers of this blog may remember that we have made candles before.  One summer in 2014, we made candles and invited friends over to be part of it.  We've made candles for a Sunday where I lead the creative church service, back when we still had that service.  One time when my sister and nephew came, we made candles together.

We've had our candlemaking supplies packed away a long time, and one year, I thought about taking them to the Create in Me retreat to give to others who might be ready to try making candles.  This year as we tried to carve out room in the cottage for camp counselors to sleep, we came across them.  Yesterday, I dribbled some wax from a candle into the foil from a tealight candle, and my spouse said, "We could just make candles."  It was an overcast but not rainy afternoon, and we decided to do it.  The thought of getting rid of some of the stuff we'd been storing for years was just irresistible.

For awhile, we'd been collecting every jar that came our way, so we had a huge bucket of jars.  I had a vision of using all of our wax and wicks, but my spouse predicted we'd run out of containers.  He was right.  But we had fun trying.

When we first made candles, I had a huge bag of crayons that had gotten melted and distorted enough that we weren't able to use as crayons; in fact, I think we made candles to use up those crayons.  As with many art projects, we ended up with more supplies than we could use.  And then it's hard to get rid of them because we've spent the money and it seems wasteful to just toss them out in the trash.

I love choosing crayons and anticipating the colors.  We have realized that the color won't be as dark as it first appears.  We now have some lovely peach colored candles from almost fluorescent orange crayons.

We also use essential oils.  Years ago when we couldn't find any citronella candles, we decided to make our own.  So most of these candles contain citronella.  I'm not sure it really keeps the mosquitoes away. Through the years we branched out into rosemary and lemongrass. 

We ended up with a table full of candles that we then rushed inside the house to finish cooling when it looked like the rain clouds were finally catching up with us.  I love the way they look:

Now we have to figure out where to store these candles.  Maybe we'll give some away.

It's been a delightful week-end.  There's been time for creativity in addition to the candles.  We had a rainy Saturday, so we watched some cooking shows while making pizza.  We experimented with dehydrated mushrooms from Mepkin Abbey and made a pasta dish.  We transplanted a salvia plant for the butterfly garden that I'm creating at school. 

We did all of this along with getting some difficult work done--a start at reclaiming the cottage.  That process can be so overwhelming.  But we'll get it done, one day at a time, one week-end project at a time.