It's the New Year

 Now we are in 2025 and my New Year's Eve and day were pretty much low key. I got off work at 8 last night and let me tell you that New Year's Eve can be busier than Christmas Eve in a grocery store. One would think that in my neck of the woods, Christmas would be the bigger deal but ever since Covid, it seems like New Year's has become the bigger deal than Christmas. But I live in a rural area so I can only comment on what I see here and not in the suburbs. My aunts and uncles said that their grocery stores were packed but mine wasn't too horribly busy on Christmas. Maybe because I work in the bakery that now requires 48 hour notice for any kind of order, maybe people started to get their shit together to plan a little better. So after I got off work, I ate dinner, watched YouTube until about 11:30, watched the ball drop and then went to bed. At the age of 42, I am not game for dealing with drunk people in public in bars or driving. Plus, I don't have the tolerance for booze that I used to.

I managed to get New Year's day off and I just hung around at home. You know that mulled white wine thing that I was going to make? That didn't happen. There was too much chaos and drama in the kitchen with the pork roast and potatoes to make that happen. So the mulled wine is going to have to wait another time. But I was kicking around a few ideas for the new year.

My first idea would be to binge watch Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace and Tales of Yanxi Palace. Both of those shows are now on Amazon Prime so I can watch those in my room instead of watching them on my Kindle Fire. At this point, there isn't much on television right now. The new season on All Creatures Great and Small won't air on PBS until the 12th. Call the Midwife won't be on until spring and Grantchester will probably air sometime in the summer.

My second idea is to make a serious effort on using up my Amouage body products. This idea came about when I applied some Epic body butter. The body butters that I have from Amouage haven't gone off in terms of smell but the consistency of the lotion itself has changed. So I want to use the body butters up before the smell goes off. I didn't notice anything when it came to the Amouage soaps though. Yes, I decided that I wanted to go big or go home for the new year, especially since I wore Clinique Happy for New Year's Eve.

My third idea is to start getting back into playing some of my video games. I am still waiting for my Quake II game to arrive but since I am trying to make a concerted effort to reduce my spending, I want to appreciate what I already have. I want to replace window shopping and shopping itself with other things. I know that I can't entirely avoid shopping, I want to do less of it. I want this to be a year of actual change and not lip service.

Amouage Epic

If memory serves me right, Amouage Epic for women was my second Amouage purchase. I had bought it from Luckyscent, this was back in the day where I was wary of purchasing decants from the Perfumed Court. I remembered liking it but not really understanding it. Mind you, I was an inexperienced perfumista and never really explored perfume in depth before. Before I was seriously into perfume, I mainly wore Clinique Happy, Estee Lauder Pleasures, CK Obsession and BBW Cucumber Melon. You know, perfumes that were easy to get and with the exception of Obsession, cheap and fairly easy to wear. What mostly attracted me to Epic was the story of Turnadot because I love the aria, Nessun Dorma and the green bottle and green is my favorite perfume.

I still haven't gotten that dresser into my bedroom and don't have a whole lot of access to most of my collection but managed to get my hands on my bottle of Epic. But a funny thing happened. It was either Monday of last week or Wednesday, I had worn Epic. I remember it being in the 80's and pretty humid. I haven't worn the EDP in quite a while so I decided to put some on. I think that because I haven't really worn Epic a whole lot recently, the perfume in the spray mechanism was probably getting on the stale side. This was the first time that I had really noticed the oud in Epic. There were always hints of something sour to my nose but I never could quite put two and two together. I think when I did review an amber dominant perfume and then another oud dominant perfume, I realized that amber and oud  perfumes were not exactly my thing or something that I would be iffy on.

Epic was always this spicy rose with a hint of resin but never smelled a whopping dose of oud in it before. Even my dabber of Epic 56 doesn't give my a huge dose of oud but with the decant being a dabber, I wouldn't be able to get the full effect of Epic 56. But I am thinking that Epic might be more of a winter perfume. Since I am slowly working my way through my Amouages, the only two that I really seem to be enjoying are Jubilation 25 and Lyric. All the other ones that I have, there is something in them that is starting to bother me. Maybe my tastes have changed or there might be notes in the Amouage bottles that I own that I have never liked. It kind of makes me sad though. I have spent a small fortune on Amouage perfumes already.
 

Another Old Favorite...Memoir

 I do keep spending time rummaging around that huge tub of perfume that I do have and I pulled out a really old favorite, Amouage Memoir for women.

