Blue Hydrangea and Patchouli

Yesterday I mentioned that you should always wait to burn a candle a second time before you mark it up as a waste of money because it doesn't throw.  This one is a prime example.

Last spring I scored a Blue Hydrangea during some glitch sale.  I've always wanted one but already having a regular hydrangea I always opted to find other candles to buy that didn't fall in the same scent range.  I finally decided to order one because so many people raved about it and I loved the color and the label.  I was so excited to burn it that it was the first one out of the box that I lit right away.  However, I was so disappointed when I couldn't smell it at all.  Nada.  Nothing.  So many people said theirs had a great throw and yet mine seemed to be lacking any scent at all.  After a couple of hours I blew it out and decided to try a different candle.  My disappointment was so great that it took me several months before I decided to try it again.  That last comment was totally sarcastic.  I don't really take myself that seriously.  I was honestly too busy burning other candles that this one just got forgotten.

Anyway, I pulled it out again this morning and after about half an hour I was pleasantly surprised to realize that I could smell it a little bit.  An hour later I could really smell it.  And now that it's been burning and has developed a full pool it's throwing like a champ.

The scent is really lovely and it is different from Hydrangea.  Even though it says "Blue Hydrangea", I can smell green notes in it and I feel like this one might be a cross between Hydrangea and Greenhouse.  More strong on the Hydrangea than the Greenhouse but that green note is definitely there.  I'm enjoying it very much today and I'm so glad I gave it another burn.  So the lesson of the day is that sometimes it takes a burn or two before a candle really gets going.

Mini review; Patchouli
Yesterday evening I burned my medium Patchouli jar after I blew the BPT out.  It produced a nice pool (I always use my self-crocheted candle cozy and an Illumalid) and I was surprised that the throw wasn't very strong.  I could smell it and it produced a nice licorice/cinnamon scent but I could only smell it in wafts when I was sitting in my chair.  I couldn't smell it anywhere else in the room.  Later in the fall I will give it another go.  I'm sure it will do better.  Patchouli is an unusual scent so you really have to be accepting of it in order to want to own one of these candles but it's really nice for a fall scent, especially a Halloween one.

Brandy Pear Tart

I was so excited to get my morning burn on with the new Brandy Pear Tart.  On cold sniff its a wonderfully pleasing and buttery fall scent with notes of pear, sugar and spices, particularly nutmeg. When I opened the jar last night I saw small rivers of oils running across the top of the wax so I felt this one was a for sure winner. 


I'm saddened to say that I think it's a dud.  I've had it burning for about an hour now and it's pooling beautifully but I can't get any scent out of it unless I'm right on top of it.  Once in a while I get a faint whiff of it but so far it's very, very light. I'm hoping that after a couple of burns it will develop more scent.  A lot of people on the Yankee Facebook page that I visit say that sometimes it take multiple burns for a candle to really get going and that they tend to get stronger as it's further along in the burning process, so I will reserve my final judgment on this one until I burn it for a while. 


I've been so disappointed in so many of these large jar throws.  Back in the 90's when I first started buying Yankees (really, the only type of candle I've ever seriously invested in) the candles used to have the best, strongest throw.  All of them.  Consistently.  Then the company got sold off to a larger company who decided to push the envelope and mass market them and start selling them everywhere and now, sadly, even in Walmart. The candles that they sell in places like Target, Kohl's, TJ Maxx, Homegoods and Walmart are generally lesser versions of the premium ones sold in the Yankee Candle stores. They have different labels, some are paper some are floral but generally they even look cheaper. I have noticed that there are less oils and very little marbling. Some even have a different type of wick. They are also at a lower price point which might appeal to some people, but cheaper doesn't always mean good. I've purchased several of these lesser line candles and in almost every one of them I've been disappointed in the throw.  I've stopped buying the off label Yankees and (I have a big confession here...) have started looking more to buying Village candles from these places instead. 


