Firestarters

I have been trying to find ways to reuse things and come up with homemade alternatives for as much as i can. Luckily my friend Jenifer, the Martha Stewart of all my friends, taught me a wonderful "craft" if you will, that does both. We have 2 firepits in our backyard. Chris usually starts the fires in them, however I attempted to the last 2 fires we had. Needless to say, I am thankful I will now have these firestarters to help me along! They make "reuse" of dryer lint, cardboard egg cartons, and if you want, crayons. However if you are unlike most Americans with kids, and don't have a ton of old crayons that can be melted, you can always buy some wax. You can also use either coffee cans (espcially if you do this over an open fire, like a firepit) or like we did, you can use glass jars, which also were recycled from spaghetti sauce, mayonaise, etc....
Fill the jars with the wax and set them in a pot of boilling water. Stir until melted.







Careful not to let water get into the jars. But if you do, just wait for it to harden and then you can pour the water out and melt the wax again.




Once the wax is melted, pour it over the egg cartons/lint. Let dry then just tear off as many as you need to place under the sticks to start the fire with. The cardboard and lint catch fire easily and the wax keeps it going for a long time so as the wood has plenty of time to catch fire.

Just a note, old spatulas, get brittle and break easily! hahaha!