While husband and I were in Kansas City last weekend we happened upon Sur la Table (love!) where we picked up a bunch of grill toys and talked about candles in galvanized buckets.

I used to make candles quite a bit, but it’s been years, mostly because we had a baby, and who lights candles around a baby? Or a toddler?

I got excited about the idea of making candles again, so I went to the craft store and got a few buckets and some wick made for container candles (I probably had something that would work in my stash, but I wanted to make sure I used the right thing). Because I had plenty of wax in my supply stash, these were all the materials I had to buy (except for some cedar oil, which we’ll get to in a minute).

Admittedly if you don’t have a stash of candle making supplies this will be a spendier project, but if you have the basics already, you can make these for about $4 a pop. Sweet.

My Candle Making Setup

Since I haven’t written about candles lately, if ever, I thought I’d tell you how I go about doing it, just in case you want to start making candles.

Wax melting on my burner.

I have an electric burner and a basic pot that I bought years ago at Walmart. I stole a cutting board and a cheap sharp knife from the kitchen. All of these are things that are just used for candles, not for food.

I do my work on the kitchen counter, which I cover with newspapers. I have marble countertops, so I can just peel any wax off if any should happen to get on there.

You really don’t need a lot to get started, and it’s a lot of fun, so I hope you’ll try it!

What You’ll Need

In addition to the basics, you’ll need

• galvanized buckets: mine are 6 inches across at the top, and cost about $3.50 at Hobby Lobby
• wax: if you can find or have wax that’s especially for container candles, that would be better. I don’t know exactly what I used, but it was the end of a slab from GenWax, which I bought so long ago they don’t even sell wax at GenWax anymore, but they do at their sister site, Candle Making Supplies. (Not an affiliate link.) You’ll need a pound to a pound and a half per bucket of this size, depending on how high you fill it (I left a couple inches at the top of mine, so you may need as much as 2 pounds if you want it fuller.)
• wick: choose some that is for large container candles (also not an affiliate link)
• wick holder tabs
• essential oils: because these candles are meant to be used outside, I wanted to include some pest-repellant oils that wouldn’t be too repellant to people. I ended up using about 20 drops per candle of rosemary and cedar oils.
• a couple of wooden skewers

What You’ll Do

1. Break up the wax a bit so it will fit in your pan. You may have to do it in batches, which is actually good since candles usually need “topping off” after cooling.
2. Plug in your burner and turn it on low. Don’t walk away. (OK, if you’re in the kitchen you can unload the dishwasher or something. But stay close.) You can stir it gently while it’s melting if you want. It will take a few minutes. While it’s melting, put in your essential oils.
3. In the meantime, cut your wick so that it’s long enough to stick out the top of the bucket and insert into one of the wick holder tabs. All you do is slide the wick into the hole and push it closed. Put the wick in the bucket, as centered as you can. Use the skewers to hold the wick straight.
   

   Melted wax in the bucket.

4. Once the wax is completely melted, turn off the burner and unplug it (yes, I do this before I pour).
5. Pour the wax into the bucket. I keep the bucket on top of my cutting board while I’m pouring for extra protection.
6. Re-center the wick and allow to cool.
7. Once it’s cool, you’ll probably want to melt and pour in a little more wax to take care of the dent that will likely form in the center of your candle.
8. Trim the wick before burning.

I think these will be a great addition to our new backyard, and we’ll get to test them out this weekend.

Have you ever made candles before? If you haven’t, I really hope you’ll give it a try. It’s lots of fun. I kind of feel like I’m going to be making a lot of candles here for a little while!

If you have or haven’t made candles before and have questions or projects you’d like to see, please let me know!

The inspiration for my little ornament came from the round piece, which started out as a swatch for another project I’m working on. I thought it would make a cute Christmas ornament with a little embroidery on it.

You could also use it as a pin cushion, or, with heavier stuffing inside, a paperweight. It’s cute, and homey, whatever you use it for.

