Light Up.

There’s something so tranquil to me about candles in the winter. Something that makes an evening of tired tasks a little merrier and and a good book with tea a little cozier.

It’s January so we can all use a little help on the “merry” front. Christmas is over, summer’s a ways away, and Blue Monday was last week.

Blue Monday is a name given to the third Monday in January claimed to be the most depressing day of the year — did ya know? The concept was first publicised as part of a 2005 press release from holiday company Sky Travel, which claimed to have calculated the date using an equation.

Of course, scientists beg to differ.

Blue Monday believer or not, January usually doesn’t have much to offer. I mean, I chose to call it Dry-uary for a reason. I thought if I were to give up wine for a month, it might as well be post-Christmas, and coincide with cold days and a sugar cookie hangover. Life sans wine would be good for the bod, the mind and since it would discourage me from going out as much, the wallet.

And who am I kidding, I love excuses to stay in. Tea and candles would be my new best friends. They would be good for the soul.

As I’m in the final stages of publishing my book, A Book of Word Paintings, there’s something about having a candle next to me that almost soothes the creativity out of me to pull the last bit of it together. There’s something about that quiet moment of stillness and solitude, when you shut out the world and zone in on your own thoughts.

When Coal and Canary candle company offered to donate a few candles to my book launch, I thought it would be a perfect touch and couldn’t be more fitting. I love Coal and Canary candles. They’re hand-poured in small batches and are made only with the highest quality soy and vegetable wax blend and true to scent fragrance oils. All of their candles have a wooden wick that burns clean and free of smoke and soot. What’s not to love? They even make a little crackling noise. And not only do they have to-die for scents and cute-as-pie names, but they last for 45-50 hours.

The three I have my hands on to giveaway at my launch (At Style Bar Boutique in Winnipeg between 6-9 p.m. on Thursday, March 3rd — shameless plug) are the most delicious of all scents: