Christmas Shopping Adventure

There are some people that do Christmas shopping year round, those that do it all 2 or 3 days after Thanksgiving and those that wait until the last minute. Today is what I would consider starting to wait until the last minute. But I seem to fall into the whole different category. I kind of start early in November getting little random gifts, in case I need an emergency gift. But most of my Christmas shopping is done probably no later than the 23rd. But now I can say that my Christmas shopping is all done. I ordered my last gift from Amazon today.

But on the 19th, I had to stop up at the mall. My mother has always been that type that can be difficult to shop for type. So ordering online for her isn't the greatest idea. I was thinking about getting her a Penhaligon's sampler set but I had some second thoughts about that. She's not much a perfume person and something kind of niche might not be her thing. But there were a few things that she was complaining about. It was the lack of an eye lash curler and not having any decent bras. So going up to the mall was my only real choice. Amazon Prime only goes so far and I doubted that all of the other places that I shop wouldn't get a gift to her on time. She sends me up to the mall's JC Penny's to return her jeans. I go to one checkout spot to do the return and then when I step up to the register, they tell me that I had to go to another checkout spot. Needless to say, that was aggravating. But the return itself was a real pain. Obviously, a bunch of seasonal workers were there and it was an online order. So the return had to be done twice and the girl needed a whole lot of help to get through this. That's what you get when you hire a bunch of seasonal workers.

But what is great about my local JC Penny's is that there is a little Sephora in that store and I had a $50 JC Penny's that I could use. I ended the JC Penny's thing with finding an eye lash curler and two roller balls. That is one of the things that I like about Sephora. One of the roller balls are going to my grandmother and the other is probably going to me. What I don't like is that the Sephoras in JC Penny's are so tiny and with a Christmas crowd, make things harder to get to and just go to the cash register to pay. After a while, I ended up telling people to just move, saying excuse me 3 times didn't exactly work so being rude had to.

Things got much better when I go to Victoria's Secret. I was able to find what I wanted and for some reason, this time, I didn't have to negotiate a slow moving line. The line seemed to move quickly and it wasn't stroller quagmire like JC Penny's was.

Andy Tauer Une Rose Chypree Review

Today is a day for reviewing. I know that it's late but it was a day for me to try something new and review it. I didn't go into my untried decant bag but looked at my full bottles and saw that there are a couple of Andy Tauer offerings that I haven't gotten to. At this point, it's rare that I spring for a full bottle of anything new before trying it. Vintage is different and is always a gamble. So anyway, Une Rose Chypree (URC from now on) was the one I picked out for the day.

After reading up on URC, I was a little surprised about the citrus notes but not really. The citrus notes don't really smell like citrus notes. Nor do they smell like oven cleaner or loaded up with powder. It's more like that homemade cranberry sauce at a turkey dinner but with an orange zest. It's not overwhelming but I think that the rose got the citrus to behave and actually work with the other notes. And let's talk about the rose. The rose aspect and it seems like the whole perfume is similar to Une Rose Vermeille. It seems to have a 'mouth feel' to it but I would have to pull out Une Rose Vermeille and wear it again. Right now, I am in the dry down phase and I am really liking the moss aspect of URC and I do enjoy how long this is lasting on my skin and it's been on my perfume eating skin since 8:30 this morning,

I really do like this perfume and this offering from Andy Tauer seems to suit me better than whatever else I have tried so far. This one does have a place in my collection either as a full bottle or as a larger decant and my Amex is rolling it's eyes at me telling me that I really shouldn't be buying anymore perfume. But what is a perfume nut supposed to do?

Laziness

I know this is supposed to be a perfume blog where I write about and review perfumes. I have one of those Surrender to Chance gauzy bag things that's kind of big and filled with perfumes that I haven't even reviewed let alone tried. But let's face it, I am lazy at this point. And I've been really lazy about it for quite a while.

What probably happened is that I've never had a real method into sampling new perfumes and after wearing them for a few days, blogging about them after a couple days. I do think that perfume can be so overwhelming. I can't keep up with all of the new releases and my current full bottle collection that I already have. Slowly but surely, I am working on trying to finish a bottle of Chanel no 5 and a bottle of Jicky EDP. Finishing one bottle of anything will make me very happy. Finishing a bottle of perfume would give me space to add something else but it would just give me some extra space. I'm not exactly looking for more perfume but looking for more space and a little less to chose from in my collection so I am going to start to look at my minis and Chanel extraits and see what happens and maybe some of those 15ml decants can get used up. Or maybe I should do a once a week perfume review to see what happens with that bag of unworn perfumes. But right this second, I am wearing Mitsouko in vintage parfum that I've never worn before. Maybe I should start off with that.

Gift Cards and Christmas

A couple days ago, I finally got that door that I wanted put in my bathroom on. Now I can do my thing in privacy. But now that Thanksgiving is over, the Christmas season is upon us. And that leads to gift giving and shopping.

I never go out and do the whole black Friday thing. No deal is good enough to drag my butt out of bed at 2 in the morning to go to the mall or any store. Getting up at 2 in the morning to go to work is another matter. But Black Friday is leading to the whole gift thing.

The "gift thing" is what I can really hate at times. I do a lot of online shopping to avoid the crowds but I do have a couple friends that love to go out and Christmas shop. When I go out with them I either go and just grab maybe one or two emergency gifts but I mostly go with them and window shop.

But every year there are these discussions about gift cards. It seems like most seem to day that they are cheap and kind of a cop out. My view is that it really depends on the situation and person. I like receiving gift cards and I give everybody in my family the gift cards on the places that I like to shop. But I am getting grief from my mother though. The two people that I usually go Christmas shopping with, I have already gotten their gifts and they are gift cards. My mother isn't giving me grief over the fact that they are gift cards but the amount of the gift cards and what the gift cards are. One of them is a $15 Starbucks gift card and one of my guy friends is obsessed with Starbucks coffee. Apparently, it's too much money spent on that friend. Guy friend #2 is getting a $15 Barnes and Noble gift card and it's the "he won't use it" bit. I know #2 would probably like a Subway or a Bath and Body Works gift card but his family seems to give him a ton of those. My reasoning is that he needs a new hobby not trolling dating sites and chowing down on Subway. My mother can turn anyone into a Scrooge when it comes to gifts because she is to the point of too critical so I have taken up with Internet shopping and not showing her any gift that I get for anyone. I'm not sure why she is that way but she is.

A Five Day Deal

Here in America, there are only about three more days until we celebrate Thanksgiving. Since I work in a bakery, I do not see any kind of day off until Thanksgiving. So instead of picking out a different perfume to wear for each day, I've decided to wear Chanel no 5 EDT or EDP to wear until Thursday. Then on Thanksgiving, I will be wearing something else. I don't know what but I'll probably be figuring it out before I have to go to a relatives house. But for some reason, I'm already weary of wearing no 5 in EDT form. I think it's the whole 5 day stretch that's getting to me, well, the idea of the whole thing. I'm wondering if I should switch over to Lolita Lempicka.

