Out With the Old and in With the New

Technically, it's New Year's Eve and I am debating on setting resolutions or goals for myself for the new year. Every year, I say that I am going to finish some bottles, save money, only get one bottle of perfume. But that shit never happens.

This year, I have a little more motivation for some of this shit. I am planning on taking a trip to California to see my sister and nephews. As it stands right now, it looks like it is going to happen some time in June. So that means is that I have to take care of Afterpay, Zip, Klarna and Sezzle. That means that there will be no more candles to be bought, no more perfume buying and saving money like crazy. The upside is that this might force me to actually start using up some perfume for the sake of creating space and not adding to my collection.

The biggest challenge for me is when I file my taxes. I know that I will be getting a refund and I will be tempted to spend that money on frivolous things. But I can't exactly do that. So I have to cut expenses somewhere. The candle thing will probably be the easiest thing to cut since I am a little bored with it and since I live with people who don't really want me to have a lit candle around, the luster has gone off. I am going to have an issue with staying off of perfume discounters, Sephora, Ulta and Luckyscent. I did blog about how I probably shouldn't have bought that big bottle of Narciso Rodriguez for her. I did get more stuff than I probably should have in the past couple weeks. At this point, I have to buckle down and get moving on the saving part. So I am looking at where I can make the cuts. I am not holding my breath on any kind of stimulus payments that our current administration has been talking about/promising since their campaign. I am going to get moving on getting my hands on that abandoned bank account check to give myself a buffer.

But since I am planning on a trip to California, I am thinking of which perfumes to take. I know that I am only limited to 3.4 ounces but I do want to take two perfumes. The one that is really sticking out is Chanel no 19 and I have no idea on the other one. Maybe Nasomatto Nuda would be another great idea for the second bottles. I would rather take two bottles of perfume and not one.

 

Post Christmas and Estee Lauder

Christmas day has come and gone and now we are heading into the new year. For Christmas day, I just decided to wear Lyric. There were a number of ways that I could have gone with perfume. I could have gone with my backup choice of Feminite du Bois or I could have gone on to wear Shalimar as well but Lyric seemed to appeal to me more.

The last perfume that I was gifted was way before I was really into perfume was Ralph Lauren Pure Turquoise. I still have the perfume and I do remember not really liking it all that much and it was my sister who gave me that and she said it smelled good. So I am going to have to dig that one out and give it another go. I think that I was wearing a different Ralph Lauren perfume called Gorgeous or something like that. But this Christmas, I was gifted a Estee Lauder Pleasures gift set. One of my friends had sent me the tracking link and I did see that it was the hand lotion and a 1 ounce bottle of Pleasures. I do still love Pleasures after all these years and have been wearing it off and on since it was released. But my sister sent me a tracking link to what she got me for Christmas. It was a set of Estee Lauder Pleasures. It was the hand cream and a 1 ounce bottle of the perfume. Now I just wait until it arrives tomorrow. Then I have to wait until I get off work tomorrow to open the package.

The one thing that is kind of funny with bottles of Pleasures. Around two or three years ago, a 5 ounce bottle of Pleasures was available for sale and apparently it was so popular that it would sell out as soon as it hit the Estee Lauder website but I haven't seen it since. I am thinking that while it might have been incredibly popular, it either might have been too costly to make or people not spending the money like they used to to warrant consistent production. Now if they made the intense version in a smaller size and a smidgen more affordable, I would get a bottle.

While Bath and Body Works is having their semi annual sale, I am not biting. One, I want to work on paying off the Christmas present shopping, two, I am just not all that interested. I have enough candles and I am not interested in buying more of the same old thing. There are so many Winter, Frozen Lake and Pink Lavender and Espresso candles can own. I should have gotten more plain old Lavender candles when Bath and Body Works was having their Candle Day sale. I noticed that after Candle Day, I just wasn't so interested in Bath and Body Works. I made one purchase after Candle Day, it was too redeem my reward. So my breaking up with Bath and Body Works is going a little easier than I thought. Let's see if I can keep that momentum going.
 

