Michigan winters can be miserable if you're outside, but few things beat curling up indoors by the fireplace with a cup of hot cocoa on a blustery winter evening.

If you want to spend some time similarly situated but don't want to spend a ton of money on firewood this season, consider supplementing by way of instructables.com user bauble's instructions for

.

The instructions claim to teach you how you can make a newspaper log that will burn for about 30 minutes in less than two minutes.

"It's kind of like hardcore paper mache," bauble writes. "To get a solid log, you must change the structure of the newspaper. That is from sheets to pulp."

The basic recipe is to soak folded newspapers in water until they're sufficiently saturated (for at least a day), hit the newspapers with a rubber mallet to flatten them and mash them together, then use a dowel to roll the newspapers into the shape of a log.

It looks like an easy enough task, though drying them out, according to bauble, can take up to two weeks outside with no sun, and in the comments section of the instructions bauble writes that unfortunately "Paper logs can help your wood supply last longer but cannot replace the wood."

Still, if you use your fireplace with any regularity, it may be a good — and money saving — idea to keep those old newspapers out of the trash bin and put them to good use this winter.

Contact Simon at ContactSimonSays@gmail.com.