What You’ll Need

• a small amount of red yarn (I didn’t even measure. Maybe 20 yards? It’s totally a scrap project.); mine happens to be cotton but wool or acrylic would work, too
• an even smaller amount of white yarn or color of your choice for embroidery
• set of size 7 US (4.5 mm) double-pointed knitting needles
• scissors
• yarn needle

What You’ll Do

1. Cast on 30 stitches in red. Divide onto 3 needles and join in the round, being careful not to twist.
2. Knit 1 round.
3. Purl 1 round.
4. Knit 1 round.
5. *Knit 3, knit 2 together. Repeat from * around.
6. Knit 1 round.
7. *Knit 2, knit 2 together. Repeat from * around.
8. Knit 1 round.
9. *Knit 1, knit 2 together. Repeat from * around.
10. Knit 1 round.
11. Knit 2 together around. 6 stitches remain.
12. Cut yarn, leaving a long tail. Thread yarn onto yarn needle, slip stitches off knitting needles onto yarn and pull tight.
13. Make a second disk in the same manner.
14. Embellish the front of one (or both, if you want) disk with contrasting embroidery as you like. I used a simple backstitch along the decrease lines, accented with French knots.
15. Sew pieces together, right sides out. Stuff lightly with fiberfill before completely sewing shut.

Project Ideas

If you don’t knit, you could do the same thing with crochet. My disk is 3 inches across, so you could work a couple of crocheted rounds to a similar size.

Or cut a couple of disks out of fabric, embellish with thread embroidery and sew together.

As mentioned above this could be a Christmas ornament, pincushion or paperweight. You could also use it as a doll’s pillow, or stuff it more to make it ball shaped. Or do whatever you like.

Since I brought it up I’d love to know if you knit, crochet or sew. I have plenty of outlets for knitting patterns but if you all are interested (or want to learn) I can post more of that over here; just let me know!

The Bit likes to mix the colors. And abuse the brush.

When you have a kid artist at home, both palette and brush can be pretty messy by the end of an art experience. And both can be a bit of a pain to clean.

I figured out a way to make it easier on myself, and to make the cleanup a little less messy. It seems so obvious that it feels a little silly to write about it, but if I had to discover it maybe it can help some other people, too.

Use the paintbrush to help clean the palette.

I’m not really left-handed, but you get the idea.

Just start your water running and swipe the brush over the remaining paint. This helps remove the paint more easily than just running water over it, and you won’t get it all over your hands.

When you’re done, use your fingers to get any remaining paint off the brush, and use a paper towel to dry.

Easy peasy, and you’ll always be ready for the next creative adventure.

Do you have any time- and effort-saving tips for crafting with kids? I’d love to hear them!

May is a pretty darn crazy time in my family. I was away for a weekend at the beginning of the month, then there’s Mother’s Day, my mom’s birthday today (happy birthday, mom!), our wedding anniversary (big 11) is Saturday and we’re going out of town for two nights — the longest the Bit has even been away from both of us at the same time. Then there’s Memorial Day to round out the month of crazy with another great opportunity for relaxing and firing up the grill.

I know it’s not summer yet, or even the fake beginning of summer that is Memorial Day, but grill season has been in full effect at my house for a while now. We just got a new grill, so we’ve been grilling tons of chicken, pork, fish, pizzas and, of course, hot dogs.

We’ve also been going through a major backyard renovation that’s almost finished — another thing to celebrate!

In about a month we’ve gone from this

to this. There’s a play place for the Bit under construction right now, and I’ll show you the whole thing when it’s all over; hopefully next week.

So over the weekend we had my parents and some other friends over for a Mother’s Day/birthday/yard work almost done grill party.

Because this is such a busy time — I ran to the grocery store on my way home from my Listen to Your Mother table read, which was awesome — I took all the help the store could give me and decided to let these Petit Jean Jumbo Grillers the good people at Petit Jean sent me be the star of the show.

Jumbo Grillers are like regular hot dogs but bigger. Petit Jean’s are made with beef and pork with “just the right seasonings,” as the website says. They’re the kind of hot dogs you’d expect to eat at the ball park, and you probably would eat them at the ball park if you’re in Arkansas, because they’re the official hot dog of the Arkansas Travelers (what the Naturals’ problem is, I’m not sure) and they’re served at Razorback games as well.

I let my husband take care of the grilling while I opened packages of potato salad and pasta salad, spent a little time with my mom and played hide and seek with the Bit. See, I told you we’re busy!

