Fall & Holiday 2025 Collection

Fall & Holiday 2025 Collection

As it turns out, some people look to my blog to see if I’m still in business—and I am! Jeez, if I knew people were referencing this, I’d have written in it much more often. But now’s as good a time as any, so allow me to introduce this year’s Fall/Winter lineup!

Last year, I launched Fall and Winter/Holiday separately, but this year I’m launching them all at once. This time of year all runs together anyway, so why not? That does mean a few less fragrances overall this year, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, all told.

First, the returning favorites:

And a couple of new additions to the lineup:

I wanted to bring Harvest Moon back from last year to maintain a balance of Fall vibes, but unfortunately, supplier issues meant I couldn’t make it happen.

As you can see, my photography hasn’t gotten any better since last year. One day, I’ll get better at it, or just pay someone to do it for me. For now, we’ll just say it’s quaint and minimalist and the photos suck for stylistic reasons.

How does this dang camera work again?

I stand behind every seasonal fragrance this year, but here are my personal top picks:

Best Fall Vibes

This one goes to Heart & Home. This one sold quite well last year, and for good reason: the blend of apples, pears, and seasonal spice creates a downright cozy atmosphere during the transition of the seasons, when it’s finally chilly enough that you can’t keep your windows open anymore. It’s everything warm and wonderful about the harvest season, and when your house smells like this, you don’t care that it’s getting dark out at 5pm anymore.

However, if you’re more of the gourmand sort of person, maybe pivot to Apple Cider Donut. Sweet apple, fried dough, dusted with cinnamon sugar, what’s not to like?

Best Holiday Vibes

I stand by Holiday Fig. I’ve tried and tested countless festive fragrances and blends, but this is the one I always come back to as my perfect Christmas fragrance. It’s that nostalgic mélange of scents and aromas of the holidays, not any one thing. Deep seasonal fruits, ginger and spice, woodsy pine and warm cider—it’s all here, and it takes me back to childhood every time I catch a whiff.

Our other fragrances capture individual elements of the holidays, letting you focus on your most favorite part of this time of year—but if you want it all, grab Holiday Fig.

Best For Nature-Lovers

Fraser Fir is our standby Christmas tree fragrance, simple and straightforward, but I’ve actively been working on including more “nature-y” vibes in my lineup, as people ask about those often. With that in mind, I’ve added Frosty Pines to this year’s collection. If Fraser Fir is your Christmas tree, Frosty Pines is the whole damn forest. Pine, cedarwood, and spruce enlivened with clove, rhubarb, and rime-glistening juniper berry. This is a full-blown winter landscape

Best Gifts

Something I learned in my first year of holiday sales is there’s a surprising number of people who avoid holiday fragrances due to sensitivities to “spicy” fragrances. That’s pretty vague, but I get what they mean. We’ve all walked past those bags full of scented pinecones at the store at this time of year—and while I’m someone who loves that smell, whoever I happen to be with tends to recoil away from them in horror.

I’ve kept that in mind ever since my first year, and since then, I’ve tried to include at least a couple of fragrances that veer in a completely different direction than the “traditional” holiday fragrances. There are two reasons for that: First, even people who don’t like “spice” should be able to experience holiday nostalgia through fragrances the same way everyone else does. Second, if you’re buying gifts or stocking stuffers for someone, there should be some “safe” options that have a lower chance of going wrong.

With that in mind, I feel like there are three good options for that scenario this year (and a bonus answer):

  • Elf Farts is a returning fragrance, and it’s a fantastic gag gift. This fragrance is fun and silly, themed primarily around sweets. It’s minty, it’s citrusy, it’s bright and lively. It still contains a little bit of cinnamon and clove, but just enough to bring it together. Naturally, this is named for Santa’s elves, but you could gift it to your DnD or WoW pals, too.
  • Cookies For Santa is also a returning fragrance, and in fact, our best seller of Holiday 2024. This thing’s a best seller for a reason. It smells delicious. It’s the most richly indulgent sugar cookie you could possibly imagine. I have in-person customers who bought this candle last year not to light it, but just to leave it open on their kitchen counter to infuse the room with fresh-baked cookie goodness. You can’t go wrong.
  • Hot Cocoa is brand new this year, and it sounds silly, but I’m happy to say it smells just like the instant stuff. The chocolate powder with the freeze-dried marshmallows is where my personal nostalgia lies, and I’d hazard a guess that applies to the vast majority of us. Yeah, the real stuff is indulgently delicious, but how many of us had that as a kid? Most of us probably Miss something of the Swiss variety, and whoever you’re gifting this to probably has those same mental connections.
  • Bourbon Butterscotch isn’t a holiday fragrance, it’s actually in my Grumpy Collection of misfit fragrances, but I include it for the men in your life who scoff at candles. There’s a lot of dudes out there that think candles are girly stuff and this fragrance could be their gateway drug. Buy those people this one and prove them wrong.

The Dark Horse

I encourage you all to take a risk on Wine Country this year. It was well-liked in-person, but it didn’t move at all in online sales. That’s a fun difficulty of this business; what’s popular in-person and what’s popular online are often totally different. Online, people tend to lean toward the familiar, and all of you can hardly be blamed for that. We don’t have smell-o-vision. You can’t exactly take a whiff of a picture on your screen or a text description.

