Why We Chose Grace+Love Candle Company

We were looking for candles from a shop that has a philosophy similar to ours—locally owned and operated, offering a quality product, community-oriented, and focused on sustainability. Grace+Love is owned by the wife and husband duo of Natalie and Jamahl Grace based in Loudoun County. One of their missions is to donate funds towards minority education. You can read about their inspiring story here!

How are Grace+Love Candles Made?

The entire collection is vegan friendly and cruelty free, using domestically grown soy wax, phthalate free fragrances, and lead-free cotton wicks. What does that mean for you?

Soy wax burns clean (no blackened walls) with no toxins, carcinogens, or pollutants. Derived from soybeans, soy wax is a renewable resource and supports American farmers. It’s also biodegradable so it cleans up nicely with just soap and water. Soy wax also burns at a lower temperature than paraffin which means your candle will last longer!

Our Current Fragrances

We’re starting with five fragrances which we believe offer a nice selection of floral, fruity, and earthy. Click on each photo for more information!

Give us a call and let us know what you think! We’re eager for your feedback!

The post Grace+Love Candle Co. Partnership appeared first on .

Just the other day, we had a lovely woman place an order for an arrangement for a 2-month-old baby that had just undergone open heart surgery… 2 months! I thought to myself, well babies are more resilient than we adults are. They haven’t yet felt the hardships of the world fall on their shoulders. And if they had, those memories would soon fade away. As I pondered this, the most striking thing I realized is that babies and children are constantly living in the now. They are intentionally living, being, and striving within their present moment.  

With so much going on in the world, it’s easy to forget that precious moments don’t just happen but are, rather, created. What was the last meaningful moment you remember creating? Where were you? Who was there? What did you feel, and why is this the moment that’s resonating with you right now? 

Working at Fantasy Floral, I am blessed to be part of the important moments in people’s lives—the joyful and the somber. Living intentionally is a choice, and this week’s important moment reminded me to choose to live…intentionally.

The post Live Intentionally appeared first on .

Chamomile

…is a happy little white flower with yellow centers that can be made into a tea. As a tea, chamomile is known for its anti-anxiety properties. It’s a wonderful sleep aid and might also reduce inflammation.

Lavender

…has a calming scent flower hue. Lavender oil helps with anxiety and depression.

Jasmine

… was one of my dad’s favorite flowers. The oil eases anxiety, and the wonderful fragrance promotes sleep.

Chrysanthemums

…come in lots of colors and textures, and a bouquet of them is sure to make you smile. The flowers are a wonderful air purifier, and the tea has relaxation properties.

Gerbera Daisies

…are a highly requested flower that comes in bright vibrant colors. Their presence alone will cheer someone up, but they also remove toxins from the air.

Peppermint

…is a great flavoring for ice cream and hot chocolate. As a tea or an oil, peppermint will also lower frustration and relax muscles

Chives

… are a great herb to cook with but also provides delicate wildflowers. The flowers can be made into a tea that helps with depression by blocking a chemical that inhibits “happy” hormones.

Aloe Vera

…, as every beach-goer knows, has healing and soothing properties. Having a plant will also improve the air quality at home or in the office.

Snake Plant

…is another good plant for the home or office. It removes several different kinds of toxins from the air that help with sleep and reducing stress.

If you or your friends and family need a vase full of flowers and plants that are calming and cheerful on election day, we’re just a phone call away!

The post Flowers and Plants that Are Calming appeared first on .

Turn the TV Off

It’s not that I really need to know when stimulus checks will be deposited, it’s just that it’s all over the news! That has been my biggest take-away from this lockdown. It is time to turn the TV off. We are glued to the news, and that is not a healthy thing. 24 hour cable news has to find something to fill its airwaves with. We get bombarded with a lot of opinions because there are not enough actual news stories to fill a 24 hour period.

Plant a Garden

That brings me to my garden. Since I won’t be watching much TV, I will actually have time to plant and take care of my garden! I’m excited about that. I had a great time browsing an online seed catalog last week. My go-to seed source has been the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, but it seems everyone else must have had the same idea I did. They are so swamped with orders, they aren’t accepting any new ones until they get caught up, but that’s a good thing! It means there will be lots of gardens this year using sustainable heritage seeds. It also means Southern Exposure is thriving during the lockdown. For me, it meant I got to meet another cool sustainable seed company called Truelove Seeds. My seeds arrived on Saturday with a handwritten note from Owen. “Thank you Margie! Seeds and Solidarity, Owen.”