But I did have a nice little surprise, perfume wise a few days ago. Before bed on Wednesday, I had forgotten that I was wearing Bal in PdT form, I sprayed Muscs Koublai Khan on my wrists. Bal was starting to get into the dry down phase but I've done questionable things with perfume before but this turned out really good. Both vintage Bal and MKK are slutty in their own way and Bal depending on the concentration, can be even sluttier than MKK. But this combination is just wow, it smells really good. Maybe not something I could wear in a tight space but if I were at an outdoor function, it would be great. There is so much slut note that I will wear in public. I'm not overly brave yet to have anything really sensual perfume wise.

My bathroom/kitchen remodeling saga continues. A new contractor was hired and I now have one of my bathrooms done, except for a face plate for the light switches and an door for the bathroom. So I now get my bathroom back, mostly. I am not some of the people in my household that can use the bathroom to either take a shower or do my business with the door open. As soon as I can, I will be putting the door up so I can do my thing without an audience. I'm strange that way.

Trouble Picking

Lately, I have been having larger problems with picking out a perfume. It's not the usual type of a lager collection than a lot of people but something different.

When I was getting started, it was fairly easy to pick out a perfume. Then decants came into play. Decants were so easy to slip into my wristlet. It started out as just one decant. That one decant was for touch ups but that changed. It may have started out as one decant, then two or three and let's not even get to the full bottles. The full bottles always get "stuck" in my work cardigan and then I am left with 4 choices to choose from when I get to work. Now, I'm getting back to either having 1 decant in my wristlet or 1 bottle in my work cardigan. Let's hope that this will lead to finishing 1 bottle of perfume and I was thinking of trying to finish my 1.2 ounce bottle of Chanel no 5 EDT. I would like to finish it because I have back ups of it.

Nail Polish

I had so many ideas on what to blog about but my mind kept going back to nail polish. Probably because I didn't have a thing to say about perfume today.

With my nails, I have always gone through always having them polished or not having them polished. But there was that time that I did have gel nails. But having gel nails only lasted 6 months because it was time consuming and expensive. So after that, I left my nails alone for a while. But I do have my favorite colors and brands.

OPI at the end of the day, has to be my favorite brand hands down. It seems to be the best bang for my buck at the end of the day. I've tried many different lines and colors and many of them seem to pale in comparison to OPI. With OPI, more often or not, I can get away with one coat of nail polish and maybe a top coat (if I remember)
and I am good to go for about a week and a half. OPI always seems to have the greatest names for their nail polishes. My ultimate favorite line or collection from OPI has got to be the Russian Collection and the German Collection is a close second. But my three favorites from OPI are An Affair in Red Square, Don't Pretzel My Buttons and Do You Lilac It?

At this time. I am testing out the Essie line and I am finding it wanting. I can't remember the red that I tried for the wedding that I had to go to in Texas but it wasn't pretty. For starters, I've never been a fan of the type of red that has pink under or overtones and it was that way. One coast of this red wasn't enough, it was streaky and I didn't have enough time to do a second coat. It caught me by surprise that a red would be streaky because I have never had that issue with a red before. I would have expected that with a pale shade of nail polish and not with a red or a dark color. Then a three days ago, I tried Essie's Lilacism. And lo and behold, it was streaky and took my three coats to make it look nice as opposed to the red. It is a nice shade of lilac but I prefer OPI's Do You Lilac It? Just due to the fact that I'm not one to enjoy a super pale nail polish. I have noticed with the Essie nail polish is that even after three coats, the nail polish is peeling off. I probably will not be getting any more of the Essie line. For the price tag, I do expect a little better.

Some Commitment

Any perfume in my collection does take some commitment but after a while, they eventually disappear and then I can apply something else if I wanted to. But there are some perfumes in my collection that take some serious commitment to wear. I mean serious commitment.

The perfumes I am talking about is Amouage. Yesterday I had decided to use Lyric body products and they lasted all day and most of this morning. I don't know why but last night for some reason, Lyric really started to get on my nerves and the only way to get rid of it was to take another shower and I wasn't annoyed enough to hop in the shower to get it off. But it's more than the body products that are time consuming is that the perfumes themselves that can be time consuming. Amouage offerings are loud and at times can be bombastic depending on the situation and time of year. But sometimes I do think that it's worse to use the matching body products because with perfume, it can easily be washed off depending on where you apply but body products require a full shower. When I decide to wear an Amouage, I am never so happy to take a shower and wear something else.

Fendi By Fendi Review

A couple days ago, I was bored with my selection. I was just tired of wearing the same old things just about every day. Part of it was being in Texas for a wedding and only having one perfume to wear. Then I just grabbed out of the unworn bag and pulled out Fendi by Fendi.

You know when I reviewed the original Coco by Chanel and had to
agree with Turin and Sanchez that it did smell dated? Fendi is the same way and the scary thing is that Fendi almost smells just like Coco. Almost word for word and I could have sworn that it was Coco if I didn't know that the color of the juice But Fendi smelled a little cruder to my nose for some reason and I can't explain why. But my pocketbook is sighing with relief due to the fact that I won't be seeking this out. I'm thinking that it's really tough to wear and 80's style perfume. It's the whole 80's aesthetic that bothers a lot of people, myself included. I do wear loud, some of them, really loud but the 80's probably too loud and crude. It seemed that more is more and everyone just bathed in these perfumes and some do still bathe in perfume.

The Week of Only One Perfume

This all started when I had to plan a week long trip to Dallas, Texas. And that meant that I had to spend time on a plane and had to deal with TSA rules about liquids and that meant perfume. It's has been almost 6 years since I have flown and I was a budding perfumista and at that time, left my entire collection at home. Times have changed for me. I was in a bit of a dilemma because I wasn't sure if I could take any decants or 2 bottles of perfume with me. The safest bet would have been to not take any but I knew in a lot of ways I wasn't going to be visiting any duty free shops or going to the mall for anything. So that left me with taking only one perfume.

The choice was agonizing to say the least even though I checked the weather forecast. The forecast was going to be in the 90's for most of it and that didn't help me a whole lot. It was a debate of Theorema, Deneuve, Mitsouko and Chanel no 19. I was making sure that all of those bottles were spray bottles and not splash bottles and under the 100ml limit. But when I came down to just walking out the door to leave, my hand landed on a 1990's refill bottle of no 19 in EDT form. All the way there I was thinking about how long the week was going to be with only one bottle of perfume instead of having 2 bottles and a decant. In some ways it was a long week because I was starting to get sick of no 19 about three days in. And much of the time in Texas, it seemed to take at least an hour to get anywhere. So I spent a lot of time in the car because everything is so far apart. And the construction was pretty bad. I know that bad drivers are everywhere and that when there is road construction more accidents will happen but I never came across so many accidents in my life.

This is when my aunt said that you need to be an aggressive driver in Texas because of the road construction and that overturned semi trucks and pretty nasty car accidents are the norm. I'm not talking about simple fender benders but the type where the front of one car is half missing and the other half is all smashed in.