Those Large Bottles and Christmas

You know that in my last post I talked about not getting anymore perfume for the year? Well, that resolution didn't last 24 hours. A new Sol de Janeiro or newish one was on the ULTA website and with the five points per dollar, a twenty percent off and free same day delivery, I was hooked and impulsively got in. I was looking at picking up some lotion and kind of figured, why not? It's not like Sol de Janeiro breaks the bank in terms of perfume. Some people might think that but I don't. I am the one sitting with bottles of Chanel and Amouage offerings and those are pretty expensive. But usually this time of year, I know Ulta and Sephora offer free same day delivery this time of year. That shit is fine for one or two things but I have enough being delivered in the next couple days to truly wrap it up for Christmas. But that isn't fully the reason on why I am posting.

When I got to really thinking about bottle sizes, for a good long while, you were hard pressed to find anything larger than 100ml of any perfume now. I know way back when Guerlain did some very bizarre sizes. But that was way back when. You still are hard pressed to find anything larger than 100ml and anything larger you really have to look for and only online. I do have a fascination with massive bottles of perfume. There is just something about them. To have a bottle of anything larger than 100ml is quite a rarity. I do have bottles of perfume that are over 100ml. The largest one is a vintage bottle of Bal a Versailles that is 9 ounces. Most of my large bottles are vintage Guerlain bottles that are probably 8 ounces. How am I going to refuse a reasonably priced bottle of vintage Mitsouko? But my big bottles of Chanel are mainly from the Exclusifs line up and that was way back when the Exclusifs line only came in the 200ml size. Yes, Chanel has massive bottles called the Grand Extrait or something like that but there is no way in hell that I am able to sink a minimum of seven grand for a few ounces of no 5 extrait. I just can't find any smaller bottles of the extrait bottles anywhere and have been looking for months for one.

But since we are a couple days away from Christmas, I am way behind on wrapping my gifts and a little behind on which perfume I want to wear. The only choices that I have thought up are Lyric, Theorema, and Feminite du Bois. I am not fully sure on which one I want to pick out but will probably be able to make a decision soon enough. I just have to get through the next few days. But the bigger issue at this point is wrapping my gifts. I have a couple packages that are arriving today and would rather have all the gifts that I ordered in the house before I commit to wrapping.

 

Probably Shouldn't Have Done That

A couple days ago, I made the mistake of taking a peek at Fragrance net. I have no idea why I was doing that. Maybe it was because I had found my travel size of the original Narciso Rodriguez for her in edt form. Off and on for the past few months, I had debated of if I should get the 5 ounce bottle of it but never did. I just couldn't make that decision or it might have been more than I wanted to spend.

But late Friday night, I decided to take a look. Fragrance net didn't have the the original edt when I looked. The edp was being sold in the 5 ounce bottles. And being tired and impulsive, I was sold. What really sold me is that Fragrance net was offering free 1 to 3 day shipping and I still was spending a shade under $95, including tax. So I am thinking that since I ordered late Friday night or very, very early Saturday morning, it should be at my doorstep on Tuesday. I am more hoping that it arrives tomorrow. 
 

I had swore to myself that redeeming my ULTA rewards for a bottle of Chanel no 5 was going to be my last full bottle purchase for the year and probably for a good while. Then I moved the goal post of that bottle of Narciso Rodriguez would be the last but nope, the goal posts got moved yet again. I made another mistake of checking out Sephora and saw one of the Sol de Janeiro body sprays on sale and I am doing the same day delivery factually

Yes, I probably shouldn't have done those things. Well, I know that I should have stopped at the Chanel no 5. I really have to stop those late night window shopping things and it always seems to be right around Thanksgiving or right around Christmas that quite a bit of this stuff happens. I think that I seriously need to crack down and actually adhere to not buying full bottles of anything for at least 6 months.

Not So Sure Anymore

So, I went to see the Stan Hewitt Christmas light thing yesterday with my family. My mother is currently having back issues an has been having it for the better part of a week. She did make an appointment with a doctor and it is on Tuesday. We thought that it would be doubtful if she was going to be able to handle that and it would be just my dad and I. But she did go and she was able to get through the house part and a little bit of the gardens. I honestly thought that walking the garden part of it would have been a little much. Even in the house, it seemed like my mother had to sit down every two seconds and we got through a fifth of the garden part. We repeatedly had to tell my mother that we did have to walk all the way back to the car and there would be no way that the car up past the gate house. So we only got a fifth of the way through the garden part before we had to turn around with her complaining the whole way. My thoughts were that she made the decision to do more than what she knew that she was physically capable of.

