Excitement Is Not Contagious

Yesterday, I spent most of the day emptying, rearranging, and then reorganizing the playroom. Even though I now have to make another trip to Goodwill, the results are worth it. When I go to bed, knowing that there is a clean, organized, functional playroom two floors beneath me is the equivalent of taking a double dose of Ambien.

When Charlie got home from school, I was kind of excited to show him the results, because not only was everything hyper-organized, but the furniture had been rearranged so that there was now a ton of room to play Wii without hitting anyone in the face.

As he walked into the playroom with his eyes closed, he had a smile on his face and was obviously excited. When he opened them, the smile disappeared and he said: "Oh. Man, I was hoping that maybe we had a new ping pong table or something. This is what you're showing me?"

Yes, it is. But that's not all! In addition to this clean playroom, you get a smack on the head!

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While reorganizing the playroom, my analness got out of hand and I'm getting rid of every single crayon in our house that doesn't have a sharp point, resulting in a shoe box full of colored wax. Since throwing them away didn't seem very "green," I tried to find a way to recycle them. I heard somewhere that if you have a small mountain of broken, worn-down, sad looking crayons, you can:

1. Peel the papers off all of the crayons.
2. Break the crayons into small chunks.
3. Put 5-10 chunks in each space of a muffin tin.
4. Put the muffin tin in a 250 degree oven until the crayons melt.
5. Let the crayons cool overnight.
6. Remove them the next day and enjoy!

If you have even more time to kill and plenty of Band-Aids, you can let the kids use a cheese grater or vegetable peeler to make crayon shavings to put into the muffin tin, which will end up melted into a giant hunk. Or, if you have serious issues, you can use sucker molds in the shape of your child's favorite character and, using a fine brush, you can "paint" facial details onto the chunk of wax that will eventually end up rubbed down to the shape of a chicken nugget.

Since spending time in the kitchen making something that isn't even edible (or drinkable) is pretty much my idea of hell, I will not be making homemade crayons. I will, however, find time to head to the post office to ship the box o' wax to this crayon recycler:

Coloring Fun With Crazy Crayons...a National Crayon Recycle Program