I have noticed a downside to only having one perfume on a vacation and no opportunity to sniff other perfumes. That one ends up scouring E-Bay, Beauty Encounter, and FragranceNet late at night and end up getting more stuff and hoping by the time you return that at least one package of perfume or make up arrives at your doorstep before you do. I was never so happy to get home very early this morning and find that two packages had arrived before I did.

My Scent Challenge

This year, I seemed to hit the jackpot in a way when it comes to travel. I get to take two trips this year. I've already taken the trip to Virginia to see my sister graduate from nursing school. Next week, I get to take the trip to Texas to go to a cousin's wedding. These trips are the I pretty much have to go to.

Since I am flying down to Texas because I'm not spending a full 24 hours in the car. That's too long of a car trip. Besides, it seems to be a little cheaper to fly and rent a car. Now here comes the challenge, I am only taking one perfume with me and maybe a decant. The airline that was chosen charges for a carry on bag so I have to pack really light. So perfume is one of those that I am cutting. It's not like the trip to Virginia because I drove down to Virginia. I am also limited because of TSA regulations, it has to be less than 3.4 ounces and that kind of restricts my choices a little bit. At this point, a lot of my vintage collection has to stay home unless I put some of it in decant form.

Right now, my choices are Fendi Theorema, Chanel no 22, Worth Courtesan, and Jicky. I am debating if Chanel no 19 should be put on this list or just left off along with Deneuve. Good thing that I do have some time to figure it out.

Post Vacation Blogging

Today is my first day back into reality. It was difficult with two nephews that are under the age of six to apply perfume and actually get to enjoy it. It was difficult just to even get it on when someone is always wanting your attention, it's hard not to mention kind of easy to forget to apply. I think that being so tired from sleeping in an unfamiliar place and being woken up so early by two little kids wanting you to make breakfast made it real easy to forget.

But on Tuesday, my sister and I hit her local mall to spend her Sephora gift card. I usually don't go into Sephora but I just tagged along for the ride. The Sephora wasn't one of the full store Sephoras but one of those inside JC Penny's. Sephora has never been my go to for any kind of perfume or make up but I was going to check it out any way. I'm always amazed at the collections at a mainstream mall's offerings. It's always the best sellers and 'classics'. I can never walk to any department store without seeing whatever is hot at the moment and what has always seemed popular. Take the Chanel counter, I always see the Chance line along with Coco Mademoiselle, and no 5. But I really don't see a whole lot of no 19 unless I am at an upscale mall.

I really didn't do a whole lot of sniffage at Sephora but did go in without wearing any perfume deciding on trying something new to me perfume wise. Then I was at the Dior display and sprayed on Miss Dior Cherie (I don't care what it's calling itself but it's not the original Miss Dior) and holy crap. I couldn't wash it off fast enough, it was that bad. It smelled almost like Coco Mademoiselle and I really don't like Mademoiselle one bit. Anything that smells like Mademoiselle really drives me batty. I think it's that whole get up that really aggravates me.

On Vacation.

Since yesterday, I have been on vacation. So yesterday was spent on the road with no internet connection to blog with. The perfumes that I brought were Chanel no 5 in det form, Theorema, vintage Bal and vintage no 19. I'm sure that I have some random decant in my bag but haven't looked yet.

Let's just say it's tough going trying to blog on an itty bitty kindle screen. So since yesterday was spent on the road, I wore Chanel no 5. It just seems like one of those perfumes that are great for traveling because it is soothing to me. The smallest squirt of vintage Bal has faded and since my nephew is down for a nap and not climbing all over me, I am going to look to see what decants I probably brought along.

Scents for a Graduation

My younger sister is graduating from nursing school next week. So that means my dreaded what am I going to wear? I have my clothes picked out, have to get a pair of heels. That's the easy part, the clothes but I am clueless on what perfume(s) I will be taking down.

It's always seems to be the same debate and some restrictions. Since I am not flying, I don't have the whole 3 ounce bottle restriction to worry about. But I do have my list narrowed down (for now) to a very small handful. Chanel no 5 in EDT form, Worth Courtesan, and either Jicky or Shalimar Ode a la Vanille. I am still debating on if Theorema,Chanel no 19 and vintage Bal should be contenders for this list. What's probably going to happen is when I am packing, I will completely change my mind to totally different things but who knows what will go down.

The day I leave vacation is the most nerve wracking of all because there is so much to do is a very short period of time. The morning, that I leave is loading my dogs, their leashed, toys, treats, medication and dog food in the car and drop them off at the boarding place. I don't know why I am a crying mess when I drop them off, I just am starting to miss them. When I arrive home, I need to load up my suitcase and take care of a few final things before I go. But it's the whole thing that bothers me. Probably because it's out of my comfort zone.

Comme des Garcons Avignon EDT Review

A couple days ago, after my first perfume of the day wore off, I was looking around for my second perfume to wear. And reached into the unworn bag and pulled out Avignon. I have been wanting to try CdG's Avignon ever since I fell in love with Zagorsk and Kyoto. Zagorsk and Kyoto is about the incense but I can smell the supporting notes that don't make it boring. Kyoto had the cedar note (that didn't smell like bedding for a hamster) and Zagorsk had a funky iris note that made both likable and bottle worthy to me. But Avignon was different.

Different as all I got was incense and something I couldn't identify. I'm thinking that it's something to do with something of wood note. I say that because I get the impression that it does have a vibe of bedding for a hamster cage. If one ever has had a hamster or a guinea pig, you would know. But that stuff doesn't agree with my nose because when my sister was younger she had guinea pigs and didn't want to clean the cages all that often and the smell of those wretched cages were horrible when my parents had me clean the cages. so any kind of wood note can be hard due to that association. What I have tried with this line is that I get decent lasting power (about 4 hours).

So Avignon is a no go for me but I can see why some would like it. The one thing that I do admire CdG is that the price of their offerings have always been pretty reasonable, especially for niche perfume.

Living With a Large Perfume Collection

Compared to a lot of people in general, I have a fairly large perfume collection. Most people probably 5 or 6 bottles of perfume at most to choose from. Having that many bottles make it easy to pick out what perfume to wear when wanting to wear perfume but a perfume fanatic, it's a different story.

There are people like me who absolutely love perfume and it seems like we have some pretty large collections. There are some that have even larger collections than I do. My collection is filled with many different perfumes, quite a bit of vintage and back ups. But living with a large collection can be difficult.

It's difficult trying to pick out what to wear on any given day. Somehow perfumes get 'lost' or forgotten about or just not readily seen. How many times have I forgotten Shalimar when I have a million bottles or it? Or Theorema and Chanel no 19? Quite often.

But I am one of those who have never finished a full bottle in my life. Buying and having a full bottle requires a lot of commitment and with dealing with a 40 odd bottle collection, this is amplified. But to many people who don't have a large collection or who are not into perfume, this boggles the mind to have a large collection. Sometimes I think book collecting would be easier.

Being Contrary

After hanging around the perfume blogosphere, you start to notice a few things. Well, I've noticed a few things. That is how contrary I am when it comes to perfume. It seems like there are perfumes in the perfume blogosphere that seem to be universally liked and I am not exception to some of what is universally liked.