Husband said the packages were a little hard to get into, but easy to cook over somewhat indirect heat (he was trying to keep the skin from getting too hard, and they were perfect). They looked and smelled yummy, and we got busy loading them up with our favorite toppings.

Everyone at the table declared them delicious, even the person who doesn’t really ever eat hot dogs, and the person who doesn’t very often eat pork and never eats beef (that second one is me; they really are tasty!). The Bit ate a whole one with nary a prod from a parent. I’d say that’s a cookout success for sure. I’ll bet we’ll pick them up again sometime when we need a quick meal for the grill that’s a little nicer than your ordinary dog.

Petit Jean Grillers are available at most major grocery stores in Arkansas (such as Walmart, Harps and Kroger) and you can buy them online direct from Petit Jean, four packs for $20. That’s how mine came, and I loved the overnight shipping and the fact that they were still plenty cold when they got to me.

You can also sign up for their newsletter to keep up with all the meaty news you can handle.

I hope wherever your busy month takes you, there are some grilled meats involved!

There would be life outside of the bubble of a New Year’s resolution, which is really kind of what One Little Word is.

I know that’s a simplification; it’s really meant to be a guiding principle that lasts a lot longer than a hope expressed on December 31.

And it’s definitely hung on in ways much longer than a regular resolution.

At the same time, the past couple of months I’ve barely thought about it at all. My Create Action month didn’t cause any great big new movements, and Create Meaning didn’t produce anything more meaningful than a blog post.

Engaging Creatively

This month’s theme for me is Create Engagement. I have no idea what the task is from the One Little Word class; I don’t think I’ve even looked at it yet.

I was thinking about engagement while on my too-long hike last weekend, and I realized that engagement means something different to me now than it did when I made up those themes.

Originally I was thinking about engagement in terms of a conversation: with my blog readers, with other bloggers and moms. More like a business sort of engagement than a personal one.

Then I realized that hiking through the forest alone was engaging in nature. The trip I’m about to take with my husband is a way of engaging with him.

Spending time really paying attention to the Bit is engaging with her.

I can engage with my work when I’m focused and having fun.

So that’s what I’m trying to work with now: engagement as a sort of focus, being in the moment, paying attention. It’s a commitment to do better work, to be present with my family and to pay attention to my needs.

It’s also a pretty tall order, so we’ll see how it goes.

What are you focusing on this month?

When I was younger, I would make pickles for 4-H, and people said they were good, but I never tried them.

Now that I’m a little older, I can tolerate a pickle if I have to, but I still don’t like them. I’m better with them mixed into things (tuna salad, say) than I used to be. I’m trying not to pass my pickle prejudice on to the next generation.

My pickles, waiting to be consumed.

I’m actually kind of starting to like bread and butter pickles.

These crunchy, sweet beauties are not laced with dill, so they’re spicy in a good way. They’re also dead simple to make, and once you buy the spices once you’ll be able to have pickles whenever you want so long as you’ve got a cucumber hanging around and a week to wait.

It’s worth it, I promise.

After the snow last week, I’m hesitant to say it’s going to stay warm this time. But I did buy my first local strawberries today, and I made my first batch of pickles (from a regular, store-bought cuke, for shame), so I’m doing what I can to ward off one last cold snap.

This recipe comes from Alton Brown’s Good Eats: The Early Years. (That’s an Amazon link, but I get no money from it.) I’ve barely changed it at all. I love this recipe because it’s one jar. You don’t need a million cucumbers to make it (though if you had a million cucumbers, you could make a bunch). It’s also not preserved in the sense of canning, sticking it on a shelf and eating it years hence. This needs to be refrigerated from day one.

