Financial Considerations

 

When there was a blip on my radar about the current tariffs in terms of perfume a post or two ago, I did think about there was no Chanel no 5 to be had. At least in the extrait form. So I am thinking that the edp, edt and Eau Premiere are still cheap enough for many companies to get but the extrait version of anything in terms of Chanel might not be worth the expense. The thing is that I have enough Chanel no 5 in every other formulation except the extrait. But the price of so many perfumes have gone up, and some horrifically so, I figured I might as well start setting some goals for myself.

With the whole BNPL thing, I have decided that in the next 6 weeks, I want to have Afterpay, Klarma and Zip paid off. My Sezzle account is paid off and Zip has only 1 payment left on it. My Klarna balance is less than $60 but Afterpay is sitting at a shade over $400. But the other part of my goal is to start saving some money and create a budget that is a little more strict. Does this mean that I won't go out and have some fun? I will still go out to eat and have fun but I have to be little more discerning about that.

It was my birthday earlier this week and usually I do get myself a bottle of perfume. For some reason, I haven't been quite up to getting a new bottle. With the tariffs and all driving the prices up, some of the stuff are simply out of my budget. But I will truly see in the next few weeks on if I want something new or just hold off in that department.

But cleaning up my finances has made me cancel my Doordash subscription and I decided not to get the Sephora same day delivery subscription. I remembered that on my birthday the same day subscription was going to be changed on my birthday and I made the point to cancel it beforehand. I did forget that I did sign up for the Door dash free trial and was charged $9.99 for it. I cancelled as soon as the charge went through. I still will "enjoy" the subscription for a month but that means I will probably use it once or twice if a hankering for Burger King or McDonald's hits but don't want to go out and get it.

Hiram Green Tryst Review

I am not sure what has been up with me come lately. It's either I am testing something or I am wearing the same old thing. But this time, it is a new to me brand and that is Hiram Green. Earlier this year, I had gotten the Hiram Green discovery set from Luckyscent. Luckyscent was probably running some kind of promo and Luckyscent isn't one to do too many promotions like a percentage off or free shipping on anything and everything. 

But Tryst is the first one up. First blast was something citrus and I have a very difficult time with citrus. But there was a big alcohol type blast for some reason because Hiram Green is supposed to be a natural perfume. While the citrus went way into the background, the orange blossom and honey came front and center and stayed there. I do love a slutty perfume but this is the kind d of slutty that I didn't care for at all. I don't know if it was the honey, orange blossom or the two being together but it smelled like I urinated in my pants and couldn't be bothered to change. Even though my sample is a spray sample and this is an edp, I found that the longetivity was lacking. I expected at least 8 hours but only had about 4 or 5 hours but in this case, it was a good thing. With the way things are going with inflation, I would have expected a little more. But I am not a fan of Tryst and I will not be getting a bottle any time soon.
 

Thoughts, L'Air du Desert Marocain Noir and Upcoming Vacation

When I hopped onto Now Smell This, I did see the post of a new Andy Tauer offering. It seems like Andy Tauer has gone crazy with all of these new releases. When Luckyscent was offering some kind of deal on some samples of the reimagined Rose Flash and Vanilla Flash, I jumped on that. But last night, I don't recall seeing the new Andy Tauer L'Air du Desert Marocain Noir but I was looking to get a bottle of the Rose de Kandahar perfume.

For the longest time, I did want a bottle of the Rose de Kandahar and finances never quite worked out to shell out a little over $200. Imagine my surprise that.is $300 and the price for just about every Andy Tauer offering has gotten stupid expensive. Someone mentioned that it was the tariffs that caused it. Yes, the prices of everything has gone up, tariffs or no tariffs. But I wasn't expecting the prices to be that high for a beauty product. But back the the Noir, I did order a sample to test out, even though I haven't been wearing a whole lot of new things.

So I am coming up on my third vacation of the year. The only real plan that I have is seeing the final Downton Abbey movie. Towards the end of the TV series, it was pretty worn. There are so may story lines that can be recycled before people lose interest. The first movie was good, the second one was okay but I think after the first movie, it really should have been put to bed.

What I am looking forward to is being able to test new things if I want or wear old favorites. I am hoping to finish the candle that I have going in the next week and I hope to start another.
 

Juliette Has a Gun Not a Perfume Superdose Review

Today was Cleveland's start to football season. The only reason that I know this is that my mother is a huge Cleveland Browns fan and football is a huge thing in Ohio. I can care less about football and most sports in general. The only sport that I will have any interest in is hockey. For around $30 to $40, I can go to Cleveland and watch a Monsters game. Well, hockey can be pretty entertaining. But I have to wait a little bit before I go to a game.

Off and on, I have been looking at the whole Juliette Has a Gun line up. The ones that I have always been intrigued by was Not a Perfume. It's supposed to be a one note perfume and tons of people seem to go gaga for this one. I couldn't understand how people could go for a one note perfume. Then a thought hit me. They don't really want to wear perfume but they kind of do. And that perfume has to be as simple as possible but smells like you are wearing perfume. But the perfume itself has to be faint. But I tried out Superdose.

Fragrance net had a mini travel spray for a song and I figured that it wasn't going to break me if I didn't care for it too much. I can keep it for reference or I could love it later on down the road. When I first applied Superdose, I initially thought it was Light Blue and I was not amused. I hate Light Blue and can't understand how people love Light Blue. After 5 minutes, it smelled really familiar to something I already have. I kept trying to remember which perfume it reminded me of. Then it came to me. Super dose reminded me of Channel Sycomore. Now, I only have the edt of Sycomore and haven't worn it in forever and I am going to have to rectify that in the next week or two. But Superdose has the Escentric Molecules type of vibe to it. It smells very artificial and incredibly not something I would call a perfume.

