Product Review: Lit Up Candle Co.

Candles that smell like the barn? #Winning

Who doesn’t love summer horse and barn smells, as well as candles? I know I do, so I jumped at the chance to smell some new candles that are both fun and horse scented. When my friend PJ, founder of Lit Up Candle Co., asked me to give him some feedback on his candles, specifically his horsey focused line, I was more than happy to oblige. What started as “sure, I’ll try a few” soon turned into “OMG BUY ALL THE CANDLES!” and I’m happy to share my feedback with you.

Imagine my delight when a giant box of candles showed up in a variety of scents and yes, I already bought duplicates of the ones I guessed I’d like the most — fortunately for me, I was right, and of course the equine and barn focused scents are my favorite.

Candles, candles, and more candles! Yay! Photo from CJ Millar.

First, like I said, I am a sucker for candles. Like many horse girls, I spend most of my time (actually I do actually live) on a farm and frequently smell like one. While that scent may bring feelings of comfort, happy days snuggling velvety muzzles and napping on hay bales to mind, I am quite sure that having my entire house smell like the barn is less than ideal (to most people in the real world, anyway…) …unless of course, the barn scents are done in a way that evokes feelings of comfort and sunny days spent with your four-legged best friend.

So just how do these candles help? For starters, they smell great. So great, that as a matter of fact, my biggest question was how do they last. Interestingly enough, the candles that Lit Up makes are even more scented (they smelled up my entire laundry room — in a good way! — without even being lit or out of the boxes) and burn cleaner for longer. I ordered these back in early April, and while I did travel for a few weeks for work, the first candle finally bit the dust this week after being burnt for several hours an evening every evening that I was home.

Okay, so they’re a great value and smell good, last long, and are good for the environment, but what’s even cooler is that the glass is from upcycled beer bottles! How cool is that? These are hand made and hand poured soy candles — good for the environment, soot-free, non-toxic and with recycled packaging. Amazing!

As for the scents: first, the Horsin’ Around line is one of the most fun, best versions of “barn” scents I’ve ever smelled. For anyone who’s spent any time in the barn, these candles are a fun take on barn scents, without the horse-human-sweat mixed in (because really, who actually wants that in the home?!). Since I’m allergic to hay and most trees, I passed on the Hay Bale and Pine Bedding candles but would love to hear from someone if they test them out in the comments below!

I love Sweet Feed – it has a warm earthy smell that’s a little sweeter than the Lumberjack line (I’ll get to that later) but not entirely overpowering either. It’s a savory sweet scent that makes me think of warm summer and autumn evenings after a nice hack in the woods.

Shoo Fly does just what its name suggests — it’s great on porches and patios for keeping flies away without smelling like chemicals. It does make me think of post-pony bath smells in the summer, and the fact that it helps keep flies away is great too.

Tack Box is my favorite of the line. It smells like a good wooden tack box complete with freshly cleaned and oiled saddle and bridle in that way that warm clean leather permeates the air and brings you memories of happy rides and clean tack before and after successful shows and fox hunts. You know the smell of a new saddle, new bridle leather, and freshly oiled and polished tack and tall boots? Yeah, that. A must-have in my book!

For those of you that love the barn smells, but want to leave them, well, in the barn, there are plenty of other scents to choose from as well: with Father’s Day around the corner, consider the line of manly scents called the Lumberjack Collection. The Tobacco Caramel smells amazing and is my favorite, with the Teakwood Cardamom a very close second tied with Witch’s Brew.

I live in an old farmhouse and the Lumberjack Collection brings a warm earthen smell to the house that just makes me want to cozy up on the couch. Think of it like curling up in your boyfriend’s favorite sweater watching your favorite movie. That’s how these candles smell to me. Bonus — I also tested them out with some of my guy friends and all of them loved the candles. They all looked at me skeptically when I asked if they wanted to take home a few candles to burn and tell me what they thought and rolled their eyes, like, sure Ceej… whatever you need… but within a few days they all told me how awesome the candles smelled and where could they get more. #winning!

Added bonus, right now through 6/11, there’s a Father’s Day promo going on where you can get 20% off with code DAD18 on the Lit Up Candle Co website (and you don’t need to be a dad or buying for one to use the code)!

Beer bottles sanded and polished – all by hand – and ready to be made into candles. Photo compliments of Lit Up Candle Co.