Since we went to an event that was a little fancier than normal, I had to spend a little more time thinking about which perfume I wanted to wear. I didn't want something loud like Lyric or L'Heure Bleu. So I went with Chanel no 22 edt. In the beginning of my perfume journey, no 22 was something I couldn't quite get enough of. When I couldn't get enough of no 22, I couldn't wait to get my hands on (at the time) the edt and eventually the extrait version. But something happened with the past couple times that I wore it. It was like something about it really bothered me. Was it the rose, was it the aldehydes or that combination that really started to bother me. Maybe no 22 is a perfume that I have just gone off of.

Candle Day 2025 and Other Stuff

 

I did mention in another post about Bath and Body Works and their Candle Day. After the 2020/2021 fiasco, Bath and Body Works changed how they do things. They made Candle Day last the entire weekend and probably ramped up production after the 2020/2021 to make sure that they would have either enough 3 wick candles to sell or pretty close.

If I recall correctly, last year the sale started online on Friday at 8 or 9 pm and in-store at 6 am the following day. This Candle Day, it started online on Thursday at 10 pm. When the online parts starts happening, you get to wait in a virtual line and that is what I did. I was one of those idiots that waited 40 minutes in that virtual lime. Some years, I didn't wait more than 5 minutes but others, I waited for an hour. All to buy 6 damn candles. I promised myself that I would get only 2. I honestly think it was my bills were paid up for the week and since last week was Thanksgiving, I had a bigger paycheck and and that is how I justified it. And the price is $9.95 per candle. But what does my stupid ass do? I order another candle with some hand sanitizer. So right now, I am so very done with the candle buying. So now, I can say I have pretty much broken up with Bath and Body Works and my goal is to only shop at Bath and Body Works during Candle Day. It might be a difficult thing to do to.

I have been working through checking Ulta, MAC and a couple other websites to check to see if I have any use it or lose it points. The $250 worth of ULTA points was one of those. So yeah, I did redeem that. A bottle of Chanel no 5 edt, a body wash for my dad and some gummy vitamins that work for me is how I used that. I had MAC points that I had to use before the end of the year was used for the smaller lipsticks that are good for stocking stuffers for my mother. But at the end of the day, I was using all of that for stocking stuffers.

But with that last bottle of no 5 edt, I think it will be the final bottle of perfume that I will buy for the year. It might have been "free" but I look at it as how many points I had to save and even though I had to spend some money to get to that point, I wanted to make sure that I made it work. I would have been happier and maybe a little surprised if Ulta started selling the parfum version of no 5. If that happened, I would have gladly used my rewards balance for that. Well, I wanted to make the last full bottle purchase for the hear to be something more solid. It would have been a lot better if it was the parfum version but nobody seems to habe it.

The good news is that I am finished with my Christmas gift shopping, all thanks to the current paycheck. I might do Christmas shopping all year round but I used this past one as the final push to finish it. I always get paranoid about shipping this time of year and always try to finish it up as soon as I can.

But since my last vacation is winding down, it seems like all I did was shop and wear perfumes that I do not get to wear all that often. Lyric, the original Coco, Arabie and I am sure that I am missing a couple. It's partly because I kind of forget that I have them since most of my collection is out of my line of sight, so things do get forgotten about. But I want to make the final two days count in terms of perfume.

My Final Vacation of 2025

So I am on my final vacation of 2025. The only major thing I have to do is the build up for my crown but I have no real plans. Yeah, I have a Wal-Mart return that I have to do and I am hoping to get that done today so I don't have to think about it.

Thanksgiving was ok. Since we didn't have to go anywhere or have anyone coming over, it was a quiet day at home. I made a roast chicken with stuffing and have some candied yams to go with it. Instead of having pumpkin pie, we had lemon pie. It was probably not the most traditional Thanksgiving meal but I am not a fan of turkey and the hams that were on sale were much too large for three people.

I didn't to a whole lot in terms of shopping for Black Friday and I don't intend to do a whole lot of shopping today since it is Cyber Monday. There isn't a whole lot that interests me and what I want to get my dad for Christmas isn't part of the sale. The sale I am waiting for is Candle Day. In terms of Candle Day, I am interested in the price and that is the biggest thing that is truly going to dictate how many candles that I am going to get. As it stands right now, I am only planning on getting two. Probably Frozen Lake and Winter.

But since I am on vacation, I can wear what I want in terms of perfume. Like yesterday's choice was the original Coco and still in it this morning. My game plan is to wear Lyric today after my shower. I don't have every day mapped out in terms of perfume but I have a few ideas on what I want to wear for the week.