There is no development in this perfume. It's linear like CKOne and I can be hot or cold on linear perfumes but most of the time, I am cold on that. With perfume, I want development on skin. I am not a fan of Superdose. I just am not getting the whole point of this. If I want linear, I will wear CKOne since CKOne has more personality to it. Superdose has no personality.

Narciso Rodriguez Pure Musc Review

 

So I did make it to the county fair yesterday. I did have a good time but I did pay for it this morning. Ever since my gallbladder surgery last year, I cannot have a lot of fried food. I had a milkshake, one corndog and a small serving of fries. I was hoping to find deep fried pickles but couldn't find them for some reason. I found some taco trucks and a Chinese food truck at the fair but wasn't interested. I did not go to the fair for Chinese food or tacos, I wanted deep fried junk food and to see the 4H animals.

For the past week, I have been poking around Fragrance net to find some pretty good deals on travel sprays. But for a while, I was looking at blind buying a bottle of Narciso Rodriguez Pure Musc and realized that I have a little mini running around to test out.Good thing that I did find it and test it out. For the first 10minutes, I enjoyed the living daylights out of it. After the initial 10 minutes, I was like, is this it? I was waiting for the whole thing to keep developing and stay enjoyable. But it got a little more annoying than anything else. I wanted it to go to the realm of Kiehl's Original Musk Blend. You know, kind of slutty but not really. I do get a little bit of orange blossom but mostly generic musk. It might be a me thing right now. I just expected a little bit more out of the whole thing but my opinion might change in a month or two.

County Fair and Perfume

So I am working most of Labor Day weekend. I worked yesterday, today and Monday and since I am going to my county fair tomorrow, I got to thinking of which perfume do I want to wear.

Every county in Ohio has a county fair and they can be very different. In rural or more rural areas, it's about farm animals and 4H. More suburban areas it's more about arts and crafts, and rides. My county fair is all about 4H and that is where I am going. I plan to eat a fair bit of fried food and look at all the animals that the kids in 4H raised. There are a couple barns that I do avoid because they make me sad. The beef barn is one of them because I know most, if not all of the cows in the beef barn will be slaughtered on Tuesday. I don't go into the pig barn for the same reason but maybe not so many. Maybe because I didn't grow up on a farm and that is why I get so sad. For farm families, this is a normal thing. But if you didn't grow up on a farm, things like this aren't a normal thing.

I am still working on using things up or just plain old using things up. But the culling of my stuff isn't easy because part of me thinks about the money that was spent. But if the body care stuff smells off or is separating, it goes in the trash. I am going to have to look at if it isn't opened and I don't want it, I will donate it and it won't be money wasted so much. But let's talk about what I am thinking of wearing tomorrow.

Normally I do wear something from Andy Tauer and I am thinking of sticking with Andy Tauer. It's either the discontinued Noontide Petals or Au Coeur du Desert. I might go with an Avignon route. There are other perfumes that I can wear but the later two seem to be the best suited for the county fair. It's fall and I am slowly switching to my fall perfumes and Au Coeur du Desert seems to blend in a little more with the smells of the county fair.
 

Back from Vacation

 

So Tuesday was my first day back from vacation. It wasn't a great vacation, let alone good. Between my mother repeatedly calling from the hospital either wanting clothes or just angry calling, it was marked by appointments or visiting my mother. So it was not very relaxing. I have a little under 3 weeks to go before my next vacation. I enjoy taking most of my vacations a little later in the year.

I wore a few of my perfumes that I don't exactly get to wear too often. I was wearing more of the bombastic perfumes like Lyric, Number One Intense and Nuda. I figured that if I am going to be on vacation, why not wear my louder ones and it wasn't hot and humid so a louder perfume was and is easier to wear.

Was I able to make progress with my candle collection? The only progress that I was able to make was finishing that Winter candle from Bath and Body Works and start a Sun Drenched Linen from Bath and Body Works in single wick form. I was hoping to make more progress with that but between all the appointments, phone calls and other bigger projects, it wasn't really possible to do.

Even my Kindle was being an ass. I wasn't able to watch Prime Video for some reason and after talking to Amazon, I had to do the option of last resort and that was resetting my Kindle to factory settings. Let's just say that I wasn't to happy with that. I could have used my Fire stick but with my mother always calling or the appointments, the Fire stick was a bigger pain in the ass for pausing movies and shows that I was willing to go through.

So now, things are getting a little more back to normal. The only things that are different is how my mother is still in the hospital and we have a holiday weekend coming up. I am planning to go to the county fair on Sunday and eating a bunch of junk food and seeing the animals. I do not plan to go with one of my friends though. He is more interested in a certain section of the fair with the folks that take pictures of wildlife. I have no problem going over there and looking at the pictures and talking to them for a couple minutes. I do take issue with the fact he wants to rush me through so he can do nothing but deep fried Oreos, eat from the Italian food stand and see if there is a way he can get business for his photography stuff. So he seems to take away the enjoyment from anything because he wants to use certain events to see if he get an opportunity to make money. I asked him once if he can just enjoy fairs and festivals with friends and family without looking for ways to bullshit or bully his way into some kind of minor side hustle. If he wants to keep friends and family in his life , he has to give it a rest. I want to enjoy small things like that. I have enough problems and want to try and enjoy something, even if it is something small.