*Ice Candles*

Take a clean milk carton, the square waxy paper kind. Let it dry after cleaning it. tie a long wick onto a pencil and place onto the top of the container. Melt wax in a double boiler, use a pan you dont want anymore, melt wax, leftover candle butts etc. while wax is melting fill carton with ice, pack it in there!Center the wick OK Heres the fun part....put this ice filled container on spread out papers to protect your counter , carefully but quickly add the wax to the ice, fill it up to the top. wait about 10 mins. pour out the water and let candle rest for about an hour. Peel off the container from the candle and admire your excellent creation! Clip off the pencil and enjoy the candle, remember to burn it on a plate so no wax melts onto counter!

Waste Not~Want Not

What happened to me? I remember my parents reusing EVERYTHING!! We would use milk cartons for Ice Candles* Reusing Foil by washing it and smoothing it out, Carefully folding up paper bags to save for lots of craft projects from balloon paper mache stuff to covering our school books. I remember saving soda bottles to take to the store where we got a few cents off the next few bottles of soda we bought! AND these sodas were few and far between too! I drink somedays 5 sodas a day now,UGH! When my oldest son was little we would save cans to take to the A&P and stick them in a machine that ground them up and gave him a nickle each! If they brought those machines back we could probably recycle every can in the US.
Gramma had the tinyest little garbage can in her kitchen, the size of my wastebasket in the bathroom... and she only emptied it a couple times a week! All the veggie peelings went to the garden, all the paper from the meat went to the sink or formed into a small bag for the peelings and then dug into the ground to feed the plants, most liquids came in bottles, milk was delivered in the early morning a couple times a week and if it was winter, we got the cream all frozen for breakfast!!What a treat!! Hersheys syrup from a can poured over the frozen cream, OH MY GOODNESS!!
During the summer, the ice cream man came by everyday and we got popsicles and saved the sticks so we could make little snowflakes in the winter, glitter and glue and some time, boy was that fun! Now we go to walmart and buy the sticks in a bag or , worse buy the homemade snowflakes at a craft fair!! again UGH!
What happened to us?? Let us all decide today to save stuff, reuses stuff and try to make just a little less garbage this week!

Blast from the Past

This past week was exciting! I got a message that someone on Classmates had left me a note. Well of course I go to read it and its a puzzle....What did Lincold do for the slaves? Made them Freeman...Which is the name of the street I grew up on. It is signed Michael J (won't finish to protect his privacy till I ask him) Ok so I am curious, I really don't remember this guy so I send a note back,"who are you?" He writes back that we had dated for 2 months and I dumped him before new years back in 1978! Still no recollection! Have all my old brain cells died?? So I ask a bunch of questions relating to guys I dated back in those days,,,,well none of them are him(EMBARRASSING!!) Mark thinks it's funny that i cannot remember him. Ok another email comes from Mike with his CB handle the Professor!! AH HA Now I know who it is!! Whoo Hoo I am not totally brain dead!! Memories flood back and I remember but am still fuzzy. Anyway he's doing ok and is married, for 30 years !! 4 kids and 1 grandchild!! I give him all my catch-up info about my wonderful Mark and the kids and grandkids and there ya go. We shared some good, special time together but I was a young, single mother, selfish with my time and struggling to find my way and broke his heart right before the New Year celebration. I sometimes dislike the person I was but know it has made me the person I am. I hope to keep a dialog going with Mike and get to know his family too!! It sure is fun to go back in time!