Vanilla Candles

Simply Vanilla from Colonial at Home

I was thrilled this summer when Colonial at Home sent me several votives to try.  I told them about our plan for our big vanilla review so they threw in a pack of 8 tealights in their recently improved Vanilla scent. While I was shopping last weekend with my mom for more vanillas, I completely forgot about the tealights at home and picked up a votive in the same scent.  I guess I had a “senior moment” at the age of 29...oh no! 

I'm not really a tealight-gal so I decided to light the votive instead.  I went straight to my powder room with it since that's where all burning votives usually wind up in my house due to their smaller scent throws.  At this point, I’m so sick of smelling vanilla I’m about to go bonkers, but I’m in the home-stretch and am starting to see the light at the end of the vanilla tunnel!

Here's the description of Simply Vanilla from Colonial:

"A classic scent, pure and memorable, calling to mind warm memories of home, comfort and family. We have tweaked our classic and made it even better, smooth and rich and aromatic."

I'm pretty impressed with Colonial's new version of vanilla.  There's nothing artificial or perfumey to this scent, which is always a good thing.  The two most dominate notes in this fragrance are vanilla beans and sugar.  It's a little too sweet for my taste but if you like your vanilla scents with a punch of sweetness, you might really enjoy this one.  There's a small note of cream in Simply Vanilla, but definitely not as much compared to some of the other vanillas I've tested lately.  Although this is a nice authentic fragrance, after trying this candle it's clear to me that I prefer vanillas that are heavier on the cream and lighter on the sweet.

ravenna French Vanilla from SparklePuss

This is another company I was dying to try after Christina reviewed them...she raved over their candles.  Christina and I are picky candle-lovers so when she finds candles she enjoys that much, I know I’ll probably like them too.  For this review, I gave their French Vanilla scent a whirl in their smaller 10oz. jar size.

Here’s the description of this scent from SparklePuss.com:

“Do you drool over vanilla candles?  Yes?  Then this is IT!  ou won't just want to sniff this one, you'll want to take a bite!  Smells like rich french vanilla cake smoothered with a creamy, sweet and buttery vanilla frosting.  YUM!  Awesome buttery, creamy french vanilla.  Scrumptuous!"

I first burned my jar in my living room for a few hours, but the scent wasn't very strong so I moved it into my smaller den to see how it would do there.  My den proved to be the perfect size room for this candle.  It's funny because I just burned the same size jar in their Mango scent a couple weeks ago in my living room and it knocked my socks off...it completely filled the whole room!  That just goes to show me (once again) how different scents from the same company and even in the same sized jar can have such different scent throws.

The description for this scent is pretty accurate.  To my nose it smells like that delicous buttercream icing that you sometimes find on a fabulous wedding cake.  You know the kind...not sickening sweet, that smooth-as-silk texture and unbelievable buttery-cream taste. Yum!!  I'm craving some good old fashioned buttercream icing just writing this...some nice vanilla cake would be nice too.  I'm smelling that as well! Mmm...

By the way, I read on the SparklePuss web site this scent used to be called Buttercream, but they had to change it because one of the bigger candle companies has a trademark on the scent name Buttercream.  Those meanies! (ha) Anyway, if you're a fan of the awesome smell of buttercream, you might want to give this scent a try.