for a little tactile fun...

grab an old shoe box...

cut a hole out on one side...

cut out two pieces of fabric, large enough to cover the hole...

cover the hole, from the inside, with the fabric... glue the pieces on the edges, overlapping them in the middle...

and you've got yourself a mystery box.

now, gather some items to put in there...

and guess, just by feeling, what's inside!  

you can do it one by one and play a guessing game... 

or throw a whole bunch in there and try to find a certain one...

 and let the mysteries begin.

a little thanks...

a generous friend of mine gifted this super-awesome cookie mold to us...

it's cast iron, and probably weighs as much as my 3 year old.

and it's awesome!

as a thank you to her, we made some crayons with it...

gathered some old crayons, peeled off the paper...and broke them into pieces (i used my hands... leo?... he liked the hammer method...)

searched for the letters we needed...

and sorted the crayons by color...

set the oven at about 250 degrees, and let all the wax melt (about 10 minutes), and then turned the oven off and let it cool before moving them.

i was hoping they'd just pop out, but they didn't.  so we turned the mold over and used a heat gun to warm them up enough to wiggle them out with an exacto knife.

and that was that...