But I do have a hard time getting the love for Amouage Ubar. When I first tried Ubar early on in my perfume journey, I tried really hard to like it and say nice things about it but I really don't like it. It just smells like someone trying to tell me that bug spray with a hint of flowers is perfume but it's not. And I am still not understanding the general like with Jubilation 25 because something just doesn't sit well with me and I am thinking it's the fruit in that one that prevents me from loving it. It's kind of funny when there are a few that get tons of love and I end up trying them and actually hate them.

Now, there are those perfumes that I am wild about along with many people but it seems like I am in the minority with such a small thing a which strength I love. It is always seems to be the one that not too many mention loving. Chanel and Guerlain seem to be the big ones. Chanel no 5 and no 19 seem to be the ones where it's the parfum and EDT get the most love. I'm a little different though. I prefer the EDP version of both of them. But it seems like Jicky is one of those where people seems to prefer the EDT to the EDP and I like the EDP much better. I am thinking that part of it is that my skin is so dry, using the EDP is a necessity. But the vintage versions of all of these is worth seeking out and getting. Vintage EDT's seem to last a very long time on my skin.

Montale Ginger Musk Review

Yesterday, after wearing Diorling, I had pulled Montale's Ginger Musk out of my unsampled bag to wear. And this morning, I am trying it out again and not exactly liking it. I honestly think that it's the fruit and laundry musk combination that bothers me. I've always had a hard time with fruit and musk can be questionable but this time, in this perfume, it just doesn't work for me. There was no animalic growl or anything to make me think that there was anything more to this perfume.

This is the 3rd Montale offering that I have tried and I did come to the opinion that Montale is not for me. Greyland seemed to fall apart on me, Jasmine Full was a candied jasmine and Ginger Musk was just weak and it seemed like more of a mainstream offering than a niche offering. Now my wallet can breath a little easier.

Nighttime Perfume Ritual

Ever since summer started, my perfume ritual has changed a little bit. In the beginning of my perfume journey, I wasn't in any kind of ritual of applying perfume before bed. As time went on, I began to apply perfume before bed but it was the same perfume that I had worn that day.

But this summer is a little different though. I had really figured out that if the perfume that I had worn during the day has faded out when I am about to go to bed so I am free to pick something else out. I have a little luxury to have some of my perfume right on my nightstand so before I turn out the light, I can reach over and spray something and then turn out the light.

But on my nightstand, I don't keep things that are too odd, too loud or too whatever. The exception seems to be vintage Bal which I have no fear wearing to bed for some reason and vintage Bal is the skankiest perfume that I own but seems to be the most soothing before bed. It seems like Shalimar, Bal and no 5 seem to get the most wear at night. But it is a good thing because I have so much of all three of them that I can afford to drain those bottles.

The First Foray into Decanting

Yesterday, while doing some housework, I came across some of the decanting supplies that I had gotten a while ago to decant a couple of my splash perfumes. Needless to say, I haven't gotten around to that until last night.

I spent a good 15 minutes trying to decide which splash bottle or mini to use as a first time experiment. Then I got the bright idea of using Cuir de Russie just because it was the first perfume that had me fall down the rabbit hole. I'm not talking the huge spray bottle of the EDT but the parfum version of it. Since I had the bulb syringes, I used one of those to transfer the parfum without incident. I was so excited to have made my first decant ever that I sprayed it on my wrists. One spray would have been more than sufficient but I did two. Let's just say that it didn't exactly end well. I was overwhelmed by this version of Cuir de Russie and by it being overpowering, it didn't smell good at all. About two or three hours, I lived with it. I have come to the conclusion that pure parfum many not be the best choice to decant into a spray even though I want to try Chanel no 19 in parfum form for some reason. I think that part of that thought stems from Nasomatto's Nuda that is pretty much the same concentration and is in spray form. So it's pretty much lesson learned.

Viktoria Minya Hedonist Review

The good thing about summer is that I can wear one perfume during the day and another one at night. Sometimes that can lead to wearing the same old thing night after night but last night was different. I have a neglected bottle of Viktoria Minya's debut perfume Hedonist that I decided not to neglect anymore. I've had Hedonist pretty much since it's release and I've smelled it and worn it off and on for the better part of two years. I'm not sure why it's been neglected but so many in my collection do get lost in the shuffle that I do forget about them.

What pulled me in initially is the bottle, I swooned over the bottle but was a little hesitant about buying a full bottle unsniffed. What if the perfume doesn't match the bottle? What if it really sucks and I am left with a bottle of perfume that just sits on my dresser? But all that was unfounded. The perfume does match the bottle.

I do have a liking for honey in perfumes and I do smell honey from start to finish. After looking around the Internet, I am not really seeing honey listed as a note but it's got to be the rum and peach that must be the ones creating that. But the rum and peach do keep their identities but when together they seem to create that honey accord. I don't get a whole lot of flowers but the flowers that I do get is the big white floral. I don't exactly get any one big white floral but it's there. This is one perfume that I do not regret at all. It smells good without being over the top nor loud but not exactly second bottle worthy for me.

Buying Backups Matter

The thought hit me last night when I was looking through my collection last night when looking for my before bed perfume. Do backup bottles of perfume matter or needed? I have to say yes they do in a few ways.


When you are always dealing with the threat of reformulation due to restricted ingrediants, backups do start to matter if a perfume is either your signature or one of your favorites. Mitsouko is an example of a restricted ingrediant and subsiquent reformulation. The IFRA had decided that too many people were allergic or some such thing to oakmoss and that meant that Mitsouko had to be created without oakmoss. But a chypre that is like Mitsouko, the oakmoss in all of it's inky glory, is vital. So Mitsouko was in real danger of being discontinued but treemoss was substituted and Mitsouko doesn't smell quite the way it should but it's a valiant attempt of the perfumers to save a part of perfume history. Now this is when hunting down vintage and back ups become vital. But if you are like me and don't live close to a really good Salvation Army or flea market, E-Bay is probably your only way to go. And in my opinion, it becomes a good like trying to find any reasonably price bottles. But I keep looking for bottles and very rarely come across one I can afford.


Then there is the discontinued perfume deal. Because there are companies that just up and decide to discontinue a perfume. Sometimes it is that a perfume after a while just isn't doing well in terms of sales and I can see that aspect of having a perfume discontinued. Sometimes it's not the right time to release that kind of perfume. Take Deneuve for example, it was released during the time where the bigger the better perfumes was fading and the watery CK Ones and all similar ones were becoming all the rage, so a floral hyper didn't sell and being sold by Avon didn't help. Some companies seem  have a tendency to just discontinue a popular perfume for no reason. Fend seems to be one of them. Theorema is probably the most recent one. I know that it maybe it's not the biggest best seller for Fending but just by poking around the internet, it's popular enough to keep it as a staple in Fendi's perfume portfolio. When perfumes are discontinued, it's always good to grab a few bottles.

