Once Upon a Thanksgiving, I Almost Burned My House Down

Apparently I can't be trusted with decorations involving fire.  Especially if I'm going to be glued to the kitchen the whole night.  I really should have given a friend the task of keeping an eye on the candles.

But seriously, wanna know what the most delicious smell is?  To have in your living room about 20 minutes before the turkey is ready?  Burned popcorn.  And not the kind that comes out of your microwave or stove top when you aren't paying attention.  The kind that comes from your candles when you've decorated them with flammable objects.  In this case, popcorn.

I came up with these candles all on my own.  Mostly because I was like "oh crap I'm hosting a holiday party with Martha Stewart  Kirsten and I didn't even think to decorate!"  This was cheap, easy, and fast.  I already have the glass jars in my pantry, plus the curling ribbon (which is about as fancy as I get), and the taper candles I had purchased by mistake and never returned.  All I needed was the popcorn!

When I had finished them, Jesse jokingly asked if the point was that the candle was supposed to burn down and pop some of the popcorn.  Then we laughed that people would probably think that.  Then we popped some stove top popcorn later that evening... and we both got the same idea... so I put some freshly popped popcorn on top of all the candles. And we laughed at how confused people would be.  We thought we were being so witty!

Fast forward to Thanksgiving night.  The candles had been burning for a few hours and at first I was doing a good job of checking them at intervals and pulling the tapers up when the flame was getting too close to the popcorn.  Until witching hour when we were frantically calmly working to get all the sides warmed up properly before the turkey was done.  

And Shawna asks me "do you smell something burning?"

Yep.  The popcorn (and even some of the kernels!) had burned to a nice, charred, smelly crisp.  OOPS!  Classy... like I said, a delicious smell to have right before serving Thanksgiving dinner!  Thankfully no harm came of it.  And everyone forgot how nasty the room smelled once they started eating all the yummy food!  

Next year?  Tea lights.  Tea lights sound safer.  And just say no to popcorn near your open flame.

The end.