Back when I was pretty new to the world of perfume, I longed for bottles of Lyric and Memoir and eventually got bottles of them. For some reason, I haven't worn much of Memoir and I don't have a great reason to hoard Memoir. With the direction that Amouage seems to be going in terms of not being able to find a whole lot in the way of bath and body stuff and I can't seem to find Ubar anywhere, I have been slowly getting back ups of the Amouage offerings that I love. I don't know exactly why I stopped wearing Memoir but I did. I was probably busy trying other things.

Even the pickings on discounters are getting a little slim.I still am trying to curb the frivolous buying and I am making every effort to not go buying everything in sight. In years past, I could go to discounters to get my bottles of Amouage but I'm not seeing the selection and I am blaming Covid for it. While I did snap up a back up bottle of Memoir, I got another back up of Lyric to cover my behind. I will get that back up of Epic eventually but I am not going to get that bottle right now. I have other things that I need to be worrying about.

Bath and Body Works has started their semi annual sale a few days ago. While I did imbibe, I didn't see tons of offerings that really wowed me. It wasn't the price points, it was the scents that were offered that I wasn't too wild about. I just grabbed what I could use for birthdays and Christmas gifts and now I am just waiting for it to arrive on my door step. I would have loved it if Night Blooming Jasmine and Gardenia Lily was brought back along with Milk and Honey. Bath and Body Works said that they had no plans to bring those back but they might at a later date. With that answer, I doubt that those will be brought back.

Amouage Epic 56 Review

A while back, TPC had a little bit left of the Amouage Epic 56 in stock. Since I adore the original Epic, I had to nab a little dabber. I haven't seen TPC offer it again and haven't seen it at all at STC. When I got it, I figured if I wouldn't be able to find it ever again on those sites, I'd have to make that dabber last if I really love it.

So Monday, I decided to give Epic 56 a test drive. And holy shit, is it good. It's Epic on steroids. A deeper, richer Epic. Yes, I love it in all of it's spicy, rosy goodness that made me fall in love with the original Epic. It's a little on the stronger side but this is Amouage and most of their older offerings are pretty strong.

I did a comparison of the extrait version of Epic (also dabber) on Monday night and the extrait of the original Epic does have the same potency but the original Epic extrait doesn't have the depth and richness of Epic 56.

I do love Epic 56 but at a price tag over over $500, it's not for me. I can get a little bit more from the Amouage website since they have the sample set of the exceptional extraits. I think that if Lyric was released as an exceptional extrait, I would truly be screwed since I really adore Lyric.

 

 

The Same Stuff Over and Over Again

My mother cut her California trip short and is now home. So much for some of the projects that I had planned to do. Three of the candles that I had started, refused to stay lit and in the trash they went. I have already finished 2 candles yesterday and will finish 2 more today. I have no freaking idea on what candle I am going to start now but that's okay at this point.

I was none too happy when I found out that a trip was cut short. I had made a decision to redeem most of my Ulta rewards points and get a bottle of no e Eau Premiere and another bottle of no 5 edt. I figured that it would arrive before my parents came home and they wouldn't see any kind of packages and gripe about it, even though I redeemed my Ulta points for them.

But I noticed something. There are some perfumes that I buy over and over again. No 5 in many of it's concentrations, Mitsouko, vintage BaV, Amouage Lyric and Epic seem to be the ones that I have the most of. I will admit that after no 5, I haven't gotten the other ones listed in quite a while. But with vintage Mitsouko and BaV, I haven't been prowling E-Bay for them. Amouage is getting harder to find a discounters and my beloved Deneuve has gotten so stupidly expensive, especially for minis. So no 5 it is.

I do wish the no 19 was a little more widely available and if Ulta carried it, I'm sure I would have stocked up even more. But Ulta and even Sephora mostly focus on best sellers but that seems to be most department stores that focus on things they know that they can sell pretty easily and even with my healthy supply of no 19, I don't reach for it often enough. I really ought to start wearing some other stuff that I have.
 

Amouage Epic 56 Thoughts

It's been a really long time since I have really paid attention to Amouage offerings. The last time I really paid attention to Amouage was when Beloved was released but after that, I wasn't so interested.

But when Amouage started to release some exceptional extraits, I sat up and took a closer look. From what I can gather, there was extended aging and a higher oil concentration. Amouage has only done 4 as the exceptional extrait but with the ones that have been released, only Epic 56 stands out. 

