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.

 

Hiram Green Moon Bloom Review

I am not one that really layers perfume but I think that I did find a combination that might work out for most people. If you are someone who has a love of iris dominant perfumes, this is probably really up your alley. I always try to go by Now Smell This Friday's community project. This past Friday, was an impressionist painting type theme. Since iris seems to be painted on the regular, I wore Serge Lutens Iris Silver Mist. I have a large decant of it that I got years ago. On Saturday, I think I had applied Infusion d'iris and had the last little bits of Iris Silver Mist. It seems like the two play incredibly well together and will have to give it another go to really make sure. Infusion d'iris tames Iris Silver Mist and Iris Silver Mist amps up the iris and brings a little more bite to Infusion d'iris.

I was getting a little bored with the current lime up of what I have been wearing the snot of (Cheirosa 62, Infusion d'iris, etc), I knew it was time to give something new a shot. And that something new happens to be Hiram Green Moon Bloom. Slowly but surely I am working through those sample sets. And I am slowly working my way through some of the tuberose dominant perfumes.

Every tuberose perfume is going to be compared to Fracas and I haven't smelled Fracas in years and my decant has long evaporated. What I smell is a medicinal type of tuberose at first. The first part of the tuberose that I have described never fully goes away but it does quiet down. Then the green starts up but never takes over the tuberose. I do like green notes in perfume but it just didn't exactly play nice with the tuberose on my skin. I did expect something a little fecal or a little slutty, the tuberose was on the tame side in Moon Bloom. What was it, Tryst that I tried that was all sank but ultimately not for me? I did expect Moon Bloom to be like that. I did expect something a little longer lasting on my skin. All I was able to get was about five hours of wear with this and I did expect something a little longer lasting. I don't know what the hell happened to make this fall apart on me. I should see if Hiram Green is a house for me and that means to keep on trucking with the sample set.

 

That Was Strange and Thanksgiving

You know a few posts ago that I mentioned that something happened to my bottle of Arabie? I am not sure about what fully happened but my bottle of Arabie has been saved. I think that something might have leaked a little bit and ended up only on the cap. I was looking for something else and pulled Arabie out for a second try and that was how I found out that that was the case and really made sure that the perfume itself wasn't ruined and it wasn't. What makes me happy is that I don't have to scour the internet for a reasonably priced bottle or just throwing out the bottle and just be without a bottle of Arabie.

Since we are coming up on Thanksgiving here in the US and I am already trying to decide on which perfume I want to wear for Thanksgiving. I don't even know if I am going to someone else's place or it is to be a quiet Thanksgiving at home. My choices are Theorema, Feminite du Bois or Lyric. The first two are mostly for if I am going to someone else's house and Lyric is more of if I am going to spend the day at home. It seems like extended family members go gaga when I wear Theorema but are disappointed that Theorema has been discontinued. I don't like the fact that Theorema was discontinued either and happy that I was able to get some back up bottles when I did before it became hard to find and stupid expensive when you can find a bottle.

 

Dragging Stuff Out

My goal was to seriously start working on finishing samples and full bottles of perfume and I have failed miserably. I thought that if I kept a very limited amount of perfume out, I would have a chance. The only things that I have finished was that very small decant of Joy extrait, vintage Jicky extrait decant, A vintage no 5 extrait bottle and did drain a 1 ounce bottle of the Cheirosa 62 body spray. It seems like I accumulated more stuff in terms of perfume. But I haven't finished anything else. I keep trying and failing which leads to this post's title.

I just had to pull out one of those storage containers just to find a bottle of Mitsouko and vintage Bal a Versailles. With Mitsouko, it didn't matter if it was the newer EDP version or the vintage, I just wanted a bottle of Mitsouko, in all of her glory out. To a lesser extent, I did want a little bit of vintage Bal a Versailles out as well. 

When I first tried vintage Bal a Versailles, I immediately understood it and loved it and for a while, I would wear just about nothing else but that was fairly early on in my perfume journey, back when I didn't know the difference between my ass and a whole in the ground. I had no real knowledge of what a skank note was nor what an aldehyde was, let alone the perfume groups. I did discover Mitsouko early on as well.

