Regardless of the time of year, there is one constant that adds to the comfy, cozy, welcome feel in my home, and if you've been here, you know what it is.
It's home fragrance.
Mmmm, mmm, mmm, mmm. I want everyone who enters my home (including myself) to immediately feel welcome, and furthermore, to be met with the most pleasant, yummy, comforting scent.
It has been a daily ritual of mine for literally years now, and I will tell you what it is.
It's wax melts.
Oh, my, my, my, how I love me some wax melts. (The only time you will not smell my wax melts is when I have something delicious smelling cooking in the oven, crock pot, or on my stove top....)Oh, and in case you are wondering, you can get the the wax burners here as well.
Decades ago, back in the early, early 1980's I think, potpourri enjoyed a wildly popular resurgence (I think it comes from the Victorian times originally or even further back in time...) and we enjoyed big jars or bowls of fragrant dried flowers. (Anyway, my girlfriends and I all did.) and then along came a thing called "simmering potpourri" where you put these dried flower petals, and cinnamon, or lavender, or vanilla, or whatever...in a big ol' pot of water on the stove.
It smelled heavenly.
The problem with simmering potpourri was that you would be enjoying the fabulous scent wafting out of your kitchen, and la-dee-da...time would pass, and suddenly, (usually when you were at the point most furthest from your stove) you would smell...what is that?!
Uh, oh.
Just at the precise moment your brain processed that bad, burning smell, your smoke detectors would go off. All of the water in the simmering potpourri would have evaporated, and you now were the proud owner of a burned pot, and a smell you couldn't get rid of for three days.
Far out.
**Side story here: One of my friends (in the 1980's....) had a pot of simmering potpourri on her stove, and her elderly father lived with her. Well, he was having some of his pals over, and she left to run an errand.
She returned to find that her Dad had served the simmering potpourri to his friends, mistakenly thinking it was some type of interesting cider drink, due to the cinnamon and vanilla he smelled.
They didn't really like it, but they all politely drank it.
True story, friends. (No one got sick, but it was easy to understand how it happened.)
Okay, back to my blogpost, and the history of home fragrance.
Scented votives and fat candles in glass holders then reached the height of popularity at some point after that, (The 90's....about the time Pearl Jam and Nirvana hit the scene....)and while I love a nice scented candle, I was born in California, and I kinda still worried about earthquakes. Also, I am rather forgetful, and the fire hazard thing just concerned me too much with three elementary aged kids in my home, so I never got too heavily into the scented candles all over my home thing. (I mainly enjoy a nice scented candle during my bubble bathes....)
This brings me back to wax melts. (Were you starting to wonder where I was going with this post?) A company named Scentsy first brought them to life, at least in my world, and then the copycat companies jumped on the bandwagon. The Better Homes and Gardens brand is still to this day my all time favorite, with it's not-to-be-undersold pricing, and wide array of fragrances.
You melt the wax in a cute little electric contraption called aptly enough, a wax burner. Wax melt burners come either as wall plug in style, or sit on the table style, and I have both. (I know you are not surprised.) I couldn't pick a favorite if I had to. I just know that I love the comforting fragrance floating throughout each and every inch of my home. (Another side note here: They also double as great little night lights.)
I am a seasonal scent nut kook purist, and I love matching the seasons, or weather to my home scents. I mostly use the vanilla peach for summertime, (fresh, and light, with just a hint that something just might be baking in the oven) A Thankful Harvest for autumn (Be still my heart. I swear it's a scent straight out of a Hallmark movie.) Perfectly Pine smells like a real fresh cut Christmas tree,(I start burning this the day after Thanksgiving while I am putting out my Christmas decorations.) and finally, Orange Buttercream is my number one go-to for springtime. Of course, sometimes I try new scents, but these are my tried and true wax scents for the year.
I am now realizing that I have rambled on about the history of home scents for several paragraphs, so I should probably button this up, for fear that everyone is thinking that I am a fragrance obsessed senior with far too much time on her hands.
(Well, we are still in the midst of Covid, so that is not entirely untrue.)
Whatever.
Don't take my word for it. If you have not tried wax melts to add the icing on the cake to your home atmosphere, I suggest you pop by any big box store, and when you are alone on the wax melt aisle, open a package of a scent that sounds yummy to you, pull your mask down off your nose, and take a big. deep. long. sniff. of it.
It just might change your world. It did mine.
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Happy hump day, peeps!