If you have never bought seeds from a seed exchange, you should! One of the seeds I bought are for Pippin’s Golden Honey Pepper. Why Pippin’s? “Horace Pippin, the now-famed painter, shared this variety (and many others) with H. Ralph Weaver in the early 1940s in exchange for bee-sting therapy. Weaver’s grandson (William Woys Weaver) found the seeds in a baby food jar in his grandmother’s deep freezer a couple decades later, many years after his grandfather’s death, and was able to reintroduce via Seed Savers Exchange.” With a backstory like that, I can’t wait to plant them and be part of this history. Yup! I’m in love with Truelove!

Write a Novel

I recently watched a TED Talk about trying something new for 30 days–The 30 Day Challenge. It was inspiring! The author, Matt Cutts, “went from desk-dwelling computer nerd to the kind of guy who bikes to work…for fun!” When I was a little girl, I dreamed of becoming a novelist who lived in Australia on a big ranch with lots of animals. I got the animal part! Cutts mentions that one of his 30 day challenges was to write a novel. I’ve never written a novel, but the extra free time that this lockdown is providing is the perfect time to become the novelist I’ve always wanted to be. Who cares if it’s a good novel or even a published novel? I can accomplish one of my dreams.

Save the World…or at least a pangolin

A good college friend of mine, Maria Diekmann, started an animal sanctuary in Namibia many years ago called Rare and Endangered Species Trust (REST). Someone brought her a mama and baby pangolin that were rescued from poachers. Mama was too traumatized from the abuse of traffickers and fled, but she had protected her baby so well that Honey Bun survived and thrived under Maria’s care. That was when I first learned about pangolins, how highly trafficked they are, and thus how endangered they are. They are often described as the most trafficked animal you’ve never heard of. That has all changed thanks to the coronavirus. Pangolins and bats have been linked to this coronavirus’ origin.

Many are hoping this will lead to crackdowns on the sale of pangolins at wet markets and hopefully bring them back from the edge of extinction. When will stimulus checks be deposited? I’m not sure. If you are looking for something to do with it though, there are lots of organizations like Maria’s that would grateful for the help!

What’s Next?

I know I’m not the only one that has been forced to reassess life and priorities. We all want to get to the other side of this as soon as possible. In the meantime, we have learned to slow down. Spend time with our children. Zoom and Facetime with our parents and grandparents. We have time to plant gardens and go for walks and write novels. My hope is that we take the lessons we are learning with us to that other side.

The post When Will Stimulus Checks Be Deposited? appeared first on .

Last Saturday was our family’s annual Vitamin D Party, where we chase away the post-holiday winter blues by bringing the islands to our home. For one night we don Aloha shirts, flipflops, and sunglasses and crank the heat and the island tunes. Somewhere between the laughter, the vibrant colors, and the tiki bar atmosphere, you forget that it’s cold and grey outside. What sunshine does for our bodies, that’s what flowers do for our soul! Flowers are a vacation for the soul!

Vintage photograph of a tiki bartender with exotic drinks in the 1960s. (Photo by Found Image Holdings/Corbis via Getty Images)

Soul

I realized this as I was mingling during the party. Our house was decorated with flowered plates and tablecloths and strings of flower lights. Our guests were decorated in flower shirts and dresses and leis. Being surrounded by flowers helped make us feel like we were on vacation! Last year I wrote a blog post on Why We Love Flowers which cited all of the scientific studies detailing the benefits of flowers. I think this is true especially in winter. The days are shorter. Many go to work in the dark and come home in the dark. It’s too cold for flowers to survive outside. The sun doesn’t shine quite as bright, and let’s face it, after all the joy of the holidays, winter just make us feel dreary. It’s the perfect time to send someone flowers, a vacation for their soul.

Surprise

Recently, we’ve delivered flowers to a daughter who was “having a rough week,” flowers to a partner who “needed some cheering up,” and flowers to a mom who had just gone back to work “to brighten up the office.” Whether the workplace is an office or the home kitchen; whether the recipient is a woman or a man; a bright burst of color is just the ticket to soothe our dreary souls! Especially don’t forget the men in your life! As I deliver flowers, men comment on the arrangements just as much as women do. And the best occasion to send someone flowers is for no occasion at all–just because! The best smiles are the surprised smiles when someone realizes they received a beautiful bouquet of color for no reason at all except to bring them joy and let them know they are loved.

Send

When I think about my favorite vacations, those are the feelings that are front and center–being immersed in joy and surrounded by love. So pick up the phone or go to our website and send someone’s soul on vacation today!

The post Flowers–A Vacation for the Soul appeared first on .