Baked Crayons anyone???

A while back, my friend Jill blogged about baking crayons. I thought, What a great idea, but never followed through with trying it myself. For some reason, the last few nights, my son has begged me to bake crayons for him and I've basically brushed him off until tonight. He came to me with his sad collection of crayons and said, "Mommy, can we PLEASE cook some crayons tonight?" How could I say no...Poor thing, since Kinley has come into our lives, most of our energy goes to her. When I say sad collection of crayons, I am not kidding. He only had about 10 crayons in his hand so off we went to look for more. Guess where all the lost and broken crayons hang out??? The bottom of the Toy Box. Even though we were just digging for crayons in the bottom of the toy box, I had fun doing it. Colton was so excited and for the first time in a while, I actually felt like we were spending quality time together. We then sat on his bedroom floor unwrapping crayons and breaking them into little pieces. This was actually hard for him to do. We always teach our kids not to break their crayons, so when permission is given to actually BREAK the Crayons, it didn't come easy....WHO KNEW!!!! Maybe I'll tell him to Stop Brushing his teeth so he will actually WANT to brush his teeth. Anyway, Here are a couple of pics of our project.

First thing we did was spray the bottom of our muffin pan with cooking spray. We preheated the oven to 275 degrees and let the fun begin! It didn't take long for the crayons to melt. They were only in the oven for about 5 minutes. After we pulled them out, we stirred them with a toothpick and left them to cool....They really start to look pretty boring and ugly as they cool. I was getting worried. I put them in the fridge for about 5 minutes and then turned the pan upside down on some foil and tapped at the bottom. SUCCESS!!! We have colorful crayons....even Colton's camo crayon came out great! The Kids spent the next hour coloring with their creation. Time well spent!