I remembered that I did like Mitsouko a lot and couldn't quite figure out why I did. It took me a few wearings of Mitsouko, Diorling and reading about perfume families to figure out why. I loved the balance of a more traditional chypre. Then I discovered the vintage Mitsouko and then I knew what oakmoss really smelled like. At that point, I spent way too much money and time on Ebay trying to find the best bang for my buck in terms of vintage Mitsouko. I was specifically looking for the old teardrop bottles that were mostly filled and especially if the bottle itself was sealed. Then my financial woes were just beginning and perfume buying became harder to justify. Buying perfume is still hard to justify at this point. But I still want more perfume but need to start wearing what I have. I think that I did get a little bored with the line up on my nightstand

 

All Kinds of Stuff

It is that time of year where Sephora is having their fall sale. The bargain with myself is that I would spend less than $20 if I decided to partake. Not buying anything would have been preferred but I couldn't spend a whole lot. I know that Ulta is trying to lure people away from the Sephora sale by offering an ok coupon and just about every day there is a different point multiplier. For the point multiplier, I am not seeing anything worthwhile thus far. I probably will not buy anything from ULTA for a while. The only things that I got at the Sephora sale is a puff for the Nars setting powder that I have and a travel sized bottle of the Cheirosa 62 conditioner. Spent under $20 and I am okay with that. Everyone still seems to be out of the Chanel no 5 parfum and right now, I think it is still a good thing. If ULTA ever gets the parfum version of no 5 before the end of the year, I will redeem my ULTA rewards points for that. 

But come recently, I haven't really been game about going to Ulta, Bath and Body Works or Sephora. Even just to window shop. I am thinking it's the fact that I have two nephews that are having birthdays in the next 5 weeks and the Christmas shopping season is just about here. Most years, I am almost two thirds done this time of year and I am almost a quarter of the way done. What my game plan is that for Christmas the two littles will have to share a gift and the two older ones will have to share a gift. Since I am still working on squaring away my Afterpay and Klarna balance, gifts will have to be smaller and I probably have to do more combining gifts. What I have taken to doing right now is if I have some extra cash, I am going to turn that into Amazon gift cards and set them aside so when I do the Christmas shopping for my nephews, I don't have to wait around for paychecks so much, I can just get it done. I think I will get my dad a cookbook called The Victorian Way but I drawing a blank when it comes to my mother. I do have time but not quite as much as I think I do.

On the video game front, I have almost finished Quake II. I haven't made any kind of judgement on if I still love the game like I used to. Maybe when I finish the game I can make an actual judgement. But I found out a few days ago that there is going to be a new Halo game called Campaign Evolved. Apparently, it is the original Halo with updated graphics and three extra levels before the original game. Part of me is very much wants to get it but part of me doesn't. The question I am asking myself is if I want to spend $60 for three extra levels and updated graphics. Part of me does want to get the game for those three extra levels. But the new Halo game won't be released until some time next year. Now if I can get the original Return to Castle Wolfenstein for the Xbox s/x series I would be happy. 
 

Seriously? Of Serge Lutens Arabie, Laundry and Storage Gone Wrong

I didn't have a ton of clothes that needed to be washed but needed to wash 3 sets of sheets. I got a little lazy and hadn't washed those 2 sets of sheets that I have bought in the past 5 or 6 weeks. Yes, I was sleeping on sheets that were starting to get a little gross. I don't know what possessed me to wash 2 sets of sheets at 9pm last night but washed those 2 sets but I did. So this morning, I stripped my bed and threw that set of sheets in the wash and started it. So I now have fresh, clean sheets on my bed.

I am not a big fan of washing any kind of bedding. You can wash a fair bit of clothes in one load of laundry but only 1 set of sheets in a single load of laundry. But I don't think I am a big fan of doing laundry. It's the time it takes and the amount of steps for just 1 load of laundry. As it stands right now, I don't have to wash any kind of bedding for a while.

This morning, I had a hankering for Serge Lutens Arabie. Portia from Perfume Posse did make a mention of it in her recent post and I promptly forgot about it until this morning. So I pulled it out of one of my bins and something went horribly wrong. At first, I noticed that the spray mechanism smelled like it smelled like A la Nuit. Then I unscrewed the spray mechanism and smelled no resemblance to the Arabie that I know. So something must have leaked into the bottle to make it smell all sorts of wrong. So that means that I am going to have to check my massive collection to see if I have a backup bottle of Arabie. 

I have already done a half assed search about the price of a new bottle. I wasn't aware or didn't pay attention that Arabie is now only in a bell jar form. I check my old stand by of Fragrance Net and didn't see a bottle and should have bought a bottle of it when they did have it. I did find a brand new bottle of it on Amazon but if I don't have a backup bottle of Arabie, I am going to have to bite the bullet and get a bottle. I don't have the $300 some dollars lying around and it is hard to find a spray bottle.

The reason why Arabie is is important to my collection is because it is one of the first niche perfumes that I purchased many years ago. Even though I didn't really "get" it at the time. I can only hope that I don't have to get another bottle.