I don't know about you, but for me, having my home smell inviting has always been just as important as making it look inviting.The smell of fresh baked muffins; cinnamon, and spices, or fresh peaches or apples. Oh yes, it sends me.
Always.
I used to be a total and complete simmering potpourri gal back in the 90's (am I dating myself here?) and more than once I turned on my stove to simmer my applejack and peel simmering stuff, only to forget about it until the smoke alarm would go off and I'd inevitably come racing downstairs to a house full of smoke and stench of burned-to-a-crisp potpourri.
Oh, true story here- I remember a friend putting her simmering potpourri in a crock pot, and her elderly father lived with her. Well, she had the yummy smell of applejack going (it was our favorite) and left the house while he had a couple of friends over. (Can you guess where I am going with this?) Mmmm hmmm. He served it up to his pals, thinking it was cider she had made for him to share.
Lousy tasting cider.
She ended up calling the hospital to make sure they would all be okay. True story, as I said.
Anyway.
After the millennium, I got into candles. Yankee candles and Yankee candle-wanna-be's. Apple cider in autumn, pine and berries at Christmas, and peach for spring and summer. The trouble with candles as scent-makers is that you need them all over the house and I always would forget to blow out one or fourteen of them when leaving the house and was always then half worried I was gonna burn the house down. (Obviously not too worried, as I am pretty sure I alone kept Yankee Candle in business until about 2009)
Fast forward to about 2011, when I discovered the wax burning electric simmer pots...you know, Scentsy. (And WalMart's Scentsy-Poser brands that aren't half bad either.)
Sweet home Alabama.
Finally a safe way to scent my home, and no side effects or potential 911 calls to speak of.
Other than what to do with the wax after I burned and melted all the fragrance out of it, I mean. I felt bad tossing the little saucer shaped wax wedges into the trash.
So, I didn't.
I used a big zip-lock bag to save them in.
And so it was. Me burning my scents daily, and collecting an ungodly amout of wax wedges in...well, lets just say several zip-lock bags and leave it at that...
Finally, after saving these wedges in the laundryroom cupboard for a few months, I took myself to GoodWill and scored a super cheap aluminum cooking pot.
I plopped the wax wedges in my thrifted pot...
...and heated the stove top up on medium. It didn't take long at all. I whipped out an old cupcake pan (as you might imagine, I have no shortage of cupcake pans...if you need one, run yourself down to a thrift store and grab one.)
I plopped cupcake papers and shredded cedar (You get it in the pet section of the grocery store, and you get a lifetime supply for under three bucks here.) into the cupcake pan...
...and poured a moderate amount of melted wax into each.
Just enough to hold the shred all in and make little "cupcakes".
(Yes, I know they look like incredible little spice muffins..)
These are the most amazing fire starters anyone has ever used. Place just one in your fireplace, wood burning stove, or fire pit on your patio, and then pile on your kindling and wood.
Light it, and it will get your entire fire going. You see, the wax makes the cedar cupcake burn for a good long while, which helps to catch all of the wood in your fireplace on fire, and youa re in business.
It makes me feel extra good, knowing that these fragrant wax melts are doing double duty.
