Fall Fun with Fruit

With the girls being off school yesterday for the holiday we decided to get creative and crafty. If only you knew how UNcrafty I actually am…you’d be all the more impressed with these projects! Our oldest daughter (we’ll call her “C-Bear”) had picked up a copy of The Ultimate Guide to Kids’ Activities (1001 Great Ideas for Anyone Who Works with Children) by Teresa Sells at a “Buck a Book” sale last week. Anyway, we found this cute centrepiece idea in it. You can use either a pumpkin or an apple. We chose this nice russet apple because of its pretty fall colour. Using an apple corer, we took out about half of the core, making a hole large enough to stuff with dried leaves or whatever you’d like. Since we don’t have any trees in our yard that are dropping coloured leaves, we opted for clippings from our very much past-its-prime herb garden on the deck instead. Didn’t C-Bear do a nice job of arranging them in our apple vase?

This next project is one I’ve seen floating around Facebook and just had to try. I had my doubts, especially since it took us a good 20 minutes of off and on trying to get the thing lit. But eventually, voila! Can you believe it?! A candle made from half an orange and olive oil! And oh, so pretty as it burns! First you take a nice big orange and cut it in half. Then carefully with a sharp knife and spoon, scoop out the fruit around the middle, white stem part. That white stem will be your wick so be careful to leave it in tact. Once your half-orange is hollowed out, fill it with olive oil about halfway up the “wick”. It takes a few minutes for the “wick” to soak up some oil so I found it helpful to pour the olive oil over top of it as I filled the orange. Then, patiently sit there with a BBQ lighter and eventually it will light. I had lost all hope after many attempts to light it, but of course as soon as my husband (PJ) came over to investigate, he got it to light on the first try. My man to the rescue! I’ve heard you can do this with any citrus fruit. Give it a try and see if you can get it to work.