Camping Hack: Orange Peel Candles

We’ve enjoyed a few days camping with friends this week, and I wanted to share this fun little camping hack we tried.

Here’s what you’re going to need:

• an orange
• a knife
• some olive oil
• a full bbq lighter
• a good sense of humour and some determination, and a good friend who shares these qualities (optional, but very useful)

Step One:

Cut your orange in half and scoop out the flesh, being careful not to damage the white middle stem -this is really important, because the stem will become your candle wick.

Step Two:

Pour olive oil into the orange, letting it flow over the white stem.  Try to get the stem as saturated as possible, maybe even let it sit for awhile.

Step Three:

Light the stem and enjoy your candle.

But….I found it kind of hard to light at first.  I tried different oil, but the olive oil seemed to work best.  I had a good bbq lighter, and just kept it on hoping it would light…it would light and then go out.  So, I kept re-lighting it until I started to run out of lighter fluid.  My friend poured a small amount, like a spoonful, of lamp oil from a lantern over the wick and it lit very easily.  So if you have lamp oil it might work great, but…when you’re doing a camping hack for your blog you need to make it work the right way…so I poured some olive oil in the second one, and let it sit while my sweet friend drove to the camp store for a new lighter, and  I tried to light it with a stick from the campfire which did not work at all.  Then my friend came back with some butane for the lighter, and refilled it.  The orange had been sitting with the oil at this point for about 20 min., with the lighter all fixed up, I tried again and after a min. or two it lit and stayed lit the rest of the night.  Sweet success.  And, they were super cool looking.  It was totally a fun hanging out around the campfire kind of an activity, just make sure you have a good, full lighter on hand. 😉

With a homemade orange peel candle lighting up the night, life really is a party!

This post is linked up at The Weekend re-Treat Link Party, and The Inspiration Gallery.