Chanel Cristalle Eau Verte EDT Concentree Review

After spending two days with Bois des Iles, I was going to review that but that's not happening today. But yesterday, I lost the motivation to wear Bois des Iles for the 3rd day straight and went Cristalle eau Verte yesterday.

I've stated before that I do have a hard time with citrus due to Espirt de Fleurs and how the citrus was presented in that one. But this Cristalle is different with the citrus. It's a huge, and I mean huge, burst of lemon in the beginning. It's like you just got through slicing a lemon. And I like that and how effervescent the lemon is, not the rotting citrus or the oven cleaner vibe. There is supposed to be magnolia listed as a dominant note but I am not smelling it. I smell a huge whopping hyacinth note and hyacinth isn't listed as a note. I love a massive hyacinth note in my perfumes but absract white flowers are listed so that doesn't tell me much. As soon as I start really enjoying this and think about getting a bottle, this just drops off the face of the earth. I can't smell it after 2 hours. Two full hours, I could believe that. So every 2 hours, I was spraying.

So since it lasts only two hours on me, I decided not to get a bottle, which is good for my wallet but for some reason, it's saddening because it's one of those that should last a whole lot longer on skin than 2 hours. If and when an EDP version comes out, I'll test that and see if a bottle would be in order.

Guerlain Chamade EDT Review

I took my good old time reviewing this because it took me forever to even wear this. When I tried the current formulation of Mitsouko's EDT and Shalimar, I promptly said that the current formulations of Guerlain's EDT's were a disgrace. Yes, the smelled like they should in the beginning but after a half an hour, they were gone and an hour if sprayed on clothes. The vintage EDT is worth trying out. So yeah, I was hesitant to try Chamade. It just seems like Chamade is either in parfum form or the EDT.

Chamade starts out with a peppery, green blast that I couldn't quite put my finger on. I smelled that in a couple perfumes before but it took me a while to figure it out. Then it came to me, the beginning was like the EDP version of Chanel no 19 but the whole structure of Chamade is no 19. But there are differences. Chamade mostly focuses on the green aspect and the hyacinth. No 19 does focus on the green but depending on the formulation, the emphasis is on either the rose or the iris. I knew that there was hyacinth in there but it is peppery and dominant. I couldn't think of which perfume that I have tested out that had a dominant hyacinth note but I realized that it was Une Couer Mai that I was thinking of. For a current version of a Guerlain EDT, I got about 4 hours out of this one. The vintage Guerlains (EDT), I get about 5 or 6 hours of wear.

I'm still not certain that I would get a bottle of the current version of the EDT but I think that it would be worth it to seek out the vintage version of the EDT.

Amouage Dia Bath Products Review

Ever since I have tried the Lyric shower gel and body butter, I've been thinking about trying out Dia's bath stuff. But this time, I have the guest soap bars and the body lotion. I was wondering if the body lotion was going to be moisturizing enough and would the hand soap drying.

The guest soap did have somewhat of a nice lather but after using it once, it maybe isn't a soap to be used in the shower or bath. I'm going to use it anyway in the shower or bath. But this bar of soap isn't drying out my skin, which is a good thing when your skin is sandpaper dry. That is when I used the body lotion, hoping that it would be like the body butter.

The body lotion is different than the body butter. The body lotion is a little richer and a little more long lasting than your drugstore offerings of body lotion but I was thinking that this is from Amouage and Lyric set the bar to what I expected out of the bath stuff. But while the body lotion did it's job, I was a tad disappointed because I wanted a little more moisture for another hour or two (the body butter lasted at least 5 hours on me. But it did soften up my elbows and knees.

What is great about what I have tried with Amouage and their body products is that they haven't caused a reaction. I'm not itchy, don't have hives and they do stay put. The perfumed part of the whole bargain of Dia is not as huge as it would be in Lyric, so I can squirt a little bit of Dia along with the body products. I'm not sure I would exactly get these bath products of Dia again though.

Badgely Mischka Parfum Review

Last year, I was on a little bit of a hunt for minis but quickly lost interest. The reasoning was that they were pretty much decants and at The Perfumed Court and Surrender to Chance, I could get a better selection and pricing than buying minis off Amazon (but vintage or discontinued scents are different). Somehow, I lucked out price wise with Badgley Mischa's Badgley Mischa. Parfum seems to be notoriously expensive for a small amount but somehow got a quarter ounce of parfum for $11.

So I splash this on me last night because I haven't worn this in a while and I couldn't remember what is smelled like, then I couldn't figure out what it reminded me of. After about a couple hours, it just hit me that the structure of it was in the way of Coco Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle and I don't exactly get along. I'm thinking that it's the structure of it or the patchouli that annoys me. But if it were not the fruit, I couldn't have smelled the difference. The lasting power of this one is about average with some throw but this is not something that I would wear. I think that I will give this one to my mother since she likes Mademoiselle and this is pretty close.

The Collection Experience

I have been trying to shop my own perfume collection and not buy so much perfume. Right now, this is kind of questionable. Ever since the weather has stayed warm, I have been able to wear two or three perfumes a day. But I've come into a little roadblock.

The roadblock comes in the form of what I have forgotten about and think about a back up bottle. I do tell myself that I don't need anymore perfume because I haven't even finished one full bottle let alone mini to justify another bottle of anything. Definitely not a sixth bottle of Theorema or my millionth bottle of Bal. So it is a little tough to get through my collection without adding more. I am considering just going cold turkey and see if I can get through a bottle of Mitsouko (not a vintage bottle) or maybe no 5.

Vintage Bottle Annoyance

Since there are no flea markets, let alone good ones where I live, let alone Goodwill or the Salvation Army, I have to rely on E-bay for my vintage perfume needs. But I'm really starting to get annoyed with the whole advertising a vintage bottle with the box and damaged cellophane listing it as new in box.

With buying vintage, with or without the box, if the seal on the perfume bottle isn't broken, yes I do expect some kind of evaporation. The older the bottle is, the more evaporation I do expect. But there is only so much evaporation I will accept before I will have to do a double take and think about getting that vintage.

But there are some bottles that are described as brand new, never used or new in box. What I am referring to is the spray bottles of vintage Bal. Bal is one of those perfumes in vintage form that I can't stop praising enough but those white spray bottles can be a bear. I have recently gotten a sealed box of the PdT version off E-Bay. It was listed as brand new and I was thinking that hey, it's vintage, even if it has not been opened or used, there is going to be a little bit of evaporation. When it arrives, I eagerly open it and find that it is actually about half full. This was reminiscent of the other PdT spray bottle that was listed as new. I am beginning to wonder if the spray bottle for Bal was the best design. Right now, I am staring at a sealed vintage bottle of Shalimar (teardrop EDT) from probably sometime in the 70's and it's about 95% full and a 1950's sealed Mitsouko EDC that is about 90% full. Even my vintages that were not listed as new or sealed are just about full. So it pretty much annoys me that I have found a couple vintage sealed items that are as full as one would expect for vintage and a spray bottle (vintage) doesn't seem to hold up.

