Hello, I am safe and sound but time gets away with me and I forget to post in here. 'Must try harder' was a true appreciation of my talents on my school reports ;)
Well anyway, yesterday we went out for a quick walk around our local area looking for pinecones to turn into useful things.
Here are some pictures from the trip :)
We're lucky to have an open fireplace to help supplement our heating over the winter. This year we have a lot of chopped kindling type wood from pallets and other wood we've collected from freecycle, plus some very large logs from our neighbour's beech trees that were chopped down this year. Last year we used some pinecones as firelighters along with my wax tart* leftovers and I thought it would be a good idea to combine the two this year. Plus anything that keeps my 4yr old interested for an hour is a bonus ;)
Wax tarts are like a cross between candles and oil burners. You can buy them from many supplers, I buy mine from http://candlewick-greens.com/index.html for two reasons, 1)they're superior to any other brand I've tried, 2) the woman who runs it is very lovely.
So take 2 bags of pinecones, a tub of leftover wax from tart burning, a saucepan of hot water, a glass bowl and some greaseproof paper.
Heat the water in the saucepan, place the glass bowl over the water, break up the wax and allow to melt gently.
Take your pinecones and carefully dip them into the wax, hold them over the liquid wax and shake off the drips then leave to dry on a sheet of greaseproof paper.
Store in a bucket or trug next to the fire ready for winter.
Use.
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Aaaah - thank you! I've been meaning to do this with pine cones but it hadn't occurred to me to use those tart things! I have some partylite ones - can't remember what they call them - and there are always left-overs. And I always have left-over bits of votives too. Sorted :-D.
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