I love Epic and do want to try it. Epic was my first Amouage love and first full bottle from Amouage. I loved the green bottle and inspired Epic. I will admit that I want to try Epic 56 and get it but dropping $480 on a bottle of perfume scares me and I think that it should. I mean, $480 is quite a bit  of cash, even for Amouage and I don't give a shit if it's for 100ml. But not all is quite lost for me. The Amouage website is offering a sample set for the exceptional offerings. For all four of them, it would set me back $55. But I am not so interested in the others, just Epic. If they had Lyric in the exceptional extraits too, I would have jumped on it.

Lyric and Epic are the two Amouages that I reach for most often but I seem to reach for Lyric more often. I just adore Lyric and the first time I tested Lyric, the clouds parted and the angels started singing and I started saving up for a bottle of Lyric. There was a time that all I wanted was a bottle of Memoir and did get a bottle but I hardly ever reach for it. I have no idea why I don't reach for it too often, other than the fact that it's maybe too sweet and has a static sort of smell to it.

I am going to hold off until maybe mid next year to do anything with that sample pack of those extraits. Maybe I might get the travel sprays of Epic. I am just a little scared of trying out Epic 56 and falling in love with it.
 

Fall is Coming and Evaporation

So much of this year, especially this summer has been mostly spent in Chanel no 5, Coco Mademoiselle and Lyric. Today's perfume is Amouage Epic. Epic is more of a fall type of perfume to my nose for some reason. It just reminds me of fall.

Now that we are creeping into fall, it's time to begin breaking out the fall perfumes. I don't have a lot in the way of transition scents or ones for fall. The main one that I have is LADDM. 

I did notice that the perfume in the bottle evaporated a little more and I haven't been wearing it in quite a while. I took a look at the bottles that I have on my dresser and noticed that my Andy Tauer full bottles seem to evaporate much quicker than the others. I think that this is probably the main reason why I really don't have too many full bottles from Tauer Perfumes. I really think that it's the bottle design that is causing the whole problem with evaporation. Evaporation is the bane of my existence when it comes to perfume. I hate throwing out decants due to evaporation and had to do some of that last week with my unworn and not reviewed stuff and I need to do that again with that makeup bag to see if there are a few that I do need to pitch. So I guess this fall is going to be pretty heavy on LADDM and a couple other Tauer offerings and will probably have to push myself to just finish those bottles and not have to worry so much.

Let's talk candles at this point. I am still working on trying to whittle down my collection and it's been really slow going right now. It seems like as soon as I finished 8 of them, I replaced 6 of them. I'm about to finish up to more candles and will have them finished by tomorrow at the very latest. But I do think that I should lay off trying to use up the single wick candles and really attack the 3 wick candles. The 3 wick candles just take up so much damn space and I need the space. Do I need that space? Not at the moment but would like to have some kind of extra space if I do need some. What I am fighting against is that Bath and Body Works has released their Honeycrisp Apple and Apple Weather candles and then soon enough Winter and Evergreen will be released. I'm still torn on if I should burn to 3 wick candles at a time or just one 3 wick candle. I have no idea yet.
 

Spray Bottle Evaporation

Things are just goofy right now. I have been working on straightening up some finances. When I took a look at things, I realized that there were a few subscriptions that I really needed to be cancelled. The Harry and David Passport thing, the Sephora 2 day shipping and a few other things had to get cancelled. A couple of those things were charged monthly and a couple things were charged yearly. The things that I had to get rid of, I wasn't using them enough to warrant the money spent on them. The only subscriptions that I did keep was Amazon Prime and my BarkBox. My rough estimate is that I have save about $175 per year but I have to begin the second phase of reworking finances. Work has been really slow and slow means less money coming in and there are things that have to go.

In my streamlining flurry, my attention did turn to my perfume. Buying full bottles have pretty much came to a stop and decants have come to an almost complete standstill. Which is a good thing for me, it is allowing me to take a look at what I have and see what I can start using up before I can even begin to add anything more. This led to rearranging some of my bottles.

After doing a little bit of rearranging of perfume bottles, I got a bit of a surprise. A bottle of Amouage Epic for women and L'Air du Desert Marocain are both showing signs of evaporation. Yes, two of my spray bottles are showing signs of evaporation. The LADDM bottle always seemed a little bit sketchy but Epic was a bigger shock. Just under Epic's cap, there is some perfume and a couple signs that this might have been going on for maybe a month of two. I am thinking that maybe one of my dogs was doing a counter surfing thing and knocked the bottles of LADDM and Epic of the dresser and the spray mechanism got goofed up somehow and now there is evaporation. I've never had an issue with evaporation issues with my spray bottles and I do have issues with spray decant and dabber bottles evaporating. I guess I need to wear the snot out of LADDM and Epic and be grateful that I do have backup bottles.