Fourth of July Themed Candle Holders

Nice weather and spending evenings out on our deck are finally here!  Two years ago we had a large deck built onto the back of our house.  Since the weather has warmed up and the days are getting longer, we enjoy spending a hour or two after dinner out back on our new area, listening to music and just spending time together after work.  

One thing we do not enjoy are the bugs!  I found the Conceal candles from Yankee Candle work well.  These candles do not have a typical citronella smell to them, are DEET free and at the end of last year they were on sale for buy one get one free - so I stocked up!

I have found that whenever I use tea light candles outside in a regular tea light holder, they tend to blow out from even a light breeze.  I decided to see if I can create a fun little holder using rice and pint size Ball jars.  

I purchased a 10 pound bag of rice (way more than I'll ever need), a case of Ball pint jars, red and blue food coloring, and used the Conceal candles already in my stash.  I worked in batches of two cups of rice each time.  That filled about 4 jars (two cups of blue, two cups of red and a little less than one and one half cups of plain white).  It took a lot of food coloring to get the colors the way I liked them - about 40-50 drops for each.  After I mixed the colors I filled each jar about a third of the way with each color.  I did a mixture of color arrangements, some started with the red rice, some started with the blue.  

I do have a few dozen boxes of the Conceal votive size candles.  I decided to use them as well for this project.  I placed the votive in a clear glass votive cup first and filled the pint jar with as much rice as was needed for the height of the votive to match the height of the jar.  I don't think using the votive is very practical, since it will be difficult to replace the candle without mixing all the rice.  I think for this project the tea light size candle is the way to go for easy changing of the candle.  We plan to use these for the rest of the summer season.  I've already made about ten of these and have given a few away!  

Here is a little view of where my DH and I spend our evenings together outside.