A favorite gift from this Christmas

 

One of my favorite gifts this Christmas was made by two of my granddaughters (Julia - 15 and Arielle - 7) with a bit of help from their mom.  I guess you would call this a luminary, or maybe a candle jar.  Whatever you call it, it is pretty!

Photo at top is not the best picture as it was taken with a flash.  However, I do love the reflected tree lights in the photo.  I took another with my Kindle so will try adding that in also to give you a closer look.   Ah yes, this looks better.

I also took a couple Kindle photos in the daylight to show the details better.

The girls also made these for their music teachers (Julia) and Sunday School teacher (Arielle).  It looks as if they decoupaged sheet music, cut to size, and with a snowflake shape cut out of it,  to a pint mason jar with (probably) Mod Podge.  I haven't asked for the crafting particulars, but they did say that their mom cut the snowflake shapes out for them.  The sheet music is a Christmas carol, as you see: mine is O Come All Ye Faithful.  I think this was probably a sheet music printable, but am not sure.  It's lovely, anyway.  Then a simple jute tie around the top and some sweet red berry pips complete the project.  I love it!

Below is a little video of the jar with a flickering tea light inside.  It looks lovely with a real tea light candle (that's what it came with), but the one I used for the video was a battery operated tea light. 

 Isn't this a sweet project?

Favorite fall candle scents

Image from Yankee Candle

Last year I remember seeing a prompt for October blogging that suggested we write about our favorite candle scents for fall.  As a rule, my favorite scents for any season are by Yankee Candle
although I have found some lovely scents by smaller companies in various country shops over the years.

Every year my granddaughters' school has a Yankee Candle fundraiser and I often get myself a package of a dozen tealights.  This year I ordered Gingerbread Maple, which will be fun to try.  It smelled very nice on the scented page!  The website describes it this way: "Baking spices and the warm fragrance of cloves, with just a touch of maple, bring back memories of gingerbread cooling on cookie sheets".  Sounds enticing!

For years my favorite Yankee Candle scent for fall was Cranberry Chutney, and I'm still pretty partial to that. The description for that one is "A delicious reminder of Thanksgiving dinner…tangy, fresh cranberries with orange zest and raisins."  It's a fun combination of cranberries and citrus that I really enjoy.

Over the years I've also enjoyed Yankee Candle's  Macintosh scent, which always takes me back to my childhood and inhaling the aroma of a barn full of apples at an orchard where my parents would buy a bushel or two of "drops".

Last year I ordered a package of tea lights from the fundraiser in the Pumpkin Ginger Bark scent.  I couldn't find this on the Yankee Candle site so this photo is from Amazon. 

Just this morning I was burning a tea light in this scent and it is a truly lovely fall fragrance.  Maybe my new favorite?