DOMVS Enterprise Club Issue 1
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Get some<br />
Hygge in<br />
Your Life<br />
Scandinavia seems to be all the rage at the<br />
moment; Scandi-Drama is the latest TV<br />
sensation, Scandinavian furniture is (still)<br />
the home decor must-have, and Scandinavian<br />
food, well, a good Danish open-faced sandwich<br />
is a thing to behold! Now, in more and more<br />
areas of life, we are coming across the concept<br />
of ‘Hygge’ (even auto-correct recognises the<br />
word!).<br />
So what is hygge, and why has it become so popular? Loosely translated, in the way that many of these words are when they relate to a<br />
concept rather than an object, it means ‘cosiness’, but that is to do the concept a disservice, for it is really far more than that. It is family,<br />
good food, warmth, comfort, contentedness, all rolled into an easy five-letter package. What’s more, autumn and winter are the perfect<br />
hygge time of year. In the UK, it’s at this time of year, with its uniquely British combination of drizzle, sun (combined with freezing cold),<br />
and evermore inconsistent temperatures, that we start to retreat indoors, Hygge is the perfect antidote, designed to make you feel warm<br />
inside, despite the outside’s ever-increasing unpredictability.<br />
Purbeck’s Perfect Hygge<br />
Melting wax on our old AGA in a rented cottage overlooking Corfe Castle, blending<br />
essential oils and creating natural candles in vintage teacups would eventually become<br />
the Purbeck Candles we are today. To be honest, not a lot has changed. We still blend<br />
and pour everything by hand here in this beautiful part of Dorset, but instead of filling<br />
teacups and random glass jars, we now have a wonderful range of tinned candles, as<br />
well as stunning glassware and our very popular reed diffusers.<br />
Creating our blends using pure essential oils, building a fragrance layer by layer,<br />
creating a scent that people love just gives me such pleasure. I want to help people<br />
create a wonderful home environment that invites and envelopes everyone who enters<br />
in a beautiful natural aroma!<br />
All of our candles and reed diffusers are packed full of wonderful natural ingredients<br />
and fragranced using 100% pure essential oils, nothing else is added. Every product is<br />
blended and hand poured in beautiful Dorset to be enjoyed everywhere...<br />
There’s alchemy in creating something magical from basic natural ingredients, taking<br />
that passion and turning it into a luxury product. From humble beginnings, creating<br />
beautiful scents by blending essential oils at the kitchen table, melting soy wax on the<br />
AGA and creating stunning natural candles in a Dorset country kitchen, we have grown<br />
to having a range of incredible products that can now enhance a home anywhere in the<br />
country.<br />
A natural home fragrance range, imagined, designed and created in Dorset using 100%<br />
natural ingredients. It can only be Purbeck Candles.<br />
How does one become, or should it be create Hygge? Hygge can be many things, or, perhaps more accurately, one can feel Hygge from<br />
many things. Try starting by adding some blankets and cushions to your bed and sofa — you cant feel Hygge with cold toes! If you have a<br />
wood-burner or fireplace, light the fire. Warming, slow-cooked comfort food is another good place to start (we have a wonderful recipe on<br />
page 13 that should hit the spot), and returning home to that smell of a wonderful home-cooked meal is guaranteed to make you feel hygge.<br />
In fact, smell is a key part of feeling hygge — and it goes beyond food. Smell is an often-overlooked yet key sense when it comes to making<br />
us feel comfortable. It’s amazing how smell can become associated with particular events or times of year — how often have you caught<br />
the scent of orange and cinnamon and thought of Christmas, even in summer? Fire is also particularly important; Scandinavian homes,<br />
and Finnish ones too, are often full of candles. Fire seems to have a primeval effect on human beings. Campfires have come to be known<br />
as ‘bush TV’, presumably because we cannot help but gaze at open flames. One can only imagine it must stem from a time when fire really<br />
did mean protection, warmth, and food — something hardwired in our evolutionary DNA.<br />
So Hygge is smell, warmth, fire,<br />
and food? It’s more than that.<br />
Hygge is also about how you live<br />
your life, about focusing on what<br />
is in front of you, rather than what<br />
you’re aiming for or what has yet<br />
to come. The next time you go for<br />
a walk, focus less on how far you’re<br />
aiming to go and more on the wind<br />
in the leaves, the birds in the trees,<br />
and the ground beneath your feet.<br />
Getting back to nature is incredibly<br />
important to hygge.<br />
Even our daily habits can be heavily<br />
influenced by hygge. It is even<br />
changing people’s eating habits;<br />
many espouse eating four meals<br />
a day rather than three, to make<br />
mealtimes more evenly spaced.<br />
Devotees report feeling more<br />
energised throughout the entirety<br />
of the day, which is certainly an<br />
attractive prospect. It seems hygge<br />
is a concept well worth exploring,<br />
and a craze we should hope is here<br />
to stay, for the good of all our wellbeing.