Real Talk About Bath and Body Works Candles

Well with Thanksgiving right around the corner, fall is pretty much over. That said I wanted to make one last fall themed post; I'm gonna throw some ideas for next fall since this fall was a hot mess! So this year as a precursor to the upcoming fall candles, y'all had the Cork & Vine collection which was...uuummmmm....yeah How about next ya'll have a..wait for...Country Fair collection, with blue ribbons on the labels. Y'all can have scents like... Apple Crumble, Caramel Apple, Cotton Candy, Cinnamon Sugared Doughnuts, Cider Lane, Summertime Soda, Toffee Glazed Popcorn, Chocolate Bacon Cupcake Strawberry Rhubarb Marmalade, Market Peach...savory scents that'll sort of wet everybody's appetites for fall For the main fall collection, I'd love to see a more metropolitan themed collection - fall in the city; long walks in the park in your favorite sweater, sipping a PSL while watching leaves fall..y'know basic bitchy. Of course in this collection...

With autumn pretty much drawing to a close, I wanted to take an opportunity to talk about a very undervalued autumn scent - Pumpkin Carving. Now as y'all already know, due to a past encounter with Shit Cinnamon Poopkin, I developed a strong and intense pumpkin scent phobia which I've only just recently gotten over. Despite hearing from other fellow candle connoisseurs of how superior Pumpkin Carving was to SCP, I just couldnt get down with PC. I tried experimenting with a PC wf bulb and though I enjoyed the scent, I just couldn't commit to a candle. Finally this fall I took the plunge and I bought/burned a 3wick ; I could kick myself for ignoring for so long. Now I do believe PC predates SCP (someone correct me if I'm wrong). It first came on the scene in the mid 2000 as "The Perfect Autumn Pumpkin" - very fitting name. The name was eventually changed to "Pumpkin Patch". Then in fall '12 it appeared (4oz only) as " Pumpkin Carving...

So this post was inspired by a video I made several months ago and forgot to post on Youtube; it was about my favorite type of fragrance from BBW - "cologney" scents or "mandles" as I like to call them. Cologney scents tend to get a lot of hate-ration from BBW community...mainly from the cupcake frosting caramel candy sticky sweet ooey goeey lovers whose brains short circuit at the very mention of a non-bakery conceptual scent. It also doesn't help when people with a basic sense of smell describe scents as "cologney" or "blah blah mixed with cologne" as if a) smelling like cologne is a bad thing and b)all colognes are cheap smelling and offensive. I always found calling something "cologney" or "mixed with cologne" (btw hat the hell does that mean?!) as very lazy. Anyway I digress... If, like me, you much prefer deep high end manly woodsy/herbal blends, then this bud's for you! Fireside (200?) smells like: a DILF b...

Ok, is it me or is there an overabundance of "balsam" this year? There are more scents with a balsam/fir balsam note in them than anything else and it's awfully strange. Now in the past, BBW has been read for having way too many bakery scents for the holidays (and back when I was very anti-bakery, I wholeheartedly agreed) Well after all of these years, BBW finally got the hint but ran with it to the extreme. Besides VBN and Joy, there are no bakery scents at all and instead we have a hodge-podge of random fruity or outdoorsy scents, including a crapload of balsam scents. Welcome to BALSAMPALOOZA '15!!!! I don't mind balsam at all but here's the problem. If all of these balsam scents were new with just a hint of balsam, that would be one thing. However all it seems like BBW is doing is simply mixing Fresh Balsam with other notes and many people have been describing these scents as such... Alpine Cheer... Fresh Balsam and Frosted Cranberry (I personally do...

Call me a Negative Nancy, but I am by and large unimpressed and underwhelmed with the holidays scents. It just seems very helter-skelter this year with more thought and effort put on the look of the candles and not the scents themselves.  Here's how I would've done all the collections Ok let's start with these... Cozy Cabin - why replace an original and new scent that people liked with a significantly weaker version of it?! REPLACEMENT: Ski Lodge - HELLO?!!! Fresh Sparkling Snow - FSS is very out of place in this collection; why have this fruity and summery mess with more outdoorsy winter scents? REPLACEMENT: - Snowed In - now this smelled more like like fresh sparkling snow! Just fix that weird oily sage and it would be a hit Mahogany Teakwood - MT is NOT a winter scent! I repeat, MT IS NOT A WINTER SCENT! REPLACEMENT:   Chestnut & Clove - ok so we already had this for Thanksgiving, who cares?! Its an amazing elegant sophisticated rustic scent and ...

So as I mentioned in my last post , I received quite a substantial amount of messages on various social media from folks asking what I thought of this candle. Unfortunately I couldn't say much cuz none of my local stores had this candle to sniff. I had my theories but no solid proof...that is until I finally went to WB and sniffed and eventually bought said candle. This mysterious candle created quite a bit of hubbub and hullabaloo on social media. It's been said that it was a repackage or at least similar my number one bae Black Pepper Bergamot . And everyone who knows me knows how much I loved it and and some folks graciously gave me a headsup about it, which is very sweet. Initially I was intrigued; hello it's a my all time favorite scent that hasn't been in rotation since '13. However part of me was a little leery and suspicious; the notes (black pepper, vetiver, pine needles) just wasn't adding up. And now having sniffed it... OH THE SUSPENSE!!!! T...

So my bf and I went to GSP over the weekend; of course we had to stop off at White Barn to see what we could see and smell what we could smell. Sure enough they had a good size portion of the holiday candles. *SIGH Color my ass unimpressed! I hate to be a Negative Nancy, but real talk I was already unimpressed and underwhelmed when I first heard about the holiday lineup and now having actually sniffed them, I'm that much more unimpressed and underwhelmed. *Just a heads up, my WB (and from what I heard most other ones too) did not have Cranberry Sugar Cookie (meh), Sparkling Sugarplum (again, meh) and Dashing thru the Snow (I really wanted to sniff this one) So there are a handful of scents that have changed since testing; the original scent wasn't up to snuff and the wise sages of the marketing department decided release a new (and more generic) safe versions for the nationwide release. The problem is who knows what version your store is gonna get; we saw this recently w...

Products: candle and wf bulbs  Area used in:  living room  Time Period: mid-October - Thanksgiving Description: Transport yourself to a hilltop winery during harvest with a blend of cinnamon leaves, crisp apple and touch of tart cranberry Missing note: pumpkin Trivia: this first appeared out of nowhere late in fall of 2013 and was named "Harvest Gathering No. 4" I'll be honest, I flatout ignored this scent for the longest! With such vastly superior fall scents like Leaves and Pumpkin Carving and Cranberry Woods , I just didn't see the need for HG. I pretty much wrote this scent off as a generic knockoff of Leaves from a low-tier candle company that you find at Target or Marshalls. Had my bf not sniffed this in the store and expressed some interest, I probably would've continued ignoring it. But as I said in my last candle review , I've been trying to be open-minded and branch out and so here we are. Performance-wise, it was kinduva hot mess. T...