Real Talk About Bath and Body Works Candles

I was going thru my blog recently and I realized that I had done a cocktail post in awhile; anybody who watches my videos know how much I love cocktails. And with New Years right around the corner and then Twelfth Night and eventually Carnival/Mardi Gras for my Louisianian readers, there are plenty of opportunities to make some festive cocktails. That said, I thought of some quick and easy cocktails inspired my some of my favorite winter scents. Tis the Season (old fashioned,on the rocks) apple cider Calvados rosemary cinnamon brown sugar red food coloring Muddle your rosemary with brown sugar and a splash of lemon. Add ice then pour a splash of Calvados, apple cider then a drop of coloring. Shake and pour on ice. Your can garnish with either a cinnamon stick or a spring of rosemary or both. *You can also serve topped with Martinelli sparkling cider  Winter Garland (bellini) Martinelli Sparkling Apple Cranberry cranberry juice blood orange juice dry champance ...

Ok so let's be real..2015 SUCKED!!! The whole year from spring til winter was a hot shitty mess! This was the year of the most random and nonsensical decisions. In spring they decided not to offer not a single floral scent besides tired ass Lilac Blossom and Honeysuckle. Instead they gave us tropical collection after tropical collection after tropical collection with every single one offering something coconutty. There was the lackluster White Barn Market collection and Screen Door and Sweet Tea collection. And this was the year of "White Barn exclusives" so the scents that people really wanted, they couldn't get! We got a little reprieve and a taste of newness in the summer with the Sunset Summer  and Poptails collections...not much though. Then the fall was an utter dissapointment; very few classics came back, we got a bunch of repackages and candles came out at totally random times. Usually fall is when BBW truly shines...not so much this year. And then finally win...

Ah, Tis the Season...such a quintessential Christmas scent! It still remains a favorite and a holiday must have for me. So this scent has been around for quite some time. It was originally called "Holiday Wreath" and sported pine green wax. Thankfully the year after they changed to "Tis the Season" and it's been that ever since...make sense as it was much more of a conceptual scent and didn't have enough pineyness to be considered a "garland" scent. The following year it became the more appropriate holiday crimson that we've come to associate with this scent. I fell in love with this scent I first sniffed it years ago and it has remained a Christmas staple. For such a simple scent, it made a deep impression on me. To this the day, whenever I sniff TIS it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy; it conjures so many great Christmas memories from my childhood - going into the attic to take down box after box of Christmas decorations, decorating th...

So I know we all have been on a major spring scent kick lately and I dunno about yall but despite the Winter Solstice and Christmas fastly approaching in a few more days, its been hard getting into the spirit. I'm sure this El Niño induced warm spell hasn't helped things. Perhaps the fact that this winter at BBW has been a hot mess so most of us are over it and are looking forward to some newness. However there is still some time left to garner some holiday mirth and good cheer. That said in the spirit of getting us back on the winter holiday track  I thought I'd do a special post about my top ten must have favorite winter scents of all time! 10. Snowed In (2012)    This was an interesting scent to say the least...definitely not for pussies. It was an unabashed outdoorsy scent and it really smelled like you were out in the snow. Think Sweater Weather without the eucalyptus with a hint of Flannel. It did have a weird cod fish oil like aroma after the midway point, but be...

Well gang, here is yet another collection with very little thought behind; just a bunch of scents that BBW "thinks" are fan favorites thrown together willy-nilly. As with many of their collections lately, they're right on the cusp of having a really interesting collection but somehow it just misses the mark. You would think with last year's dismal White Barn Market collection, they would've learned their lesson but NOPE! With just a little more thought and less assumptions and pandering, this collection could've rivaled the infamous Sweet Shoppe collection and as of yet they haven't had a success like that since. At any rate, as usual, I thought of better replacements that would make this collection more interesting Sugared Peony Petals  - So in my scent list post , I was corrected by a reader that "sugared peonies" are indeed a thing. Despite being hip to culinary/gourmet fads, I never heard of that. So yeah it is a thing but that doesn't...

As most of yall know, I posted about the upcoming Spring candles and one of the collections has a "Mexican" theme...*sigh. As exciting as it may sound, sadly many of the scents in this collection are the most basic and un-Mexican things you could think of...almost to the point of being insulting. Y'know BBW has never been the most culturally savvy bunch...I'm lookin at you Electric Tokyo/Tokyo Petals. I just imagine a bunch of palefaces sitting the table throwing out the most mainstream basic scents they could think of and trying to spin them into something international and exotic. But with this collection in particular, they're really diggin deep; this collection is as Mexican as Taco Bell! Now I would never claim myself to be the authority on Mexican culture (although during my childhood living in Houston with all Mexican friends, I was made an honorary Mexicano), I could think of better scents for this collection. The only scent in this entire collection th...

Well ladies and gents, it's about that time again..test stores have started releasing spring scents. My homegurls  theshow78  and tinybubblesfloating has set social media on fire with their pics of the latest candles at their local test store. That said, with their permission of course, the following info comes straight from them. It looks like we're getting 4 collections, though nobody at the moment knows what the names of any of them though. So every spring, BBW releases a collection based on certain international locale; we've been all up and thru France, we've been to Italy, we've been to Hawaii, last year we were taken to the Amazon and now this year BBW is bringing us to..MEXICO!!! Si mis amigos, this collection has an "exotic" Spanish/Mexican/Mayan/Aztec-y theme. New scents include... Prickly Pear and Sugarcane - Bring home a luscious prickly pear fruit and sugarcane inspired by the exotic flavors of Mexico (Hmm, this could be anything - Heir...