Scents & Scentsibilities

Graduation season is upon us!  We’ve actually got two kids graduating here:  our son is graduating high school on June 1 and our daughter graduates middle school (8th grade) on June 4.  It seems like just yesterday we were walking them up to preschool.  ::sigh::

Anyway, this is the time of year we really see the orders for candle favors come rolling in.  Bridal showers, weddings, baby showers, christenings, bar mitzvahs and graduation parties are all gearing up.  I wanted to mention a couple of fun things you can do if you order favors from us.

If you have a graduate in your family, chunk votive favors really look nice because we can do two different colors and have them match the school colors.  You choose one color for the chunk and one color for the overpour.  The overpour color is the more dominant one, so if you prefer one color over the other, pick your preferred color for the overpour.

Chunk favors are also nice for weddings that have two colors in the theme.  Another really popular wedding favor option is the little mini pears.  These come with a leaf tag  personalized with the couple’s names, wedding date and “A Perfect Pair”.  The play on words is really cute and these little pears look adorable — we used them as the favors for our own wedding, in fact!

Finally, one really fun thing we can do is give you a customized scent name.  You can go ahead and pick whichever fragrance you want, and then let us know the custom name you’d like to use.   This option doesn’t show up on the website, but all you have to do is send us an email after you order, or put the information in the “Messages” box of the shopping cart.  We print the fragrance/safety label after the candles are made, so it’s no problem to type a special name in for you, and there’s no extra charge.

For example, my sister-in-law had a baby shower and one of the fragrances used for her favors was Warm Vanilla Sugar.  This is a great fragrance for favors because it’s light and vanilla is usually not an offensive scent to most people.  I renamed the scent “Baby’s Breath” on the labels to make it more appropriate for a baby shower.

Finally, just remember to order well enough in advance to get your favors in time for your event!  This is definitely our busiest time for favors but the processing times shown on the Favors page are pretty accurate.  Remember that the 3 day processing doesn’t apply to favors — we have special processing times listed on each of the webpages for the various  favors we offer.

After you order, we’ll send a second email to you (disregard the automatic one that the shopping cart sends).  This email will ask you to confirm the revised shipping charges and will also give you the latest date we would ship your order, so you can be sure you’ll receive the favors in time.  We ask that you just respond to this email with a quick “That’s fine!” or whatever, just so we know that you’ve seen the revised total and you’re okay with the processing time.  The last thing we want is to have a miscommunication issue and have your favors arrive too late for your event!

Enjoy your day, everyone!

It’s now been a year and a half since we discovered the little cat family living under our deck, and they’ve made such progress.  If it weren’t for the fact that we still can’t pick them up, you’d probably never know they used to be feral.

We submitted their story to Borders for their Hopeful Tails book project, and it was accepted.  You can see a short story and sweet photo of our girls on page 79 of the book, and if you purchase a copy they will donate $1.00 to the ASPCA (through June 2008).  One funny note:  in the abridged version of their story that was published, my name was changed from Wendi to Melissa in the middle of the paragraph.  Everyone who sees the book wants to know who Melissa is!

They each have their little quirks:

Maxie loves to jump onto one of the kitchen stools when we’re cooking.  She peeks her face over the corner of the kitchen island to watch and sniff the enticing aromas, but she always stays on the stool and never tries to jump up onto the counter.

Gracie is our Flying Wallenda.  We often find her on the fireplace mantel or on top of our work oven in the workshop.  She’s the one most likely to leap from surface to surface without hesitation.  She’s also still absolutely in love with our dog, Toby!

Alice, or Ally-Cat, has finally warmed up and become extremely affectionate.  She loves to come up for chin scratches, and will flip over in a ninja roll when you start to pet her.  We’ve never seen a cat do somersaults before!

Now that the weather is slowly turning cooler, we find them lounging on our bed most days.  They tend to hang out downstairs in the summer and in our bedroom during winter.  It makes Dave a little bit nervous; he has to race Maxie into the bedroom and try to leap into bed before she gets there!  Otherwise he has to try to slip under the covers without her thinking it’s a game – a couple of times we’ve had cats attacking our toes under the covers and boy, their teeth are sharp!

Sabrina and Sugar have formed a little gang of two and are accepting the newest family members really well.  Sugar had some fun over the summer when he had to be hospitalized for a urinary blockage.  It turned into a fairly major deal and he ended up with surgery and a Perineal Urethrostomy.  The recovery period was fairly long and he had to wear an Elizabethan Collar to keep him from irritating the incision.  This absolutely terrified the New Girls and he seemed to get a little thrill out of strutting by with his collar and watching them flee in horror.  What a stinker!

We’ll leave you with a photo (this was not Photoshopped) in honor of Halloween, albeit a bit belatedly:

Boo!

We’ve really been busy testing fragrances lately! A few of our
favorite scents have been discontinued by the manufacturer, so we’ve had to hunt down new versions and test them for performance in our wax. We’ve narrowed down some real winners and thought we’d update everyone on the changes.

Our Honeydew Melon was discontinued, and this just made us want to cry because it was the strongest Honeydew we’d found. A little back story on Honeydew Melon…it is one of Wendi’s favorite scents, and it was always the fragrance she would buy before we started making our own candles. It was one of the first fragrance oils we ever purchased, and then we spent nearly a year testing to find a supplier with a version that really blew us away.

