Making Beeswax Valentine's Day candles

 This morning, D was struck by an inspirational thought as he sniffed the package for the umpteenth time: What about making Valentine's Day candles?

I bought a bunch of beeswax about a month ago - well, to be strictly accurate, I sent my long-suffering husband in search of it - but we never ended up doing the project we'd planned.

As it happened, we'd bought a $1 silicone cupcake mold at the dollar store last week, so we happily sacrificed it for the project. Here's how we made them:

Put your bars of beeswax into a pan you don't care much about....in this case, we used the banged-up, permanenetly stained one that we keep strictly for this sort of project and for playdough making.

Melt it on low heat - I used a "2" setting - until it's completely liquified. It doesn't take long, so don't leave the room.

Cut your wicks and hold them into the mold one at a time while you add a little bit of the melted beeswax, to stick the wicks in place at the bottom. This gets messy, so we used a measuring cup for the pouring.

Now add a clothespin and balance it on the top while you add more beeswax. Repeat until the whole mold is done.

Let the candles cool. This, for those of us with zero patience, is the hardest part of the whole thing, and every candle has a suspicious fingerprint mark in at least one place. Once they're actually cool, pop them out of the mold, remove the clothespins, and trim the wicks.

Ta-dah! A beautiful smelling, clean-burning candle that your kids can be proud of.