I have three Village candles so far and while I don't plan on abandoning Yankee for them I'm not such a Yankee snob that I avoid buying them at all.  If I come across a scent that I LOVE I will buy it.  The first one I bought was called Pure Linen and it was only based on my desire to "try" a Village candle because I had heard that they burn better and have much stronger throw than Yankee does now.  I liked the Pure Linen but that candle struggles with a drowning wick and at one point I had to pour some of the wax out.  I had decided not to buy any more Village but then Ocean Serenity came into my life.  I picked this one up off the shelf at Homegoods and fell in love with it's sweet, clean ocean scent that is unlike any candle that Yankee makes.  I brought it home, lit it and fell in love with it even more.  I would not hesitate buying another one in this scent if I ever came across it again.  I'd snap it up in a minute! My third Village is an autumn one called Indian Summer.  Its a nice fallish scent with some leather, some floral and some cologne.  It's very different and I liked it when I found it. 

The thing about Village candles is that they are considerably cheaper than the Yankees.  The large jars are $10 as opposed to $15 for a Yankee at the discount stores.  I'd really prefer to get a cheaper candle in a scent that I don't already have fifteen of already.  Yankee tends to recycle scents and they get old.  This is particularly true in their fall and Christmas lines.  I know these candles are more consistent than Yankee has been lately so once in a while I will pick one up if I love it.

I wanted to give an update on BPT.  After about two or three hours it developed a deep pool and really got going.  It wasn't overpoweringly strong but I could smell it.  It had a lovely light throw and I ultimately ended up enjoying it very much. It falls in the category of I enjoy it but I probably wouldn't  go out of my way to get a second one. I do buy second and third jars of scents that I love and don't want to be without but I will pass on this one.  The good news is that I find it to be very enjoyable and I don't regret buying it.  Hopefully others out there have had the same experience and are enjoying theirs too.

A Candle Day For Sure!

I just couldn't stand it any longer.  I had to make an order.  Forgive me husband, for I have sinned. There are some great coupons circulating right now like a  buy one/get one free and $20 off a $45 purchase.  Believe me when I tell you that I almost always have something in my cart in the YC online site.  So today I decided to bite the bullet and use up a couple of vouchers on top of my coupons and I feel like I got a pretty good deal.  For the buy-one get-one deal I got a large jar of  Brandy Pear Tart and a Lake Sunset.  I've heard great things about BPT but I haven't even smelled it yet but it's got great reviews so I'm taking a risk on this one.  Usually I like to pick up a tart before I commit to a large jar of it but there's something about knowing that it's only available online that makes it more tempting.

  Lake Sunset is one of my all time favorites.  During the last SAS (Semi Anual Sale) in the spring I was sniffing around and I found this one on the treasures shelf.  Intially I wasn't sure about it, in fact, out of all the candles I took home that day, Lake Sunset was the one that I really wasn't sure I would like.  There is just something about it that grew on me though and over the past several months that I've burned it, it has grown on me.  It has such a different scent for me.  I'm usually one to gravitate to florals and some fruits but this year I've been trying to branch out to pick up more fresh and beachy scents.  This one falls in the category of fresh.  The best way I can describe it would be powdery, sweet and floral.  I love Lake sunset so much that I have also picked it up in the two wick tumbler form when it was sold out of the large jar form and now I am getting my third large jar of it.  This is one that I will select when I have had a particularly difficult day and I'm in need of some TLC and comfort.  It's a very comforting and peaceful scent to me.  I hope I never have to be without it.

I also bought two medium jars.  Normally I don't buy medium jars because I want to get as much wax as I can for the money.  Now, you  do the math.  Large jars are currently $27.99 each and medium jars are $24.99. For $3 more you can get nearly twice as much wax and twice as much burn time. So it stands to reason that the best way to purchase the candles are by buying the large jars.  But I'm starting to refine that mindset.  There are a couple of scents that I'm not sure I will like but I want to try. Patchouli is one of those scents.  I've melted a Patchouli votive before (eons ago) and I really liked it because it was so fall-ish and spicy and different.  My husband, however hated it and basically told me never to burn that candle in our home again.  That was many years ago and I've never forgotten that exchange and as a result I've always been interested in buying Patchouli based scents (Witch's Brew) but I've never taken the plunge to buy one.  So today I rebelled and bought a medium jar.  Dear husband, please forgive my transgression.  I'm looking forward to getting it mostly because I want to see how my husband will react when I burn it.  Yeah, I'm wicked that way.

