An Open Letter to Candles

Dear Candles,

Girls love you. I mean, girls love a lot of stuff, but they REALLY love you. Take me, for example. I love you.  I love candles.

But I don’t simply love candles; I am a freak for candles. I would be so down with being transported back to Plymouth, Massachusetts in the early 1800s because, well first of all time travel = awesome, but also think about all those candles! Back when there wasn’t electricity it wasn’t just girls with a penchant for journal writing to Taylor Swift songs who had an overstock of candles. Back in the Days of Yore (an actual historical era I just made up), everyone rocked candles. Back then people would even have these little candle trays they would use to carry their candles around on and everything was always kind of terrifying because the only thing lit at night would be the area around the candle which sounds both very romantic and very scary and possibly both at the same time which is fun too.

Nowadays candles are just sort of tossed aside as this decorative item that costs way more than I am willing to spend on an average meal so my candle buying is limited. I mean I would love to purchase a thirty-dollar homemade organic wax candle that smells exactly like a unicorn cried into a grapefruit but I’d also like to eat lunch. So nowadays, getting to enjoy candles is not quiet as easy as it was back in the Days of Yore. But that’s where discount department stores come in handy. See, I’ve recently discovered that places like Marshalls, TJ Maxx, Ross, Filene’s Basement, etc have some pretty bangin’ sales in the home goods aisles, and that almost always includes candles!

Why just the other day I took an excursion to my favorite local discount department store, Ross (dress for less!) and proceeded to spend upwards of ninety dollars on candles. Now I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, “Boy, this girl needs to learn how to budget” and you are also thinking “wasn’t she just talking about thirty dollars being way too much to spend on a candle?” and to those thoughts I will respond, “Yes, I do need to learn how to budget do they make a book for that” and “Not one of those candles I bought cost more than $6.99.” See, that’s my trick, you guys! I’m stocking up on cheap candles! This is good both for when I have a lot of writing to do and want to set a very chill and zen vibe around my workspace (this old table in my kitchen) and also for the impending zombie apocalypse when we will lose all power and have to rely on candles for light lest we get eaten by a zombie just because it’s dark out and we couldn’t figure out where to go!

The thing is, if you want to get into the big serious Romeo + Juliet candle shrine type mood then you are going to need a literal boatload of candles. And you definitely don’t want all those candles to be scented because there is a very real chance you will pass out from candle fumes and or hallucinate that a giant Tahitian Gardenia is doing interpretive dance with some Spanish Sandalwood while White Linen eats a Fig on a Bamboo Teak tabletop. So just get one or two scented candles and then go straight bananas in the unscented candle section. Snatch up every odorless waxed wick you can find!  Then just disperse the candles in the place of your choosing, light away, and rejoice in all those flickering flames!

Now remember to always practice candle safety because everyone knows about that dude who left a candle burning in his dorm room and he lit his super cool tapestry that his sister brought him from Spain on fire and then the building burned down. I would also not recommend laying on a bed surrounded by candles à la Claire Danes as Juliet (see photo), because first of all, those candles look expensive; secondly, if you are as klutzy as I am, chances are 100% you’ll burn yourself; but mostly you should just remember that no one is ever going to look as good as Claire Danes looks when she’s emoting.

Regards,

Stamos

(Image via ShutterStock.)