Handmade Tea-Light Candle Holders

My 3-year-old made this candle holder. All the kids enjoy making these to give away as gifts. They make great gifts for grandparents, aunts, and uncles, etc. Great project idea to offer up to Dad for making mother's day gifts as well.

You'll need a small GLASS jar with an opening large enough to accommodate a tea-light candle. Dijon mustard jars, maraschino cherry jars, and babyfood jars are perfect.

If you've been saving the gift tissue from gifts, you are all set. If not, you can buy some if you need to. The more colors and patterns, the better. My child chose to stick with one pattern, and for his age of 3, I chose to keep the pieces more square for ease. Cut up your chosen tissue papers into irregular shapes, and store extra in a baggie for the next time. Each time makes for a unique gift. Multiple colors gives a special stained glass effect once the candle is inserted and lit.

You will also need glue. I have not investigated flammability of craft glues of any sort, but I know you can use what we do--regular ol' white school glue. You can thin it out a bit with water if you like as well. We don't. To apply the glue, you'll need a child-style paintbrush or foam craft brush. It's probably best to ensure minimal glue gets on the inside portion of your jar.

Paint one side of the jar and apply your tissue paper, and repeat all the way around. Overlapping is great. It's okay to go over the tissue paper with the glue to help flatten out any wrinkles. Imperfection for toddlers is sweet in my opinion.

It's obviously best to keep any tissue paper from overlapping into the mouth of the jar as well due to flammability. If your jar is tall enough, then you really won't need to worry about this due to the height of a tea-light candle. Do NOT use votive candles in your handmade candle holders. You may also embellish your handmade candle holder externally with a variety of items, foam shapes, sticky letters, glitter, etc. To add glitter, paint a layer of glue over the paper and sprinkle it on. Glitter should only be used for children who are able to handle their creation minimally, as the glitter will get on their hands. You don't want glitter to get into a youngster's eyes, so use with caution.

Allow to dry, and you're all set.

Even the Best Laid Plans.....

It's been crazy here lately. I've been getting lectured by other working mothers about how I should just buy a store-made cake, store-made costume, etc., but the fact of the matter is that I WANT to do these things. I actually ENJOY them. I actually believe I was meant to do them. I get such satisfaction from doing them as well. I hate that my "life-n-stuff" gets in the way. I do the best I can.

I know my 3-year-old doesn't mind what his cake looks like as long as it had some train tracks and a Thomas engine on it and I know he didn't even care what he was for Halloween, other than avoiding scary since he's a big ol' Halloween chicken. lol.

I know not every working mother encounters the same issues as I do because circumstances vary so greatly. For me, however, I've learned that with working opposite schedules as my spouse so that there is always one of us with our kids, the days of the week an event/holiday falls on combined with his rotating schedule really impacts whether or not I can accomplish what I have planned. See, if Halloween had been on a Monday or Tuesday this year, I could have had "my" weekend days to tend to finishing the costume, baking the cake/decorating it, creating those mummy cookies my oldest son unknowingly volunteered to bring to class for his party, etc., but Halloween was at the end of the week and DH wound up having all sorts of last-minute overtime last week on his "weekend days" that I was counting on, including "my" whole weekend prior. Since I work around his schedule, it drastically cut down on my available hours to accomplish work, let alone all of these other extra to-do items I added to the list.

To complicate matters, my parents decided to come out for a visit on Halloween day for the first time in 18 months! Now instead of pizza and on-the-go foods (parents have dietary issues), I needed to cook a meal! I needed to have my 3-y/o's birthday party between 4:30 and 5:30 (the time the older kids get home and he wakes from his nap), serve up a dinner, finish sewing that bone on the costume, cake and presents, get 'em all dressed and go trick or treating in a one-hour period!

So, the cake didn't get decorated the elaborate way I had planned. Instead I did it in 20 minutes flat - thank goodness for green icing spray paint--I didn't have to tint the frosting myself to cover the top only for grass! Heck, he didn't even say a word about the pink frosting that should've been red!

I didn't get to make a new loin cloth for the Bamm-Bamm costume that was too tight for my little T-o-T'er, and the fleece body suit I made from a jammie pattern in a large size was now too big because the weather was so nice and we didn't need the extra clothes beneath them. This in turn meant that the red drape over his shoulder also fell down frequently. There was no pattern for the Bamm-Bamm parts - I just winged it. I think it was pretty darned good considering that was my first crack at sewing since 7th grade home ec! (the costume dilemma was also compounded by the fact that since the pattern actually fit all 3 of my kids I decided that I could make them all jammie bottoms, but this meant I needed to start with cutting out the largest size first and then reducing the pattern to the smallest size before I could get to the costume for the smallest kid!)

The foam DH bought from the craft store to carve into a club and a bone for the costume couldn't take the spray paint. The spray paint ate the foam, some sort of chemical reaction I suppose. I had to scramble to find a paper mache recipe, which is surprisingly easy - messy, but easy. Flour, water, and salt and newspaper strips. Set onto a heat register, it dries relatively quickly. This could now take the spray paint. (Beware of dogs, however, as ours wanted to eat them in a bad way - couldn't stop trying to lick them before the paint was added!)


I also did not make a salad for the dinner. Instead everyone settled for the cornish game hens with sausage stuffing and garlic asparagus only.

I also didn't get to send in the mummy cookies with my child to school that morning because we ran out of white chocolate chips and I was 2 cookies shy of making the class count (would have only been 1 shy had I not eaten 1, but they are so good and fudgie AND it seems some pantry gnomes were munching on the white chips, hence the shortage). The night before, I knew I was going to be cutting it close. I asked my son if it would be okay to have Dad stop and buy a store treat for the school party, but his eyes welled up and he explained that he had bragged about those cookies and another kid who had them had chimed in on their deliciousness, so all the kids were looking forward to them. Sigh. Yummy mummy cookies it is then. The cookies were finished the following morning and dropped off at school by noon.

I got it all done somehow, but my back and feet were aching from being on them for 2 days straight. Wouldn't you know it, all that work on the costume, which wasn't too bad, just stressful timewise with a little stinker who liked to sneak up on me and step on the sewing machine pedal, and my little real-life Bamm-Bamm decided after about 40 minutes that he wanted to go home and play with his new birthday presents. lol. Where are the Flinstones these days anyway? I had to find an online Flinstone episode to show my baby who Bamm-Bamm even was! It was the episode he got adopted and my baby loved it - took to clubbing items right away while saying Bamm-Bamm. He was really impressed at how strong he was. lol.

I took all day Saturday, a weekend day DH had in common with me for a change, and we both just recuperated from our week together as a family, which doesn't happen but once a quarter it seems. Sunday I worked all day catching up what I had to ignore on Friday, cleaning up, invoicing, etc., then back to the usual. What is really important to me is that all 3 of my kids were happy and have no idea what I went through just to see those smiles on their faces!