OldTrustyLegs - I liked hearing your thoughts on the fall/Halloween stuff at Yankee Candle this year. I pretty much agree. I'm not too excited about any of the new scents. They're nice, but nothing I had to have. I tend to like the pumpkin scents (big surprise) but how many of those do I really need anyway? I already have quite a few in the process of being melted down...
I got some "Apple Pumpkin" scent last year, I liked that one. Apple cider smell (I have a few candles called "Cider Web") are a good fit for fall too. And someone gave me Harvest Welcome as a gift last year, that smells a bit more like natural pumpkins without the spice.
But that's the old stuff... this year the main new pumpkin scent is "Pumpkin Wreath." I bought a votive in that scent to try it out, but it's not my favorite. Smells a bit too floral for my tastes. Plant smells tend to irritate my nose.
Anyway, I headed to my local Yankee Candle store last Saturday morning, for their premiere party. I was pleased to see balloons and snacks and the staff in costume.
One employee was wearing an angel halo, with her face painted like a zombie. I complimented her costume effort, and she pointed out that she was a "dead angel." I said, "That's creative, but... aren't all angels dead, by definition?" She admitted that she didn't think of that, and felt like she was having a dumb blonde moment. I said, "No, don't feel bad. You're an undead angel. You don't see those every day."
So you enter the store and are greeted with all this Halloween goodness...
There are 4 Halloween-specific candle scents, same selection as the past few years...
"Trick or Treat" is a swirl of Candy Corn and Buttercream. "Pumpkin Patch" is Spiced Pumpkin and Harvest. "Witches Brew" is patchouli. And "Candy Corn" is... take a guess. I didn't buy any of these because I already have some Candy Corn and Pumpkin Patch candles left from past Halloweens. I do like the decorations around the side of this year's Candy Corn jar.
A big draw for collectors is the "Boney Bunch" figures. Most of them are candle holders, naturally. The biggest hit (based on the fact that I saw tons of people posting photos of it online) are this Frankenstein and Bride candlestick holder. If you want this pair, you may be out of luck. Most stores are sold out and so is the
official website.
I don't collect the Boney Bunch, but it's fun to see what new variations they come out with ever year. Here are a few I photographed...
A sampling of other decor available...
Some cool (or rather, warm, I should say) jack o' lanterns. They are wax tart melters. You plug it in which heats up the area in the lid where the wax goes. But, he's a jack o' lantern so I sort of which the whole face was open so it could light up.
They have bottles again, tall and small. They're open on the top and bottom so you can put a tealight inside. They don't light up too much, but the glass is a dark purple. Really nice, although I think I prefer
the bottle designs they had last year (which I bought).
Metal pumpkin sleeve for your jar candles. Tempting...
Also tempting was this 3-skull candle holder...
That one is part of their "Skeleton Crew" collection, which is the stuff of theirs that I like best. Here's some more in that style...
I only bought one small thing this time. Trying to be selective about what I buy, since I only have so much display space. I picked up this tealight candle holder, which is a stack of books with a small raven. I thought it was classy. "Nevermore."
You can see all of the
Yankee Candle Halloween items on their site here.
Oh, and I talked to the staff at Yankee Candle about maybe doing a pumpkin carving demo in their store for their next Halloween premiere party. And then when I tweeted about my experience there, I got a shoutout and public retweet from the official Yankee Candle Company Twitter account, which was pretty cool.
We've got a Yankee Candle here in Edinburgh city centre now but I think if I go and look I'll just be disappointed as the UK just doesn't do Halloween ion a big way 
. I find it so hard to get down to the states to do this sort of thing.
I'd love to give some of the other Halloween scents a try but I've had no luck in tracking them down over here, perhaps as we get closer to Halloween they'll appear 
