Linda recommended Illuminations candles a long time back, and I recently got up my nerve and placed an online order. It is difficult to choose scents based on the descriptions, but I took a chance and OMG SO GLAD. I liked ALL of them. ALL!

SO LISTEN. This weekend, Illuminations is having a sale: if you buy 2 of their jar candles, you get 1 free. This applies even in their Sale section, which has about fourteen different scents at 50% off. SO! If you buy from THERE, you get 3 large jar candles for $22, which is the usual price of ONE jar candle. If you shop in the sale section, YOUR deal is essentially buy ONE get TWO free! You see? You are practically EARNING money!

Several of the scents I ordered are available in the sale section, so I can report on those:

Flower Market was my favorite of all the ones I tried. I used to work in a plant nursery, and this is exactly what it smelled like when things were blooming: a fresh, watery, real-flower-petal smell, tinged with green leaves and a little bit of clean damp dirt. It’s not a fakey, powdery floral, it’s an ACTUAL FLOWER floral. This morning I ordered THREE MORE of that one: especially in winter, the smell of things growing and blooming is heartening.

Same with Stargazer Lily: it smells like real flower petals (though with less green/dirt—more just pure floral). I ordered another one of those, too.

Thai Market smells citrusy and sharp and clean—like Lemon Pledge, but if it were LIME Pledge.

Tea and Honey smells exactly like tea and honey. Imagine putting a nice teabag into some hot water and adding a little honey and taking a sniff, and that is what the candle smells like.

Pikake smells like tropical fruit juice, light and fresh. I don’t usually like fruit scents, and particularly I don’t usually like tropical fruit scents, but I do like this one.

Oak Forest has a fruity, woodsy smell, but maybe I’m imagining the woodsy because of the scent name. I asked Paul, “What would you say this candle smells like?,” and he said, “Scented candle.”

NOTE: If you click on a scent in the sale section and it appears they are out of the jars in that scent, try looking for a second entry for that same scent. The first Flower Market listing says it’s out of large jars, but the second Flower Market listing has them (or did, as of this post). It’s some sort of glitch.

ALSO NOTE: Because the cheapest items are the free ones, this is a bad time to buy, say, four candles at 50% off and two at 75% off (you’ll get the 75%-off ones free), or four large jar candles and two small jar candles (you’ll get the small ones free). —Swistle

Link: Illuminations.com
Ballpark price: The large jars are usually $22 each, but this weekend you can get the sale-section ones at THREE for $22 (half-off to start with, then buy-2-get-1-free). The same sale applies to the smaller jars.