Candles all aglow! (Indoor and Outdoor Candles)

Member Name: SusanLesley

Product:	Indoor and Outdoor Candles
Date:	08/09/08 (248 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lovely atmosphere, cheap lighting

Disadvantages: Not light enough to read by though

As you may know we have recently moved into our cottage which is within the confines of The Great Orme Country Park in Llandudno.

The cottage in question was built in 1896 and was originally the quarry manager's cottage and is a little detached cottage with fairly low ceilings (although the previous owner did raise them slightly) and small rooms.

When we moved in we decided to remove the gas fire in the lounge and replace it with a log burner, which has been a great success.

To add to the atmosphere and to further reduce our electricity bill we have decided to use candles to light the lounge.

If we just want a basic low level light for watching TV by we just light four standard slim candles in the old fashioned brass candles holders with the little round handles on the side - you know the sort - the ones that you see the maid carrying up to bed in the old films!

We also have various little tea light holders collected over time. I also treated myself to a tea light holder from our local Homebase. It holds nine tea lights arranged in a spiral standing about 18 inches tall. It gives off quite a bit of light surprisingly.

We also have a few pillar candles - sometimes called church candles - that look lovely in the candle holders but they're useless for burning! As the wick burns down the middle of the candle drops but the edge doesn't which eventually means that the wick is doused by the pool of liquid wax. Subsequently I have to keep trimming the edge off the pillar candles at regular intervals - at least I can throw the bits on the fire or use them in one of my log makers.

We buy our tea lights from Asda at £1.48 for 100 and these last about three hours each, although if we get a lot of them burning at the same time we soon get through 100!

Now the long candles are a bargain indeed. I realised that we would get through a fair few of these and unless I could find a supply of cheap candles this was going to be a none starter.

I googled 'white candles' and the best that I found were £23 plus £8.50 postage making £31.50 for 100 candles, thus making the candles 31.5p each.

I decided to check on EBay thinking that the postage charges would make buying my candles here too expensive - how wrong I was! I have found a supplier who sells surplus stock at a low price. The candles have been stored loose and so are a bit misshapen (some more than others LOL!) but they sell in bundles of 200, 250, 450 etc and the postage is free! It works out at about 7p a candle! Now that's more like it. As you can guess I have bought quite a stock of these whilst they are available.

The room looks lovely with our log burner and candles all glowing and I am really looking forward to the winter now as it will be so cosy!

I couldn't actually do a review about candles without mentioning safety though. Strangely enough I have been terrified of fire ever since we had a fire at home when I was a little girl so we are VERY careful with the candles.

The ones on the window sill are nowhere near the curtains and the others are on the mantelpiece and on the hearth - again nowhere near anything flammable. We never, ever go out and leave any candle alight even for the briefest time and they are all carefully extinguished before we go to bed.

So there you are another way to help beat the credit crunch and the atmosphere is lovely.

Summary: A lovely glow in our cottage