Also on my list is a new-to-to me scent Harvest Welcome.  I love fall scents and I know a couple of years ago, somewhere along the road I smelled this one and for some reason I opted not to buy it. Someone recently was talking about how delicious it is so I decided to take a leap and pick one up.  Now both of these jars (Patchouli and Harvest Welcome) weren't at the full retail price but were both drastically discounted.  One was 12.00 and the other 10.00.  I felt both were good deals so I'm eagerly looking forward to them arriving in the mail next week.  In this shipment I also ordered a Leather Car Jar.  Leather is the only scent I will put into my van.  It just makes sense.


But I didn't stop there, Oh no.  I also went to visit my local store.  I love going to my local YC store.  I feel like Norm in Cheers who is greeted jovially by all the employees and patrons as he walks into the bar.  Today I was very happily greeted by the store manager and for a half hour or so we chewed the fat before I even got around to selecting my candles.   I finally got around to buying my candles. I Again I selected two large jars for the buy-one-get one deal (us pros know how to take advantage of any and all coupons offered by Yankee!) and I picked up my fall favorites Crisp Morning Air and Vanilla Bourbon.  Crisp Morning Air has been a stunner in our home with a delicious minty-citrus throw that goes on and on and on so I knew I had to have a large jar of it.  Vanilla Bourbon seems to be a repackage of Warm Chestnut which is one of my favorite fall scents so I had to have one of these as well.

In transaction number two (Yankee candle buying hint number 1; split your coupons into separate transactions.  you will get more bang for your buck.)

                                            I selected a recent favorite Mango Peach Salsa.

I love peach based scents and this one is a winner.  I bought this scent in a Meltcup recently and I loved it because it reminded me of how the model home smelled when we went to select the new house that we built last year.  I loved the meltcup very much so I really wanted to have  a large jar of it,  I have the jar going right now and it smells wonderful but not quite as wonderful as the meltcup did.  It just feels like there is a tad bit of something missing in the actual candle.  It still smells great though and it has a good throw.  It's just that the meltcup is better. I don't regret buying the large jar though.

 I also picked up several new meltcups to get to my $45 dollar limit. I got Pink Sands, Vanilla Cupcake, Berrylicous and Red Raspberry.  Tomorrow I will be trying out Red Raspberry.  As a bonus, Yankee is offering a medium jar for $10 for some obscure qualification.  Who am I to argue?  Any time I have the opportunity to pick up a medium jar for ten bucks I'm going to take advantage of it (case in point; this morning's online purchase) I quickly realized that French Vanilla is what I needed to pick up.

 Any vanilla based scents  also fall into the category of, "maybe I'll try it if I eventually get to it".  My husband loves vanilla but I could live the rest of my life without ever burning any vanilla candle. I dislike vanilla candles.  They just remind me of cheap grocery store candles. But I want my husband to feel that warm snuggly feeling when he comes home from a rough day at the office so I picked up French Vanilla for him. I know he likes this particular scent because once we went to the store together and the sales associate hauled out every vanilla based candle for him to sniff and this was the one he picked out. We bought a tart and when I melted it, I actually enjoyed it.  So all these months I've had it in my mind that I want to pick up a jar of it. Things got in the way though and I always found other scents that I wanted more so I never picked it up.  Today was my day.  Too bad I'm not burning it right now as I'm waiting for him to come home!

All in all I feel like I got a great deal.  I got three large jar candles, one medium jar candle, four melt cups and two (free) votives for about $65.

Scenterpiece

So now that the introductions are out of the way here's what I am doing today;

Can I just say how much I love my new Scenterpiece system?  

A couple of weeks ago I decided that I *need* a Scenterpiece. My husband and I are going to celebrate out 25th anniversary this year and we decided to go on a 7 day cruise.  How could I go 7 days without my beloved candles?  I obviously can't do lighted candles on a ship and I didn't want to deal with a messy tart warmer.  So what better solution that to purchase a Scenterpiece?

