The Full Bottle Hustle

It is now a rarity for me to purchase a full bottle of anything. The past two or three years, I've gotten around 6 or 7 bottles (I think) of perfume. Necessity has made it to where I can't just end up spend any kind of money on a full bottle of perfume very often. Want that bottle of Lonestar Memories? Gotta wait for it. It's difficult o get out of the habit of just buying full bottles. I have worked out a budget of what to get and when.

I have blogged about which full bottle was next. I couldn't decide on either Ubar or Lonestar Memories. I spent at least two or three weeks going back and forth and just yammering on about how difficult the choice was. In the end, I went with Ubar. Fragrancenet was offering a 1,7 ounce bottle for $105. Yes, it was that cheap. I was a little unsure if I wanted to pull the trigger. Beauty Encounter, Amazon, Luckyscent and any reputable place that sells Amouage, only sells the 3.4 ounce bottles. So I have never seen Ubar sold in a smaller size than a 3.4 ounce bottle. The price sealed the deal for me because Lonestar Memories turned out to be a little more expensive than Ubar. Maybe I will get Lonestar Memories later on in the year or there is a really good sale in the next couple months.

After every full bottle purchase, I want to go and buy another on my wish list. I do have to step away. Because the new rule for me is that I can only pick one perfume and not two. After about a couple hours, I am okay because I had saved up enough fun money to get a bottle of perfume. If I could only keep away from buying so many decants.

A Harsh Mistress

Come recently, I've been rearranging my perfume collection. Pulling things that I don't wear too often to the front and things that I have been wearing quite a bit to the back. It's the whole forgetting about which bottles I have and why I bought them. So it's the whole trying to use up what I already have. Forgot that I had a bell jar of Sarrasins and De Profundis and I remembered the joy I felt to finally have a bell jars of two scents that I loved. And yet I still kind of hoard them. Then I started to wonder why.

Perfume is a harsh mistress when it comes to collecting. I haven't counted how many bottles of perfume that I have but I have a lot. Every time I gaze at my collection, I ask, "Do you really know how much you've spent on full bottles alone?" Truth is, I don't and I don't think I really want to know the answer to that question. I figure that I have probably spent almost a year's wages or a little more than that over the span of 10 years. Vintage finds, high and low end offerings, some discounted, some not and with the vintage finds; I might have spent more than what I should have on a few bottles. Back up bottles played a roll too, the fear of anything being discontinued is real. And yet, I want to add more to my collection.

I've had many collections and I have found that perfume has been the most demanding and expensive to date. Books, makeup, nail polish have been fairly cheap compared to perfume. Amouage, Serge Lutens bell jars don't come cheap and I don't really have the means to snap up bottles left and right anymore. So the perfume buying has slowed down and I don't even buy so many decants anymore. I still love perfume but I really need to start using some full bottles up and add only 1 or 2 more bottles to my collection.

Zoologist Civet EDP Review

On Now Smell This, there has been talk on the SOTD posts about the house Zoologist. After hearing quite a bit about it, I had bought 2 decants when STC was having their 3ml Thursdays. It was tough to figure out which ones to pick out. I am a perfumista that loves a good skank note. MKK, vintage BaV, Shalimar and my favorites so far with vintage BaV being my favorite (15 bottles would attest to that love).

Last night and most of the morning, I was wearing Civet. I was hoping for something in the lines of smooth and a little easy going. Civet isn't either of those things. I get something huge and pepper like. I have no fear of sillage but the sillage is not something to de desired in Civet. While I have said that there is something pepper like, I am not talking about green peppers, I am talking black pepper mixed with something else, what smells like strong, burnt coffee. Both of them together, don't smell good. So I waited the beginning hoping something would change. Something did change, the civet started peaking out never really came out on skin. Yes, when the civet came out, Civet just fell apart on me. Civet was just a hot mess on me and I have to say that I really don't like Civet and I had to shower to get it off me. I couldn't wait for the dry down to see if anything got any better. A full bottle will never be in my collection and I did have some hopes that it would.

Ubar Bath Products?

Recently, I have been wearing the crap out of my Amouage body products. It's winter and the Amouage body butters fit the bill for my dry skin. It moisturizes my skin without causing breakouts. Jubilation 25 and Dia I have in hand lotion form but don't see a whole lot of wear. Dia lotion and soap seems to be best suited for spring and Jubilation 25 gets aggravating. But there is something on my mind.

Ever since I have fallen in love with Ubar, I am not seeing any matching bath products. Yes, I am pining for a bottle and hoping that I will get a bottle sometime soon. You see, Ubar has been around for a while and hasn't had the benefit of having the body butter nor soap. Even Gold has matching soaps and body lotions and that has been around since the '80's. Is Ubar's formula not making it possible? Or is Ubar not the biggest seller to warrant one? I want to know.

Tax Things and Birthdays

We seem to be into tax season, well the very beginnings of it anyway. No, I haven't filed mine yet but I know that I will be getting a refund. There are a million ways on how I can use that money and I shouldn't be using it on perfume. But I will be.

My mother has always had a marginal interest in perfume. But she has always gone for the Dolce Gabbana stuff or something from Estee Lauder. She used to like Chanel mo 5 but she said that something changed in it and it doesn't smell the same. I gave her a dab of vintage extrait and that is when I knew what the issue was. Chanel had taken out the nitro-musk and that is why she didn't care for it. That is when she had taken the two vintage extraits and gave me her current version of extrait that I had gotten her one year. But this is a little different. In August of last year, she had fallen in love with Amouage Honour for women and at Christmas time, I had gotten her the bar soap and the matching body butter. So I think that for her birthday, I will be getting her a bottle of Honour. So using part of that tax refund is going to that.

But I am still looking at something for myself. The short list is Amouage Ubar, Guerlain SDV and Tauer's Andees 25. The problem is that I can't make up my mind on which one. It's funny, I can easily make up my mind about many things but when it comes to perfume, I can't make up my mind, either which one should I wear for the day or which is my next bottle purchase. I hope I can commit sometime soon.