How to make.....

...A thinking jar!

I got this amazing idea from Apartment Therapy Family (formerly ohdeedoh) from a mom who was looking for a way to calm her anxious toddler before school. What is a thinking jar? It's a jar full of glitter and water, which you swirl around and relax while you watch the glitter settle to the bottom of the jar. It's calming and pretty and fascinating, and we're already having universes of good ideas while watching it. Actually, we're really only using it because we like playing with glitter, but I can see it getting a lot of use for calming and inspiration later on.

You need: 1 big jar (our is made out of a pickle jar, but I think a canning jar would be better), glitter glue (which makes the water nice and gloopy), hot water (not boiling) and some regular glitter. Basically all you need to do is empty the glue into the jar, add 1 cup of hot water for every ounce of glitter glue, and pour in some additional glitter on top (I used one small jar of glitter and that was plenty). Screw on the cap nice and tight (yeah, I suppose you could seal it with bathroom caulk), and dream away.

*** Note: The water needs to be hot, because that will dissolve the glitter glue, but I used recently boiled water from our kettle, which was hot enough to melt off the dye from the regular glitter and that turned the water blue and sort of murky. The next one I make I will use hot water from the tap, which should be sufficient.