How to Recycle Wax Candles the Quick and Easy Way!

There is nothing I enjoy more than an evening on the sofa snuggling with Lacey, enjoying a cup of tea or a glass of wine, and the sight and smell of a candle burning in the living room. Hygge at its finest!

Also, burning a scented candle clears after dinner cooking smells which means I’m content and practical. Go me.

I always seem to have a decent sized chunk of wax left when my candle wicks burn out. I’d look at the candle jar and think someday I should melt the wax down and make a new candle out of it. A few times I did but mostly I didn’t. 

Making new candles out of old candle wax usually involves rigging up a double boiler with a can in water in a pot on the stove or digging through the hard wax to remove the metal wick tab so I can melt the leftover soft vegetable candle wax in short microwave bursts. It was much easier to put the spent candle in a box with its comrades and light a new candle from my small stash and invoke a Someday that never comes.

Quick, Easy, and Cheap DIY Candle

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Someday came in the form of a crazy freak storm that took down electric power lines all over the city and we sat in the dark for days on end. Naturally, I had more used up candle nubs than I had candles to burn for light during that time. I figured it was time to come up with a quick and easy way to recycle old candle wax into new candles so I wouldn’t be sitting in the dark again. Also, it would allow me to enjoy the scented candle wax I never can seem to find the next time I need to buy candles.

How to Repair a Broken Zipper the Easy Way!

The zipper split on my down winter coat. I’m fortunate to have another winter coat to wear but I always grab the down coat when Lacey needs to go outside and the temperature plummets, especially when there is a negative wind chill factor.

Fortunately the zipper got stuck at a point that I could wriggle out of the coat and pull it off over my head. I tried zipping and unzipping the coat. That zipper was stuck. It would not move.

No worries! Fixing a split zipper is a quick, easy, and no sew fix. You don’t need to replace the zipper. You don’t have to take anything apart. All you need is a pair of needle nose pliers and 5 minutes of your time.

Or 15 minutes if you have to hunt for your pliers to do the job. Ahem.

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How to Repair a Split Zipper the No Sew Way!

What’s the Sustainable Story with Hemp Fabric Underwear?

This post is made possible from samples provided by WAMA. As always this did not influence my opinion, as all opinions are strictly my own.

One of the easiest and cheapest ways to get sustainable clothing is to buy it second hand. Who knew combing though thrift shops looking for funky clothes as a teen was considered so environmentally friendly? I was just looking for stuff to wear to school that no one else had or dared to wear.

Who am I kidding? I still do.

I’m all for wearing more sustainable clothing, there are some things I’m not willing to buy second hand, like underwear. Sorry environment. No. Nope. No way. No how.

I tried organic cotton fabric. While organic cotton is super soft, the items I have are very thin and wear more quickly. Swing and a miss.The folks at WAMA Underwear reached out to me and suggested I try their hemp fabric underwear. Up until now my only experience with hemp fabric is seeing scratchy Baja hoodies at flea markets. I already knew that hemp fabric is made from industrial hemp (not to be confused with its stoner cousin marijuana) uses less water and does not need pesticides to grow quickly, similar to bamboo.

 

 

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Yuletide Village Christmas Light Tour

Last summer I created and performed a new character at the Ohio Renaissance Festival- Nissa Tomtesdottir the gnome! I had so much fun sharing my Danish heritage and Scandinavian gnome/nisse/tomte lore through Nissa (with a giant helping of playing with patrons who came dressed as Wirt and Greg from Over the Garden Wall this season) that I had to celebrate Nissa's and my favorite time of the year - Christmas - at Yuletide Village Season of Lights!

 

My favorite light display are the blanket of blue twinkle lights in the dry creek bed around the Y bridge.  Photo credit: Steve Kohus

How to Make Peg Doll Gnomes

One of my fellow renaissance festival performer friends, painted a set of wood peg dolls for her daughter to look like some of the characters from our show so she has a period toy to keep her busy/quiet/not fussy if she is visiting with her family –  dressed as a fairy.

Her peg doll toys gave me the idea to make wood peg doll gnome pin favors for my fellow fae performers. Our little Honorary Fairy wanted a mini me too (and my heart exploded into a million pieces of joy.) I asked if she wanted a pin to wear or a gnome peg doll to play with. She asked for a gnome peg doll so Nissa can play with all of her peg dolls of our village.

 

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My homemade gnome peg dolls are quick and easy to make. You can make them for children or with children. You make them as detailed or simple as you like

As of this writing, I’m calling my DIY peg doll gnomes, Nissa Tomtesdottir Elizabethan Action Figures because who hasn’t wanted to have their own action figure?!

 

Quick and Easy DIY Gnome Peg Dolls

 

A Christmas Story House Tour

A Christmas Story is one of my favorite Christmas movies (I skip the problematic Chinese restaurant scene) because I was a kid living in the Cleveland area where they shot some of the movie. I love looking for the dollops of 1980’s anachronisms like Ralphie’s glasses and Mom’s hair. You can watch the movie A Christmas Story here. (Disclosure: I am including affiliate links in this post for your convenience.

The house they used in the movie has an interesting history. Before and after they made A Christmas Story a regular family lived in it as a regular house and modernized it accordingly. The current owner of the house saw it for sale on eBay and bought it fully intending to turn back into its movie accurate glory.

This proved a little harder than it first seemed to be because the inside of the house didn’t look like it did in the movie. They shot the interiors on a soundstage in Toronto Canada.

The owners watched A Christmas Story a million times, slowed it down frame by frame, gutted the house,  and recreated the staircase and sets we all know and love. They also put as much care searching for replica furniture and props to furnish it and now you can tour it! 

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