Serge Lutens La Religieuse Review

What I do like about summer is that in the morning/afternoon is that I can wear one perfume and another in the evening. Last night, I went into my unworn and reviewed bag for something a little different and got La Religieuse by Serge Lutens. I know that Serge Lutens offerings can be really odd smelling and it's always been kind of a crap shoot for me with Serge Lutens. La Religieuse is not different.

This is supposed to be a jasmine dominant perfume but I'm having a whole lot of trouble finding the jasmine and I love jasmine (skankier the better). This offering is very perfumey and there are a few that are in my collection that are that way but this time, I'm not liking it one bit. I do think that the musk in this one and the lack of jasmine makes this one a stinker.

Stinker in the way of this isn't what I already haven't smelled in the mainstream. The Bois de Jasmin blog did some it up nicely by saying that one could go to the department store and this statement is very true. But I think that one can do a little better in the department store.

All Over The Place and Amouage Lyric

My thoughts for blogging are all over the place that I can't exactly focus on one thing or a couple things that would make up one post. But all I know is that it is definitely going into summer and I am having trouble with my perfumes sticking around on skin for any length of time. Even my Amouages are not really sticking around. But the good thing is that I can wear multiple scents throughout the day.

Speaking of Amouage, I did bust out and try the Lyric body butter and shower gel. After using the shower gel, I kind of am stuck with staying with either using the body butter or the perfume version of what ever Amouage shower gel I used. But using the shower gel, body butter or lotion, then using the perfume would be way too much and probably kill everyone around me. But Lyric somehow gets me the stink eye from my family because they don't much care for Lyric. But I do have to say that the body butter is fabulous and much better than a whole lot of body butters I've used. It's much thicker and I need to use less of it. That says a lot because my skin is very dry.

Tom Ford Velvet Gardenia Review

Ever since I smelled a real, honest to goodness gardenia flower I started to look for that would have either that blue cheese note or that huge mushroom note, I thought I would hit that with Velvet Gardenia. At this point, it's a big old no.

When I first sprayed this, I started to wonder if this was even perfume because I didn't smell a thing. I pressed my nose against my wrist and got a faint whiff of flowers and an even fainter whiff of mushroom. The flowers were definitely not gardenia or didn't even smell remotely smell of gardenia. Boy, was I disappointed but there was no throw to this perfume, I had to press my nose to my wrist to get anything. But after a couple hours, I did get some kind of sour that I couldn't identify and still can't identify. This only good thing is that my Amex is breathing a sigh of relief that I am not going to seek this out.

The Weather and VIntage Bal a Versailles

This spring, has been pretty goofy in Cleveland. We have a couple days where it is in the mid-80's with a 50% chance of thunderstorms that never happen and then we get a week of mid-50's temps. This makes it almost impossible to pick anything out or plan for anything perfume wise.

Vintage Bal a Versailles is probably my favorite perfume and my ultimate skank perfume and I've noticed a few things when it comes to the bottles when I do find them for a reasonable price. The PdT version is my favorite version and is difficult to find for something reasonably priced. The spray bottles, splash bottles and lyre bottles are totally different animals when it comes to how the perfume can smell. I'm not kidding, the spray bottle and the screw top splash bottles don't have the funky top notes that seems to be common with vintage bottles but my lyre bottles seem to have that funky, damaged top not thing going on. Out of all of the vintage Shalimars and Mitsouko that I have, I don't get that funk and Bal is the only one that has this. I'm wondering if it is something that has to do with the bottle. I don't regret my Bal lyre bottles but it just makes me wonder if it is the bottles themselves that do cause this and maybe some improper storage somewhere along the line.

Got Nothing

I can't believe that it is mid month and I haven't blogged about anything yet. But I don't have much because I'm not motivated to try anything and ideas are kind of scarce. So I don't have much.

You know, sometimes people and corporations really do amaze me. I'm not getting the post office this time. I bought something off E-bay and the seller shipped it promptly (always good) two weeks ago and the stupid package hasn't even arrived yet. I've tried to e-mail the post office about what happened to my package but I need the seller's address which I don't have and of course, I can't send the e-mail, I will call. I've had a similar issue before with a bottle of vintage Mitsouko and it didn't take a little over two weeks to arrive at my door step. But scratch that, I just checked and now it is at my local post office. But it kind of annoys me that it took so long.

But I am thinking of trying out the Amouage body products today. I'm thinking of going with Dia today or maybe Lyric. Right now, I can't decide but I do love days off where I can either test out a new to me perfume or new body products if I wanted to.

Amouage Beloved Woman Review

I have finally gotten around to trying out something new, well, motivated into something new. Friday and Saturday seemed like days were wearing an Amouage just suited me. I was about to wear Gold but then decided it was going to be Beloved. Sometimes, it can be tough to wear something new. What if I go out and don't have the ability to wash this off kind of thing. What also prevented me from trying this is when Beloved came out, it was a shade over $400. Hey, I do have limits on what I will spend on a perfume. Now, Beloved is less spendy but in a way only Amouage could be.

Amouage has never had the skin scent thing or what other companies call 'your skin but better' type of thing. When I wear Amouage, everyone around me knows that it's perfume. And Beloved is perfumey but overly so. I do get quite a bit of rose and powder in this one but it's not the powder bomb of L'Heure Bleue nor is it like the rose in a couple other perfumes I could mention. The rose aspect is more like the discontinued Le Labo Aldehyde 44 or the current formulation of Chanel no, 22. Beloved does remind me mostly of Le Labo Aldehyde 44 but Beloved does smell expensive and I love it. Now I have to start saving pennies to get this.

A Post Got Me into Thinking

Periodically, Now Smell This has those quarterly polls where people can share what they had gotten perfume wise in a certain period of time. That post entirely slipped my mind and forgot to post it. I have gotten into a pretty regular habit of posting on Now Smell This but that post got me to thinking about my spending habits on perfume.

Some months, I don't spend much of anything on perfume except for a few decants but other times it seems to be massive quantities of perfume. And the past two three months, I've spent a ton of money on E-bay getting vintages. To some those might not count as full bottles because more often than not, they are either partially used, victims to evaporation, or minis. I'm thinking that my two best finds have been two vintage teardrop Guerlains (Jicky and Mitsouko) that were actually full. I knew the vintage Jicky bottle was going to be big but the 8.5 ounce bottle was a monster and don't regret it one bit.

Sometimes I do get the buyer's remorse and try not to feel that way. I think that buyer's remorse comes from the fact that I own so much perfume to begin with. But I try to live my life without regretting things but it can be difficult.

Bell Jars and Exclusive

I am not the type that is usually swayed by the look of a bottle of perfume but I do have my moments and many more moments of grouching about exclusivity of some perfumes. Ever since Chanel has come out with the Les Exclusifs line, there has been a little bit on unavailability but not much those come recently. When Les Exclusifs came out, it was only online at the Chanel site or the Chanel boutiques. But some of that has changed. How I can get them has not changed but the sizes have. I think that the prices of those bottles have made me do a double take and made me think twice about a bottle. But Chanel never has been one to have fancy bottles so there is nothing eye catching in that respect.

