Thanks to everyone. We live in California in a city of approximately 250,000. There are 8 GW's, 2 SA's, 1 Women's League, 1 SPCA, 1 store that benefits the mentally handicapped in our city, 1 Cancer Society Store, 1 Operation School Bell (they buy new clothes for school aged children with the proceeds), and numerous other thrift stores throughout the city. We only went to a handful of stores the other day. Usually she will call me or I will call her and all we have to say if we want to run away is "suit up". Ha, ha! We have one GW that sells nothing but books, tapes, CD's, VHS and DVD's. There are tables and chairs throughout the store so you can sit down and peruse the items before you buy. We are big time readers and we have another store that charges 5 cents for paperbacks and on Tuesdays she gets a senior discount. She has one room in her house we call "The Library". All of the stores are in nice neighborhoods so I don't have any qualms about going to them. We did go to Lancaster, CA thrift store-ing and I felt like I could have used a body guard. We have numerous Dollar Stores also. I do TRY to be a selective shopper and I'm so proud of my "finds". Today I got a Hallmark cookie jar with a jingle bell on top $1.50 and a Hallmark tart burner 50 cents. As you may have noticed there is a theme, I LOVE CHRISTMAS. I have 36 large bins in our garage. DH suggested I go shopping there. We usually have 4 trees so I need my treasures!

Been awhile since I got back to this post. Thank you all so much! Grlwprls - how pretty is that?! I may have to steal that idea for our transoms at the holidays. So, so pretty! Sis2two - if you could let me know what the pprice range is that would be wonderful - I'd really appreciate it! Fun2BHere - I will check out QVC right now. I actually just got back from RH and they have C Cell battery operated ones that looked wonderful! 1000 battery life and they are all on sale at $14 - $33 per candle. They looked so good burning - not that spastic on/off flicker that I see a lot. It was more of a pulsating flicker. They also have a real 'wick'. I just knew that there had to be something out there w/ cell batteries. Thank you all for giving me options!

Several years ago I found the single taper candle, battery operated, for in our windows for the winter months. They have a similar timer as mentioned above. Turn them on the first time at the time you want them to come on and they stay on 8 hours. Off for 16 hours and then they come on again. I have used them several years. They run on 2 AA batteries and I start using them around Thanksgiving and the batteries last until April when I pack them up for the summer. If I remember right, I got them on sale 6/$11.99. Wish I could find more!

I haven't seen any - but agree that they would be safer. I remember a Dennis the Menace cartoon, years ago, in which the family were enjoyng a romantic dinner by candlelight ... ... when Dennis gave as his judgement on the situation, "I don't think it's romantic ... I think it's dark!". When I saw the subject line about "Flameless candles", I thought ... ... isn't a flameless candle a lot like a car without gas? (And I doubt that AAA (or CAA) could help, in that situation.) Better to light a single candle (whether flameless or traditional) ... ... than sit quietly, effortlessly ... and curse the darkness. ole joyful