I see the light

We invariably have a couple of candles burning when we eat dinner. I particularly like the effect and feel it adds to the ambience of the meal.

Stashed away in our boxes are literally hundreds of candles that I acquired through garage sales or store sales.

A few months ago, a store was moving and I spied a cart full of nice tapers for 9 cents apiece, so I bought 100.

Some years ago at a garage sale in Minnesota I found some really nice dripless candles that were only slightly used in weddings. The woman was selling them for 25 cents apiece, but I convinced her that I was a garage sale junkie and knew that candles did not sell well in Minnesota garage sales. I offered her $3 for all of them. After haggling, we settled on $4. I wound up with 225 candles. And I'm still using them.

So...do you use candles for dining?

[Jenise]

Yes!!! But for about one six month stretch where we had to stop because our then-new and bullheaded young Persian would jump onto the table for attention and catch fire (he had no sense of his own width), we've always loved the ambience of candlelight at dinner. We also find that we spend more time at the table, eating slowly and lingering to chat for an hour or the rest of the evening, when we eat by candlelight.

Yes, every dinner together.

We have been making a concerted effort the past year or so to make every meal together as a household community a mini-celebration of life, as it should be. Life is short and time with loved ones is precious.

With all the various schedules in the household (mostly paramedics and flight medics), we end up all being home for a connected dinner only about twice a week. Thankfully we are all food and wine people so one of us is always in the mood to create something wonderful.

We also usually have flowers on the table, and always use a tablecloth and cloth napkins.

....We have been making a concerted effort the past year or so to make every meal together as a household community a mini-celebration of life, as it should be. Life is short and time with loved ones is precious.....

Amen

So...do you use candles for dining?

No. I've watched too many episodes of "Keeping Up Appearances", I guess.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

So...do you use candles for dining?

No. I've watched too many episodes of "Keeping Up Appearances", I guess.

-Paul W.

Paul, being unaware of episodes of anything so named, I'm not sure if I and others have been called a name or not. Several possibilities come to mind: 1) you have assumed way too much about why other people enjoy candlight, 2) it's a self-deprecating remark about your own preference for dining in front of the TV wearing only your underwear, or 3) there's a really good show on that we should be watching.
Which is it?

Yes, we use candlelight for meal times, wine times and to add "love light" to any evening together. I couldn't agree more with Cynthia that life is much too short not to cherish the moments we have with each other and we do our very best to do so everyday in some form or fashion. I'm also very fond of setting the table with elegant table linens and fresh flowers. I believe that anything "special" we may possess should be used often on our loved ones, not just brought out for annual occasions or guests. :cool:

I never heard of it, either. At any rate, we always have our blinds closed, so only Edie and I can see each other dining by candlelight. Plus we have our chandelier on (dimmed) so we can see what we're eating. We do it even we're having just mac and cheese. Our motto: candles are for burning.

With the winter storm and no power, we had the candles burning all night long.

With the winter storm and no power, we had the candles burning all night long.

Oh my, I hope the power has been restored by now, but candles can provide warmth too, Howie...if you stand really close to them!

With the winter storm and no power, we had the candles burning all night long.

When I was visiting PA this past June there was a hellacious storm that knocked out power. Over the vigorous protestations of my mother I lit a small, short emergency candle in the middle of a plate far away from any flammable items. She was scared to death of the thing.

A year ago, the house across the street burned because of a candle, but I had to remind her that the lady had placed a candle on the windowsill next to her curtains (and some wind blew the curtains over the flame)--DUH!--and that our candle was not going to jump off the plate and set our house on fire.

My son called from my house and said the power has just been restored. Not so at my mother-in-law's though, so we'll be going back home in a little bit.

[Robin Garr]

So...do you use candles for dining?

I'm really late coming to this thread ... it must have been a busy week.

We have a similar problem to Jenise involving a couple of cats who think it's all right to get up on the table, and at one point when there was a particularly playful kitten around here, we gave up the candle thing entirely. Now that he's bigger and more set in his ways, we ought to bring it back.

One good solution, particularly effective for people who share their house with cats but attractive regardless, is to pick up an old-fashioned glass "hurricane chimney" and put the candlestick inside it. We got a beauty from Shakertown at Pleasant Hill, one of Kentucky's restored Shaker villages, that's not in the usual coke-bottle curvy shape but just a straight-sided, heavy cylinder of hand-made glass, just ripply and flawed enough that it shoots off interesting highlights from the candle flame. Put an attractive, old-fashioned candle holder in it, and maybe a real beeswax candle, some flowers on the table, and it's the next best thing to eating dinner at a fancy restaurant. I really need to dig out that hurricane and start using it again.

Never.

(Well, hardly ever -- in case of power blackouts, we use candles -- and Rockland Electric has figured out how to give us five days of those a year on a pretty regular basis.)

They hurt my eyes, and we even put out the candles on our table in restaurants. Maybe she's just humouring me after so many years, but Janet no longer likes them either.

You and my husband must have been separated at birth.
They hurt his eyes also. Not only that, he can't stand the smell of any scented candles-- especially citronella, nor can he stand the smell of a candle that has just been snuffed out.
He humors me, and doesn't balk when I light them for entertaining, but, to be nice, I carry them outside to blow them out. When we have one at our table in a restaurant, I usually move it off to the side, and closer to my side of the table.

None of the smells bother me, Carrie, but they do bother Janet. So, I have to put them out carefully, or tuck them behind something.

What's really kind of funny is how the wait staff stops by to relight them or to deliver a burning candle from another table.

Janet and I are well met. :-)

That has happened to us also, Bob, when we unlight a particularly flickery or agressive flame. The servers always do seem puzzled when we tell them, "It's okay, we really don't need it re-lit."

You and Janet certainly do seem well-met.

reminded me of this email I sent to my brother about a year ago. It was still in my "sent" file:

Luke, I thought you might want to know how you impacted my dinner last night.

We had another couple over last night for dinner. We were opening some good wines, eating some good food, and everything was going along just swell, and then......

The candle that Cindy was using as a centerpiece, a rather large, cylindrical affair that YOU APPARENTLY GAVE HER, decided to go nuts. Hot, liquid wax began running, and I do mean running, down off the top of the candle and onto the table, spreading out, lava like, all over the tablecloth. Luckily, we didn't panic. No wine was spilled. Wait, I'm lying. Cindy knocked over a glass, but that's pretty normal so I'm not certain the candle had anything to do with it. Anyway, thanks for the lovely candle. Please consider our safety when selecting gifts in the future.

J

John, that is priceless -- thanks so much. Your email resonates with me in so many ways.

Great job! Regards, Bob