What You’ll Need

• 1 cucumber (the recipe calls for two medium, but in these pictures, I just used one; use your judgement based on your definition of “medium”)
• 1/2 medium white onion
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup cider vinegar
• 1 1/2 cups sugar (I used just a little less this time around, because I used less cucumber)
• 1 pinch kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon each yellow mustard seeds, ground turmeric, celery seeds and pickling spice
• 1-quart Mason jar with lid

What You’ll Do

1. Clean your jar if you need to.
2. Mix everything but the onions and the cucumbers in a saucepan. Stir, bring to boil and let simmer for 4 minutes.
3. While that’s working, thinly slice your cucumber and onion. Go slow; this should take a few minutes unless you have much better knife skills than I do.
4. Pour the liquid over the cucumbers until they’re well covered and the jar is basically full.
5. Allow to cool, top off with any remaining liquid if necessary to keep the slices covered, pop on the lid and stash in the refrigerator for a week before consuming.

AB says they’re good for 2 months after opening, but I’m not sure they’ll last that long.

What recipes signal summer to you? I’d love it if you’d share!

This weekend was a retreat and involved three classes as well as a public lecture over the course of two days. It was so much fun, learning, inspiration, I don’t even know what all. Beautiful scenery, snow in May, lovely people, lots of yarn.

I’m still distilling things, but here are some things I learned, thoughts and pictures.

Arkansas is really, really lovely. Some of the scenery I passed was just so beautiful and idyllic I wish my eyes could take pictures because you wouldn’t believe it was real if I described it to you. Bright blue sky, fluffy white clouds, rolling green hills, farmland that goes on forever. Black and white cows in fields of yellow flowers. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it myself.

The best I could do while driving. My drive home was so beautiful.

The scenic route is always worth it.

Even when this happens.

That’s a Walmart truck, as you can probably see,  going around a curve on the highway affectionately known in these parts as “the Pig Trail.” It’s super curvy, steep and beautiful. This is the road that taught me that a hairpin turn is a real thing. I love the line in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas entry I just linked over there that says

Today’s traveler is more likely to use the Pig Trail for leisure and recreation than for point-to-point transportation.

Hogwash. It’s so much better than the Interstate.

That said, when you get stuck behind a semi on the Pig Trail and are going so slow you could complain about it on Facebook while you’re driving, you will be shattered to learn you have no cell reception.

There’s also no reception at the top of Arkansas. I’m pretty sure there’s a joke in there somewhere.

I’m not completely sure the representation of Arkansas in native stone is even proportional.

This is our highest point, at Mount Magazine, or more specifically, Signal Hill. It’s really not that impressive.

After hiking up there after I got to the park on Friday, I decided to take another little trail along the ridge. It was there I learned (nay, was reminded, because I already knew) that my friend Jamie is very wise. He advised me via Facebook to take snacks when I reported I was going hiking. I didn’t. (I didn’t expect to be out as long as I was.) It was a huge mistake. I promise to listen to him in the future.

Me and Stephanie. I’m the tall one. Cellphone photos are garbage in poorly lit hotel hallways.

Knitters are awesome. Welcoming, fun, funny, smart. And as Stephanie told us, knitting does great things to our brains, so I think we’re entitled to feel a little superior about how amazing we are.

I definitely need to up my game when it comes to knitting needles.

It’s good to try new things, even if feeling like a beginner again does kind of suck. Some things you don’t know yet are worth knowing.

The length of an adult’s hand from the tip of the longest finger to the base of the palm is exactly the length you need to knit a sock for that person before you shape the toes. This is awesome information to have if you happen to be knitting socks for yourself and can never find a tape measure.

This happened on May 4. In Arkansas.

Knitting by the fire is always a good thing. Even if it happens to be happening in May.

When we kill silkworms (because that’s what you have to do to get their silk) we don’t call it killing. They are stifled. Either by baking or boiling.

My silk hankie layer. This is, apparently, pretty good for a first effort.

I’m actually pretty good at making silk hankies (this is a step in the process of making silk knitable). Stephanie promoted me to the Chinese factory (which sounds awful, but silk really does largely come from Asia, and these are actually good jobs because skill is involved).

You can stretch a cocoon enough that 18 people standing shoulder to shoulder can all hold it. This will scare the normals if you do it in a hotel lobby. (I don’t have pictures of that because I was part of it.) And then you can knit with it.

Knitting is pretty awesome, too.

I forget sometimes.

But I really do love my job.

I’d already been thinking of a plain picture frame that made it’s way into our house in one gift or another. I originally thought of covering it with fabric and changing out the glass piece for a piece of cork. But the glass doesn’t actually come out of this frame, so I decided just to embellish it instead.