But Serge Lutens offerings have been a whole different matter. For the longest time, the US hasn't been privy to being able to get a bottle of the non-export line without going to Paris. Now the bell jars are being sold at Barney's and their stock seems to be dwindling but the bell jars are being sold on the Serge Lutens website to US customers. After I found a three quarters full bottle of De Profundis on E-bay for $165, I had a couple thoughts and was a little disappointed. I still love De Profundis, Iris Silver Mist and Sarrasins but it seemed to be the bottle itself that was the source of the disappointment. I don't know why I had thought that the bell jar would be larger for a 2.5 ounce bottle. I honestly think that I was seduced by the exclusivity of the bell jars and was comparing the size to my Chanel no 22 bottle and my Mitsouko EDP bottle. I couldn't help but think about spending $300 and over for a bell jar that a sprayer doesn't come with it and that I can get a 3.4 ounce Amouage for the same price. I think that it is spending time on E-bay and getting lucky. But I don't know what exactly I was thinking about the bell jar except that I might have over hyped it in my mind. I don't regret getting De Profundis and still want Iris Silver Mist and Sarrasins but it might be a while before I do.

Slowly Growing on Me

I have been taking the time to shop my collection instead of looking at E-bay so much. A few days ago, I was in a rush and did just reach into my decant bag and sprayed Amouage Jubilation 25. When I first tried Jubilation in the beginning of my perfume journey, I honestly didn't care for it. At the time, I always tried to find the good in every perfume and sometimes couldn't but didn't want to trash the perfume. Right now, that seems to be changing a little bit with Jubilation and it's somewhat of a good thing but my wallet is quaking in it's boots. But I think that it will never be a full blown love. L'Heure Bleue wasn't full blown love at first but I did fall in love with the powder bomb. Another that is growing on me is the EDT version of no 19. But we shall see if it will ever be true love when I try the vintage version.

I really am loving the shopping my collection because it is forcing me to start using up my collection before I add more. I always love a good bargain and adding to my collection but that incident with Mitsouko, it really becomes an issue when things get knocked over and spilled. In the next two months I am hoping to get at least one bottle of Chanel no 5 used up and probably one bottle of the current formulation of Mitsouko since I do have a lot of back ups of those. Maybe I just might finish up one of my bottles of Theorema even though it's discontinued and probably shouldn't.

Vintage Bal a Versailles EDT Review

Sometimes there are perfumes with many variations like parfum. EDP, EDT and so on. Sometimes
they smell exactly the same or they can smell completely different. Chanel no 5 is one of those that can smell exactly the same or very different depending on the concentration. But the Chanel no 5 structure is there and you can smell the variation in the concentration.

Vintage Bal a Versailles is one of those perfumes as well. I have tried the parfum, PDT and now the EDT. At first, I thought that I would not like it maybe even hate it. I am not really a fan of the vintage parfum because of the emphasis on the patchouli and not the flowers and skank that I love in the PdT version. But it turns out that I love it. The EDT still has the skank and flower dominance but it's much softer than the PdT. Softer as in not as strong or as loud as the PdT. Some perfumes, even vintage can have a bigger heft than Bal a Versailles in EDT form. The vintage EDT of Bal a Versailles does last quite a while but not like the PdT. It's not a bad thing though, sometimes I want that huge projection and sometimes I don't. Hopefully, I will get my hands of the EDC version and try that because I hear that it is the skankiest version out there.

*Decant from Surrender to Chance.

The List/Guidelines

 I ought to start getting a move on with reviewing Noontide Petals but things just creapt up on me. I don't exactly know when I created my own personal rules for perfume but I think that it sort of evolved.

1. Never go buying vintage anything without smelling the current version of any perfume. Without knowing what the current version of Mitsouko smells like, how would you know how the vintage smells like. And you don't always know if the previous owner had drained the original scent and put something else in there.

2. Always buy back ups of the perfumes you love. Reformulations happen all the time and it's not always for the better. Or it's the horror of horrors, it's been discontinued. This is when E-Bay can become your enemy but it's going to contradict me when I get to my next thing.

3. E-Bay can be your best friend or it can be your worst enemy. I've been trolling E-Bay off and on since 2013 and this comes with getting perfume off this. I'm not one of those who does that bidding thing. If bidding is your thing, some perfumes when they are discontinued or vintage the price may be low but always seems to skyrocket just before the auction ends. But I love the buy it now option because in a way, I am saved from some of that paying what would be a mortgage payment. But what goes on with the buy it now, you do have to be careful because some people are putting half used or quarter full vintages and discontinued scents for $100 or more. But never turn your nose up because you can find a bargain once in a while.

5. Surrender to Chance and The Perfumed Court can be your ultimate best friend when sampling or your comparing vintage to the modern version of something or want to sample a niche perfume that you can only get a full bottle of at Amazon. Yeah, you gotta pay for those but it can be worth it. Hey, it saved me a lot of money. It has made me make up my mind when I was going back and forth between two perfumes.

6. Luckyscent maybe the place to go when beginning the perfume journey but it's not the whole picture. I can find my Amouages at other places and not pay full price. Luckyscent may give you codes for free shipping when you spend $75 and the maybe once a year 20% around tax time.

7. A lot of the time, Beauty Encounter and FragranceNet have the better deals for the Serge Lutens export line and Amouage. Truthfully, I prefer Beauty Encounter because the discounts seem to be better and much more frequent. Hey, where else could I have found Fendi Theorema for a decent price and unused besides Beauty Encounter?

8. Wear what you want, where you want, when you want to. What good is having bottles of perfume if they are just decorating the dresser? It's just not good because eventually the perfume will either evaporate or just go bad. Some perfumes (Clinique Happy for example) do have a short shelf life and go bad very quickly and I found out the hard way about that.

9. Visit perfume blogs like Now Smell This, Perfume Posse and many others. That's were you can find all kinds of perfume news and periodically there are perfume swaps. The things (perfumes) that you have been dying to get rid of and see if someone has something you are dying to try.

St. Patricks Day and Green

Saint Patrick's Day is coming up. That means that it's the time of corned beef, cabbage, carrots, potatoes and wearing green. Wearing green clothing is optional for me but wearing a green perfume isn't no matter what I am craving.It doesn't matter if I want Worth's Courtesan or Shalimar but a green perfume. I'm not talking the color green with perfume but the smell of green.

After reading lists of green perfumes from Perfume Shrine, I realized that I either don't own a full bottle of a lot of green perfumes or even have a decant. But I'm not running out and getting more green perfumes right this second. I have some that kind of push the whole green aspect though. I find that Mitsouko and Diorling do push the green aspect a little bit because they are not the overtly green type of perfume. Givenchy III is definitely green along with Deneuve and Chanel no 19. No 19 in it's various concentrations has various degrees of green. The current EDT is probably the sharpest green but my vintage EDP is even sharper than that. But the choice remains on which one do I pick out.