Last year when the Scenterpiece system came out I wasn't very impressed with them.  The burners were HUGE.  As in, humongous- the size of a small lamp.  I was told by the sales associate at the store that they were to be considered to be an accent piece to go with your decor.  You may have read in my first post that I'm not really into the accessory pieces.  Plus the cups are $5!  I considered them to be overpriced tart warmers and every time I was in the store I ignored them.  But now that I know I *need* to have one for my cruise, I started doing some research and discovered some nice benefits of owning a Scenterpiece system.  The first one is that these melt cups have a much stronger throw than the candles and even the tarts.  So if you find a scent you like but you think the throw is too weak, try it in a Meltcup.  The wax is much more concentrated.  I have a large, open kitchen and living room area with a 20ft vaulted ceiling so that makes burning jar candles in there difficult because you just can't smell them very well.  I've learned that I have to find the really strong ones to burn in the living room or to use a tart warmer.  Most of the time I have a tart melting in the living room and a candle in my bedroom which is where I spend the majority of my time when I'm home.  Some candles work best in smaller rooms.

Another benefit I found out recently is the cost of the cups.  One cup is twice as much as a tart however it lasts much longer.  Some people cut their meltcups in half (well, the cut the wax in half, not the cup itself) and they save half of the wax while they melt the rest, which essentially doubles your melting time.  You technically could get 48 hours or more out of one meltcup.  That's definitely worth $5 to me.

The third benefit that I discovered about owning a Scenterpiece system is how neat the whole thing is.  The cups are a heat resistant plastic (or acrylic) that have lids.  They are so easy to change out.  Lift the cup out of the warmer and insert a new one right away.  You don't have to deal with having to let it cool or gouging hardened wax out of a dish to change the scent out.  Lift the cup out and put a new one in.  That easy.  No mess.  For Christmas last year my dear and well meaning husband bought me a new electric tart warmer (no tea-light warmers for me).  The piece he bought me is one continuous piece.  Whenever I can't get hardened wax out I have to put the whole thing, cord and all, into the freezer.  It's a pain and it's a mess and I worry about the benefit of freezing the cord so that it gets stiff.  None of that with the Scenterpiece system.

When I picked up my Scenterpiece system at the store at the end of July they were having a deal where you picked out one of three or four basic models and you got three meltcups to go with it.  I thought that was a pretty good deal for $25 so I picked out the above melter that goes with our dark wood furnishings and I got Midnight Jasmine, Sun and Sand and Crisp Morning Air meltcups.

I never knew how hard I would fall for this system.  Man, the throw on these cups are fantastic and it fills up the whole downstairs of my house.  Some of the scents are strong enough to carry upstairs too.  Within a week I was using a coupon to order ten more cups and I've had so much fun with them changing them out on a whim.


                                                   
                                                      My favorite one so far has been Mango Peach Salsa.

It's a blockbuster and it makes my whole house smell like a model home.  I know I will get more melt cups in this scent but I also plan on getting a large jar too.







The other one that I have also gotten a lot of use out of is Crisp Morning Air;

Crisp Morning Air is a new fall scent for 2015 and it is just lovely.  I smell predominately a cool, sweet mint with a hint of citrus and cedar.  It really is different and is one of the scents that is perfectly described by it's name.  I tried the tart form first and I melted the tart on at least three different occasions for at least 8 hours each time so I knew the meltcup would also be a good one.  I'm still on my first one and have probably gotten at least 5 full day melts from it.  I would say I've done at least 30-40 hours and it still smells great like the first time I put it in! I will definitely be buying up more of this scent.

In the bedroom today I'm doing a mixology of Beachwood and Drift Away in my electric tart warmer.  I like Beachwood. It has a sweet earthy scent and I would also venture to say it smells like a sweet cotton.  I don't know how else to describe it.  I wanted to buy a jar of it before it goes away totally (you can get from Bed, Bath and Beyond stores right now but the YC stores and online do not have it available) but some people have reviewed it and have said that the throw on the 2015 pour is too light.  I would have to agree that even in the tart form it's very light.  Maybe next year they will put out a better version with more oils in it.  I have a hard time spending almost $30 that I'm not confident will have a good throw.  I've learned to read reviews and pay attention to what year they were written in.  Each year the pours differ in concentration.  Some years a candle might have a strong pour and get great reviews while the next year it has a bad pour and gets terrible reviews.  If a candle gets a lot of complaints about no throw in one year, I will wait to order the next year in hopes that the throw will be better the next time around.

