Can't turn my back for a minute.

So this morning, I decided to light one of those scented oil candles. It was great. The house was starting to smell like strawberries. Later, I went to help S in the other room. While I was in there, I noticed the smell in the house seemed to change. Now it smelled like melted plastic and smoke. I ran into the smoky living room to check the candle. It looked fine, but the oil had burned out. I blew out the candle and looked around. What I found was this:







There was also a back pack that had one of the straps melted. (Hence the melted plastic smell.)

Apparently, D had climbed up on the couch where he could reach the candle, and stuck a piece of paper in it. Then he let the paper burn until it burned his finger, and dropped the paper. (He has a small blister.) It landed on blanket that I hadn't picked up. He didn't bother to call me, but at least he was smart enough to grab his water bottle and used it to put out the fire. He burn a good bit of the blanket, a little bit of the rug and carpet. I put the phone there in one picture so you could get an idea of how big the burn was. It could have been a lot worse.

I guess I need to talk to our landlord because there was not a smoke detector that went off. That is a bit scary. Fortunately the only injury was the little blister. The fire was put out quickly and not a ton of damage. (Good job D on getting it out so fast.) I guess in the future, I will have to remember to put out any candles if I am going to leave the room even for just a few minutes.