After we got done freaking out about the loss of our favorite Honeydew Melon scent, we decided to test the fragrance our supplier had added to replace the scent we had been using. (They got rid of one and added another version in its place.) Luckily, this one is also very strong and works well in our wax. This is more of a straight Honeydew and not quite as sweet-smelling as our previous Honeydew, but it is very true to the scent and we’re happy to say that we’re quite pleased with it.

Apple Cinnamon has also undergone a change. Our new Apple Cinnamon has a deep, sweet note to it that is more reminiscent of apple cinnamon potpourri. We think this new scent has some great added depth and much prefer it over the previous Apple Cinnamon. We hope you like it as much as we do!

Plumeria will be discontinued, sadly, once we run out of the fragrance we currently have. Our original supplier went out of business, and it took quite a long time to find a new supplier with a similar Plumeria fragrance. Unfortunately, this supplier has discontinued their Plumeria scent and we just can’t seem to find a replacement that meets our quality standards. We do still have a bit left so it’s not leaving our fragrance list just yet.

That should cover the most recent fragrance changes!

It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?! We have the usual excuses for not updating in so long…busy, busy! We’ve been testing fragrances and we’ll be changing suppliers on a couple of scents (due to scents being discontinued by the original supplier), so we’ll be posting about those changes soon.

In the meantime, we’re getting ready for Easter and we’re also celebrating the birth of our nephew, Joseph. (Congratulations to my brother and his wife — we are so very excited and it’s been a long time since we’ve had a sweet little baby in the family!)

To celebrate, we’re offering a 10% discount through April 8. Just type EASTER in the voucher box when you’re checking out, and hit the ‘recalculate’ button. You should see the discount come off automatically.

By the way, the Company Cats are growing and thriving! We just watched Alice perform a perfect somersault in the kitchen this morning — she’s quite a character.

We like to give lots of advance notice of our holiday schedule. Since we hand-make every candle after it’s ordered, and this is by far the busiest time of the year for us, our processing time does get longer as the holidays draw near.

In addition, the only time of year that we close shop is during Christmas. This gives us a chance to spend time with our family, who otherwise see very little of us at this time of year!

Here’s our full holiday schedule, including ordering deadlines and holiday closing dates:

If you would like your items to arrive by Dec. 22, please order by midnight on Sunday, Dec. 10. This ensures enough time for processing and a one-week delivery period, which should be enough time to receive your order by Dec. 22 (the last day UPS delivers before Christmas).

All orders placed while we’re closed in December will receive a free votive (for new and repeat customers) and a discount code good for 10% off a future order!

Holiday Closings

Thanksgiving: Nov. 23 through Nov. 26 - Orders accepted but not processed until Nov. 27

Christmas: We will be closed Dec. 14 through Dec. 27 - Orders accepted but not processed until Dec. 28

New Years: Dec. 31 through Jan. 3 - Orders accepted but not processed until Jan. 4, 2007

Here’s our Halloween treat for you:

For a limited time, take 10% off your order. Just enter this code into the “Vouchers” box of the shopping cart when you’re ready to place your order:

boo

Be sure to hit the “Recalculate” button when you’re done (you may have to scroll down a bit to see it). Your discount will automatically be taken.

** This applies to everything except favor orders.

Everyone loves freebies! We’re offering two free votives (in your choice of scent) with every $25 you order (before shipping). Place a $25 order and get 2 free votives, order $50 and get 4 free votives, and so on. Go to this page to add your freebies to your order:

http://www.contemporarycandles.com/subscribers.shtml

This is in addition to the freebies regularly offered with every order on our Freebies page!

I was skimming through a magazine(OK!) recently when I came across this:

“…certain smells, such as those of bananas, vanilla, green apples and peppermint, may actually help curb appetite…”

Beaming through the Google-door landed me at the website of The Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, ltd. Wow!! With a title like that, who wouldn’t be impressed?!

The credentials of Dr. Alan R. Hirsch, M.D., F.A.C.P., are certainly noteworthy and impressive and the site contains some very good information about the sense of smell and other equally interesting things.

I found the research page to be of the most interest, including:

The Effect of Inhaling Green Apple Fragrance to Reduce Migraine

“…. effectiveness of the green apple odor seemed to be dependent on whether the volunteer found the scent to be pleasant. Various other studies, such as those on learning speed, weight loss and product appeal, have made such connections between a person’s like or dislike of a scent and its effect on their perception or behavior.”

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Effects of Chronic Malodor Exposure on Olfactory Ability

“…A wide variety of environmental agents impact upon a person’s ability to smell. Ambient aroma can also affect olfactory ability. Those living around a pulp mill site (where paper is produced) have impaired olfactory ability. The affects of chronic exposure to unpleasant or malodor is currently not known. In an earlier study for the Attorney General’s office in the state of Illinois, Dr. Hirsch found that intermittent exposure to the odor of burning rubber impaired olfactory ability.”

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How to Detect Lying and Cheating in Children

“…When a person lies, specific tissues in the nose usually engorge. This nasal engorgement causes mast cells to release histamine, which in turn causes the nose to itch. Dr. Hirsch has dubbed this nasal itching the “Pinocchio Sign” as an indicator of lying. He has demonstrated this phenomenon in adults, but it has never been investigated in children. To address this, Dr. Hirsch is currently studying children during periods of lying and cheating to determine if they manifest some of the same signs as adults.”

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You might like to know some of the things that can go wrong with your sense of smell; check out the disorders page.

I also intend to read some of the articles listed in Dr. Hirsch’s VC, as well as at least one of his books:

What Flavor is Your Personality?

The Amazon reviews were enticing enough to make the book seem enjoyable and worthwhile.