Yule Logs

I was super inspired by Acorn Moon Mercantile‘s instagram post last year about fire incense. She collects scraps and bits of pinecones, plants and shells and throws them on a smoldering fire. This ties nicely into my natural hoarding instincts, and also gives purpose to all of those random scraps of things I can’t seem to part with. We decided to take it a step further and use fire incense to make our yule log!

First we created our own fire incense scraps of birch and bayberry and fir and spruce and collected black walnuts shells and spruce resin and holly branches—- anything seasonal or nice smelling that spoke to us. Once we had our collection of incense we picked out our special Yule Log and got to work. The whole family wrote some hopes for the new year on bay leaves and tucked those into the log as well. The Yule Log smelled amazing as it burned!

Fire Incense Yule Log

Materials:

• A special log to serve as your Yule Log
• Fire Incense- any combination of nice smelling natural things that you’d like to use, evergreens, pinecones, spruce resin, herbs, flowers, holly leaves, birch bark, nut shells, bayberry leaves, spices etc.
• Bay leaves with your intentions and wishes written on them
• A drill and paddle bit
• Beeswax
• A wax melting pot
• A mason jar

Method:

First, gather all of your fire incense ingredients in a bowl. Be creative and use anything that speaks to you or you think might smell really nice. Birch is symbolic of new beginning so I always try to include some for the new year. Holly leaves are traditional on a Yule log, Spruce resin and bayberry smell amazing and have holiday vibes. There are no wrong answers here. Make sure teh whole family writes some wishes or intentions on bay leaves to include.

Once you have your incense sorted, choose your Yule Log. There are a million different contradictory rules from different traditions about what makes a proper log. Again, I say just choose the one that speaks to you and fits in your firepit/fireplace. Drill a few 1 or 2″ holes with a paddlebit about an inch or two into the log.

Stuff as much of your fire incense as you can into the holes. This is a great kid job.

Boil a few inches of water in your wax pot and lower to a simmer. Put the beeswax into the mason jar and set into teh simmering water. Allow the wax to fully melt. Once it’s melted, pour all over the log making sure to fill up the gaps and the holes and hold everything in place. Allow the wax to set and then add to your Yule fire!