Midnight Candle Company

July 2023

This outing was easily one of our favorites of the summer – it checked off all the boxes: unique, creative, and has a great backstory. As we’ve discussed recently in other posts, our Long Branch, NJ location has been expanding their enrichment department and community outings at a rapid pace, thanks in large part to Erin Alvino, the new Therapeutic Enrichment Coordinator in Long Branch. Erin was originally a Speech Therapist at our Livingston location who moved to our Long Branch location earlier this year. (Erin is still a Speech Therapist and runs speech sessions throughout the week on top of her Enrichment Coordinator duties – go Erin!).

While Erin was designing different outings for the clients, she kept thinking about one client in particular, Shonna, who is blind. Because of Shonna’s disability, she can’t participate in many events and doesn’t get to experience community outings in the same way as the other clients. But then Erin had a genius idea – if Shonna can’t see, why not focus on her other senses? For example, how about a candle making class! This is where we begin our tale of the Midnight Candle Company.

*Click on any picture to enlarge it.

Midnight Candle Co. is a local candle making shop in Belmar, NJ that specializes in candle making workshops and at-home candle making kits. After setting up a candle making class with the owner of the store, Erin, Shonna and the crew arrived ready to learn some science and make their own candles. The owner of the store, Matt, started off the day with a short science demonstration explaining the properties and effects of heat and hardening candle wax. After finishing their simple chemistry lesson, the clients and staff were tasked with choosing the colors and scents for their handmade candles. Before deciding on their scents of choice, Erin and the group were given a blind smell test to see if they could guess the correct scents of the fragrance oils. In Erin’s own words, “We didn’t get everything right – some scents were tricky! Eucalyptus smelled like throw up, sage smelled like something green, and agave smelled slightly sweet.”

Once everyone picked their scents and colors, they went to work. The cool part about this experience was that each person also made their own label and named their custom candle. Shonna chose lilac and gardenia for her two scents because she wanted her candle to smell like a flower; she named her candle Wild + Free. Erin went a different route and chose pineapple and coconut for her candle scents, which she aptly named Pina Colada. They say you should never judge a book by its cover, but instead judge a person by their candle. Okay, that might have been made up but it was fun to see each person create their candle based on their preferences and moods. We want to emphasize that Matt and his colleagues were extremely accommodating to our clients and made the experience extraordinary for everyone. We will definitely be back – thank you to Erin’s brain for such a brilliant idea.