So I cut the picture a little small. I told you I was in a hurry!

I won’t waste your time with anything as fancy as a tutorial here. All you need is

• a picture frame
• glue
• rick-rack (mine is Wright’s brand)
• 4 buttons (mine are vintage)
• scissors

What you do is cut the rick-rack to size, glue it down and let it dry. Plain old Elmer’s is fine for this.

Glue the buttons on the corners if you like to cover up the messy edges.

Let dry and insert a cute picture. Or your little one’s latest masterpiece. Whichever.

This would be a really cute teacher gift or Mother’s Day gift for a grandma in your life. If you have an older kid, you could even make let them do it themselves.

Related articles

• Up-Cycled Picture Frames
• DIY Button Picture Frame

I’ve been taking part in an every-other-week crafting challenge all year now, and I still end up procrastinating and trying to make the whole thing on the day before (or the day) it’s due.

So that means today, on what felt like not enough sleep after a whirlwind knitting weekend (which I will share more about soon, I promise) I decided I was going to sew a skirt to embellish (the challenge, as you’ll see tomorrow, has to do with using notions, so I was going to sew some rick-rack on the bottom and make a little flower out of a button and some embroidery).

First I went through my fabric stash and found some red stuff I thought would be suitable, but it was a little see-through, so I thought I’d make a bubble skirt.

But then I couldn’t find the pattern for the bubble skirt I made the Bit last year almost exactly around this time (though, if I’d searched my blog I could have found it), so while I was looking for it on my Pinterest board I came across a skirt made out of an adult T-shirt and thought that would be perfect.

It started out OK, despite my apparent inability to properly sew knits on my regular sewing machine or to properly wind a bobbin. It’s Monday, right?

The waistband ended up way wonky, and you can really tell because my thread doesn’t match. I figured it would be OK for the pictures tomorrow and then I could redo it.

But then I noticed this.

If you look closely, you can see that the front is the front of a shirt and the back has the back facing out. Oops.

I sewed the front of one side out and the back of the other side out.

Doh!

So much for a quick and easy project.

It’s still going to be really cute, once I rip it all out and start over. In the meantime, I’d better figure out something else to craft for tomorrow!

Have you done anything that made you hit yourself in the forehead lately? Please share; it’ll make me feel better.

Disclosure: Heather sent me a digital review copy of her book so I could write about it.

I’m not much of a fiction writer, but I’ve always enjoyed concocting stories about strangers. I love imagining how that single running shoe ended up in the middle of the street, where that woman on the airplane is going, what life is like in my next-door neighbor’s house (and why does he think it’s appropriate to run the leaf blower in the back yard for two hours straight?).

If you love peeking in the windows of other people’s lives, you’re sure to enjoy Heather Davis’ book TMI Mom: Oversharing My Life. Heather is also known as the Minivan Momma, and she’s taken oversharing to a whole new level, even talking about peeing in the shower on “The Dr. Oz Show.”

I first got to know Heather because she was part of the local Listen to Your Mother Show last year. This year she’s co-producing her own show in Oklahoma City, which takes place this weekend.

This piece and the Dr. Oz peeing in the shower story are just a couple of the essays in her new book. Heather is a working momma of two kids trying to keep the spark with her husband, hit the snooze button as many times as possible and get through the day without too much sangria.

She writes of the impossibility of enjoying soccer, the difficulties of home cooking when the assemble-it-yourself place shuts down, the hardships of being a non-morning person who has to get herself and two other people to school on time, the perils of the potty and why no mom gets to go alone and much, much more.

There are some cringe-worthy stories here, for sure. You’ll know long before the end why she calls herself the TMI Mom. But you’ll also laugh, and probably see a bit of yourself in these stories as well.

I think that’s the best thing writing about parenting can do: make us feel like we’re not alone. We’ve all had sick kids, sleeping husbands, crazed trips to “Hellmart” and the feeling that we may never be alone again.

We also all understand that if you can’t laugh at yourself there’s probably something wrong.

And if you can’t laugh at yourself, at least laugh at Heather. Trust me, she’s laughing, too.