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 I don’t know exactly what to call this project,
but it’s what we did today at our house and we have lots of these Fall
leaves hanging in our windows.

It’s really quite simple. The color of these leaves are made from
crayon shavings that are melted in between 2 pieces of wax paper.
Here’s a step by step if you are interested in doing a project with the
kids (or just want some fall decorations for your house):

1) Pull off the paper from an assorment of fall colored crayons. Red, Yellow, Orange & Green tend to work best.

2) To make the shavings, you can put the crayons through a hand held
pencil sharpener or use a vegetable peeler. Keep the colored shavings
seperate on a plate.

3) Lay down a large piece of wax paper with the waxy side facing you. There is a smooth & a rough side. The rough side is the waxy side. Sprinkle an assortment of the shavings towards the middle of the wax
paper. You don’t want to put down too many crayon shavings or it looks
like brown mush. I would suggest using the yellow and orange and then just sprinkling a little of
the red & green. Also avoid putting the shavings too close to the
edge as they will melt out & ruin your ironing board.

4) Place another piece of wax paper (wax side facing down on the crayon shavings) on top. Place a hand towel or dish towel on top of the wax paper & using a hot iron, iron over the dish towel, melting the crayon shavings underneath.

5) Once it’s melted, let it cool for 5 minutes. I cut this leaf out from hand, you can do that or trace the outline of a leaf you already have on the wax paper. Hole-punch the top and hang in the window. You can also make a garland out of several leaves.

When I was little, we used to put leaves in between the wax paper along with the crayon shavings and that turns out really neat as well. In that case, you could cut it into a square that had leaves & crayon shavings in the middle.

I love simmering this little concoction on the stove during the Fall months. It makes the house smell wonderful.

In a small saucepan, add:

5 cups of water
1 Tbsp vanilla
2-3 slices of oranges
1 Tbsp of whole cloves
2-3 cinnamon sticks
Sprinkle of ground cinnamon

Bring to a boil & then let simmer.  I usually let it simmer all day, adding additional water in as it evaporates (you may want to add a little more vanilla as well). Also, this doesn’t have to be exact- use what you have or add in a sprinkle of allspice or whatever sounds good to you.  This will keep for 2-3 days before you’ll need to discard it. Happy Monday!!