Added to my Beachwood is Drift Away.  It smells sweet, perfumey and salty.  It's okay but I think I made a mistake by adding it to the Beachwood.  I can't smell the Beachwood at all now and that was the only tart I had of it.

  

Sorry about the wonkiness of the words and pictures here.  I'm still trying to figure this blog stuff out.  

Hello

Hello everyone,

I have decided to start my own blog about my love for and obsession with Yankee Candles.  This love goes back many years.  Too many to count, but I would say that it goes back at least ten or twelve years if not more.  Recently my love has hit obsessive levels and not only have I added to my hoard of large jars, votives and tarts but I have found great joy in writing a diary in my computer that is now more than 30 pages long.  Each time I write, I always think to myself that I should just start a blog.  That would create a fun and cute little online world for this obsession of mine and hopefully I will find some friends and other Yankee addicts along the way. So here we are making a blog for the first time ever.  This is mostly for my own benefit because I really want a pictorial reference for the things that I write about and the candles that I experience, not just a word related one.

Here are a few quick facts about my obsession;

• I have more than 200 jars- mostly large jars as I feel they are more economical, but I do have a few medium and small jars
• About 20 of those jars are Black Bands which show you how long I've been collecting.  I have been trying to burn through some of them but I do have a few beloveds that I won't burn until they bring the scent back as a Treasure.  My favorites is Hearts and Flowers and I have two jars of it both of which I have only burned a couple of times.  The last time I burned one was last Christmas when I heard a rumor that they were bringing Hearts and Flowers back in the spring which sadly didn't happen, much to my disappointment. My other beloved is a large jar of unburned Violet and Birch.  I think this one is extremely rare and if I sold it on Ebay I might make a few pennies. I've never seen this scent listed on Ebay before.
• My Yankee obsession is noticeable all over my house; in addition to all my candles, I have a drawer full of tarts, a box of half used tarts, several tart melters and my  new pride and joy - the Scenterpiece.  All of these things I will discuss at one point or another. If I could, I would wear a pair of Yankee Candle earrings!
• I have a diary that I write in frequently in my computer. This blog is taking that diary to a whole new level. 
• I have a notebook that I use to keep track of the tarts I melt so I can remember what my impressions were as I was melting them.  No sense buying a full jar of a scent that I hated when I melted the tart!
• I don't have very accessories.  I would rather spend my dough on candles.  See?  I'm a purist. I won't have elaborate pretty displays of accessories to show you.  I hardly every buy that stuff.  I don't have anywhere to keep it anyway.
• My obsession reaches into the online world too.  I have several Youtubers that I stalk on a regular basis (I love watching them talk about their YC hauls and reviews) and I'm an active member of a great group on Facebook.  Those people truly understand me. 
• Last year we moved into a new house.  In my master closet I had a double shelf custom made so that I would have more space for my candles.  Recently I took all of my fall and Christmas scents upstairs to store in the shelf above the dry bar and I got in trouble when my husband realized I was expanding. Insert embarrassed emoticon here. 
• My husband is a saint. He mostly understands my obsession.  Puts up with it anyway.  But he gripes when I spend too much money.  I think I do a pretty good job not getting too out of control.  Sometimes he buys me a candle or two for a gift or a special occasion so he gets bonus points.
• My 16 year old daughter just thinks I'm nuts and most of the time she just thinks I'm ridiculous and rolls her eyes.
• My 20 year old son doesn't really care. 

Okay, so that's me in a nutshell.  I also have a house full of animals (3 small dogs and two cats and a third cat that comes to visit when my son comes home from college) and I'm a preschool teacher which is my other obsession. Most of the time life is pretty good and I'm very blessed.  Even though some people make fun of me because of my obsession.  I just ignore them and love them anyway.