Joe and I are newly married. We enjoy every day modern conveniences I.e.; heat, plumbing, electric - and quite honestly, up until recently didn’t even recycle. We realized that in today’s modern world, there is no sense of adventure, no real exploration. Everything you want or need can be given to you in a moment. People mostly visit far off places by plane for vacation, stay for a week in one place and spend 2 years saving to fly off for another week to another foreign place. We decided that while we loved the idea of seeing the world, shouldn’t we see what our own beautiful country has to offer? We are un-mortgaged, have no children, and have really only one true possession: Our Honda Element. We converted the back of the car into compressed sleeping quarters and storage, and traveled across the 48 contiguous states in order to find out what it really means to live within your means. We traveled parks, campgrounds, cities, caverns, mountains, and deserts. We stood at the base of giant redwoods on the west coast, and watched in awe as the sun broke the horizon in the east. We soaked in everything that our phenomenal country had to offer and asked ourselves, what does our society need back?

The hardest part about this concept was understanding what it meant to have the basic minimum. What do you really need, and how do you get it? How do you genuinely sustain your life without the modern conveniences of everyday living? Answer: you figure it out. We saved a bit of money, sold off everything we could, and downsized to nothing but what was in our car and a storage locker. We took the chance, and hoped for the best.

In the midst of downsizing we conceptualized and created an all-natural candle using 100% beeswax, an all natural hemp wick, sustainable cork, and antique re-purposed glass. Ideally this candle would help promote the collaboration of small local American businesses, utilize sustainable and recyclable materials, and simultaneously call attention to the dwindling population of bees. We are hoping that by creating a piece of art that also serves a functional purpose, we will be able to call attention to the needs of the many species not just our own.

10% of our sales go to charities that research and combat Colony Collapse Disorder. We also created a series of candles in collaboration with glass artists who handcrafted the candle vessels. We looked at this as our unique way of supporting local artists and their dreams of putting something beautiful into the world. We look forward to meeting and working with inspirational and enlightened people.