I’ve poured over the November Ask Martha in Living and have come away with some tidbits. Firstly, I really appreciated the answer about removing wax from votives. I had not clue how to do this. Martha suggests popping the votive in the freezer and then removing the wax. This totally worked for me! Here are my before and after photos (the after one still needs some cleaning up, but the huge glob of candle wax is completely gone):

Before

And after

The other question I enjoyed was the one about adding fragrance to wood-burning fireplaces. One of Martha’s suggestions was to dry and then scent pinecones. I sent Mini-Martha to the backyard to pick up pinecones. I dried them in the oven at 200 degrees for about 45 minutes. Then I spread them out and sprayed them with a glittery spray. It didn’t turn out too glittery, so I sprayed it again and while still wet, shook on some white glitter. Gorgeous! Next I dropped on some scented oil. Martha says to keep the scented pinecones in a plastic ziploc, which I will do, but my plan is to give this as a gift, so I’m going to put them in a basket once we’re closer to Christmas.

Spraying

Glittering

Scenting