Wine Country is one of those that you almost have to smell it to get it—I’m not a wine person myself, so I probably wouldn’t buy it based on name alone, either. But it’s good, y’all. It’s really, really good. So while it didn’t exactly pop off last year, I’m giving it another year to prove itself.

It’s a fantastic alternative to Heart & Home for cozy fall evenings. It’s rich, it’s deep, it’s fruity, with a little oakwood and vanilla. If you take a chance on it, I’m sure you’ll love it.

Be Brave, Be Bold

I’m also doing something different this year: I’m offering a Holiday Mystery Candle at a reduced rate. This candle could be literally anything Holiday related that isn’t currently available for purchase. They’re $3 less than our standard candle, so you get a lovely candle to light, and the joy of discovery when you receive it. Doesn’t everyone love a blind box these days?

I do these Mystery candles for a few reasons:

  • There’s a lot of fragrances I try, test, love, but my catalogue can’t be infinitely deep. It’s just not realistic to have a bloated catalogue. I can’t financially buy and store vast quantities of infinite numbers of fragrance oils. But I have small amounts left over from my testing and blending, so I can make a few of each out of what I already have without bloating my expenses and storage. There may not be room for something in my Collection this year, but it’s still fantastic, so why not let all of you have that one small batch I can still make? It’s not worth its own product page if I can only make, say, three of them.
  • Sometimes, you’re my guinea pigs. Sometimes, I do intend for these to enter my permanent lineup—eventually. I think it’s great, but do you guys think it’s great? Does it fulfill the vibe I want it to fulfill? Does it spark joy in you? Getting your feedback on your mystery candles is wonderful for this reason. In these cases, think of it as getting a sneak preview.
  • It’s fun. I think the experience of not knowing what it’s going to be is fun for you—and for me, it’s fun to get the chance to curate something for you. Based on the rest of your order, I can get a good idea of the sorts of things you like. And I might have something in my back pocket you would also like, given everything you’ve purchased. Or, if you’ve placed an order for a wide variety of things, I can dig into what I have and see if there’s a niche you haven’t covered, some spice of life that’s been left out, and I get the chance to introduce you to something new. That’s rad. I love it.

So when you place your order this year, considering adding some Holiday Mystery to your life. Or, if you don’t want to restrict your adventure to just holiday fragrances, you can grab the general, all-purpose mystery candle, which could be anything at all.

What’s next?

Now that I have my Fall/Winter/Holiday collection out, it’s time to focus on some things I’ve been working on in the background. Notably, I’d like to have Reed Diffusers and Carpet Freshener available sometime real soon.

  • Reed Diffusers are just to provide another option for those who don’t like the idea of having fire in their home. Not all of my fragrances are compatible with diffusers, but most of them are. (Some people also do wickless candles, which is effectively just a really big wax melt you put on a hot plate. Do any of you want this? If you do, reach out!)
  • Carpet Freshener is born out of a personal bugbear. I hate that the store-bought stuff only ever comes in lavender and “fresh.” Why can’t they be something fun? Well hey, look at me—a small-batch crafty person with access to everything I need to make my own. I have a recipe nailed down, and the vast majority of my fragrances are safe for this purpose—and generally safe for your pets as well. I’m almost ready to go on this one, I even test-printed my safety labels. Granted, I don’t have the actual labels yet, so it was on a plain sheet of paper…

In other little details: I still want to do a line of RPG-themed candles. I have a few fragrances nailed down, but I haven’t gotten the chance to do some of the other testing I want to do, since it involves some investment. I’d like to use wood wicks, which I’ve never worked with before. I think I’d like to use different vessels than my standard matte black, but I don’t know what I do want to use. I also have to be wary of scope creep; an RPG Collection can get out of hand really fast. When I first sat down to jam down ideas, I think I scribbled down something like 30 different biomes, locations, and scenarios I could make fragrances for. I’m not made of money here; I’d have to whittle that down to 5-10 for my initial lineup. (Fun fact: The Study was meant for that RPG line but I loved it too much to wait eons until I finalized matters.)

I’m likely to reformulate Cleaning Day in the near future (or retire it and introduce a new “clean” fragrance) for logistics reasons. I try to source my fragrance oils (and other materials) as close to me as possible to keep costs down. Cleaning Day was one of my first ever fragrances, and elements of that blend are one of the few things I get from one particular supplier who is very far away from me and the shipping costs from that supplier just continue to balloon out of proportion. I might get around to doing this when I build out a full Chores Collection. Cleaning Day, Laundry Day, so on… who knows.

Later this year (yes, in 2025) I’m also going to release a very limited fandom-based collection. Right now, it includes 5 fragrances—which I think is a good sweet spot, because if you get one of each, it puts you over the threshold to get free shipping. For legally distinct reasons, I’m not sure I can actually release it here on my website. It might end up on Etsy. I have no idea. Here’s a hint:

If I can’t release them here, follow me on social media to get a heads up when they come out. I’m a terrible small business owner who doesn’t have socials for said business, so find my personal accounts on Twitter and Bluesky. Or, or, you could sign up for the Grumpy Candle Co newsletter via that little widget on the page. I swear to you that I won't overuse that. Plus, when you sign up, you get a free picture of one of my cats. Future pictures of cats are possible.

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