Snotty Noses Happy Parents Raising Healthy Kids by Dr Orlena Kerek, Paediatrician

I have recently become slightly addicted to pinterest. That, combined with my new year's resolution to do more crafts with the kids, has lead to lots of unfinished craft projects lying forlornly around the house. Some of them turn out well and others well, not so well. Perhaps you have to practice making your pinterest pins before you go for gold. A bit like perfecting a recipe. Anyhow, this week it's been wax disasters.

Firstly, there were those beautiful hearts that you make by scraping shavings of crayons onto grease proof paper. Then you iron them and you end up with a lovely translucent sheet of wax that you cut into a heart shape and dangle elegantly in front of your window. Except you don't. You end up with a splodge of hot wax that dries and then cracks. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong I thought and tried again. Nope, still splodgy, cracky wax. And again. In the end I gave up. So disheartened I didn't even manage to take a photo to show you...

And what on Earth went wrong with my beautiful crayons?

I saw a heap of heart shaped wax crayons on pinterest. You take bits of old crayons, put them in a silicon mould, shove them in the oven and then you end up with beautiful mottled, marbled heart shaped crayons. Well, my first stumbling block was that I couldn't find any heart shaped moulds anywhere in town. I searched high and low and eventually found a packet that looked suitable. 2 hearts, some teddies and assorted other shapes. That will have to do.

The boys were very excited. We used up all those bits of old crayons that you can't really use because they're so small. I notice that other people bought crayons especially for the task but I was trying to 'up cycle'. Chop, chop, chop. Being careful not to cut little fingers. The boys were enjoying it.

The pin I saw said, 250 degrees for 15 minutes. I put them in the oven and got on with the laundry. The smell was lovely, sweet molten wax, taking me back to my childhood, sitting in my dad's sculpture workshop.

Ping! The timer went off. Excitedly we rushed to the oven. A brown, murky mess awaited us. Hmmm. Perhaps I should have kept a closer eye on them. In fact, they didn't turn out as bad as I thought. The other side was mottled, but I think I didn't use enough pink. And clearly my moulds were much smaller than the ones in the pin. I hadn't thought of that.

Some of them broke as we took them out. So a week later, I put them back in the moulds and when the oven was on (at a much lower heat) I popped them in for 5 minutes. The wax remelted but seemed to have adhered to the silicon mould. Humph again. Sadly I had to say good bye to a teddy bear and a heart mould.

But the kids had fun and gave a couple of them to a little girl at school for valentines. I tried to encourage them to spread the wealth a bit and give some to the other girls but they were having none of it. Clearly Aina is a very special (or scary) girl as they both wanted to give her the crayons. In return, Galen got a green rabbit shaped rubber band. I'm not sure what you're supposed to do with it but he likes it. Although that's not saying much, he'd collect the rubbish off the street if I let him, or when I don't notice. Not to mention his collection of sticks and stones. Come to think of it, the crayons were fun, but I think next year he can stick to giving Aina one of the weeds from the garden, I mean flowers...