Of Taxes and Refunds and Bal a Versailles

Spring is slowly but surly getting here since we are having a minor heat wave in Cleveland. Everyone that I have talked to has just filed their taxes and now are waiting on some kind of refund. Some are yapping on how much they are getting back and how they plan to spend the money. I think it's pretty rude to brag about that. I have no problem with people just saying that they just did their taxes but bragging about refunds and what they will spend it on is just plain rude to me for some reason. I have just filed mine today and now have to wait on the government to accept my return.

I have always complained about not being able to find vintage Bal a Versailles PdT for a reasonable
price, when I actually could find it on E-bay. But the past couple weeks have been where I have found bottles for a decent price. But I am comparing the two partial bottles that I managed to get off of E-bay.Both of them definitely smell like Bal a Versailles PdT. But I am thinking that the half full bottle is of a much earlier date than my three quarters full bottle. The darker Bal a Versailles takes a couple minutes before it smells like it should but it seems to be a little heavier on the patchouli and what seems to be the little more recent bottle but both smell divine and I don't regret them at all. What is funny that I have spend a little more on the half full one. But vintage seems to command a higher price tag then most current formulations of the same scent.

Accidents in Perfume Land

The past couple of days have been rough. I had a sick dog that spent the night in the emergency vets office and some family drama but now I have had a perfume accident. I had procured a second teardrop bottle of Mitsouko and I had knocked it over trying to get at my jewelry box. Granted, the bottle was half full when I had bought it but now, I have lost a third of that precious perfume. Vintage Mitsouko is kind of hard to find and I am usually going for the ones in the teardrop bottle. Normally when I do find those teardrop Mitsouko bottles, they seem to be on the pricey side. Now my room and part of the hallway smells like vintage Mitsouko. So I guess that tomorrow's scent of the day will be vintage Mitsouko. I'm thinking that I shouldn't be having dabber bottles period but if it were a mini of Lolita Lempicka or my no 19 in parfum form, I think I would be less upset because they are easier and cheaper to replace. Yeah, I'm a little upset and PO'ed at myself even though my nightgown and part of my bedroom carpet is drenched in the rose/oakmoss combination and smells good.

My old TV stand that I was thinking of redoing to house my perfume will just have to be just cleaned out and wiped down or just get some IKEA shelving to deal with this. But I need to decide soon.

Running out of Space and Long Winter

Let's just say that it has been a really long winter and I can't wait for it to be over. I miss wearing short sleeved shirts and not having scaly skin on my face. Every winter, I find myself doing more laundry due to my perfume habits. Let's face it, after 3 or 4 wearings, various perfumes do tend to clash and annoy. It's kind of rare that I wear any perfume for more than two days in a row. But I have made some progress with using what I have, decant wise but not with full bottles. I have started to go through my worn and reviewed bag and throwing out mostly evaporated (after I use that last little bit) and the smaller decants. But right now, I am trying to find something better for my dry skin and nails.

But since I go through spurts of getting back ups and vintage, I am seriously running out of space on my dresser. I'm not kidding, it's starting to overflow with vintage and not only vintage but back ups and periodically something new. But I do have an idea for this. I am about to take an old but small TV stand and clean it our and fix it up for my perfume storage. I just can't take this almost no space on my dresser. It's competing for space with my Galileo thermometer collection.

On a better note, that vintage bottle of Mitsouko arrived two days ago. I am wary of dabber bottles of perfume on E-bay. Because I don't know if the seller has dumped out the original perfume and maybe filled it with something else. Just like my vintage teardrop bottle of Jicky, the pictures on E-day made the perfume look like water but I did ask before I bought it. And with a bottle this huge, I didn't want to spend a nice chunk of change on just a bottle

Stuff, Stuff and More Stuff

It's rare that I get any kind of compliments on my perfume wearing. But then again, my perfume collection contains a lot of "weird" perfumes that to a lot of people are too odd to smell good. So it is an event when I am complimented on my perfume and asked what am I wearing. A couple days ago, I was wearing vintage Mitsouko and was asked about it because it smelled good. It's funny how my vintages are the ones that people compliment me on. Current no 5 or Theorema? Nope, no compliments but vintage Mitsouko and vintage Bal a Versailles do. It kind of makes me wonder if people are a little tired of the fruity floral or patchouli mixes. But these wimpy things went out of style a long time ago.

But I've noticed that I really must stay off of E-bay and ignore Beauty Encounter's emails of 20% off. Due to the fact that I can't stop looking for vintage perfumes. But sometimes, ordering things can be annoying. I found a half used bottle of vintage Mitsouko on the 14th and it's now the 23rd and it hasn't arrived at my doorstep as of yet. Looking at the tracking number, it's been at the Kent, WA USPS facility since the 18th and hasn't moved since. But the almost full vintage Jicky that was ordered on the 19th, is going to land on my doorstep today. I am about to contact the seller for the Mitsouko and ask or contact USPS and ask what is the deal. Because when I pay good money for something, I kind of do expect decent service and whatever I bought in a reasonable amount of time. It's rare that something like this happens to me. But if I could just make up my mind on that sealed vintage no 5 and a large bottle of Havana Vanille, life would be great.

Lolita Lempicka for Her EDP Review

Since yesterday was Valentine's Day, I was looking for something fun and a little foody to wear to work yesterday. My eyes were going back and forth between L'Heure Bleue and the original Lolita Lempicka perfume. I chose Lolita Lempicka because it was more fun and a little more foody that L'Heure Bleue. People have said that it's a more toned down version on Angel but I never have consciously smelled Angel, so I wouldn't know but I can make the association between L'Heure Bleue and Lolita Lempicka.

I had initially drained a mini of Lolita Lempicka and did like it but couldn't quite smell a whole hell of a lot because the mini didn't spray to give a reading. Enter Beauty Encounter and the perpetual sales allowed me to get a spray bottle for dirt cheap. Not like it was expensive before but the pricing on Beauty Encounter was better than Fragrance Net that day. Lolita Lempicka is more edible smelling than L'Heure Bleue and smells a little more like it's price point but I do find the LL is a little more wearable than L'Heure Bleue. It's hard to find a situation to be wearing L'Heure Bleue due to the huge powder note but LL is a little more on the universal side of wear. I really do love Lolita Lempicka because it is different but not drastically so. Because it's sweeter and not as powdery.

But I do have to talk about the bottle though. I have always had spray perfumes where you had to take off the cap to spray but I was thrown for a loop with this one. The bottle, as in the picture, is in the shape of an apple and the stem is the spray part and I'm not used to a perfume where I don't have to pull off a cap to spray. I remember in reading the Guide, one of the authors had said that one of the Lolita Lempicka offerings bottle looked like something out of a Tim Burton movie and this one looks like it would be out of Tim Burton's Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and not out of his Sleepy Hollow or Sweeney Todd. I do think that the bottle is cool.

The Collection

Picking out what perfume I want to wear on any given day is a little tricky. Let's think about it, in the past four or five years, I have amassed a huge decant collection and a growing full bottle collection. And that leaves me with too many choices on some days and other days it's not big enough and that seems to lead to more minis, decants and bottles. I partly blame my love of window shopping on the internet.

But since I spend a couple days a week getting up at about 3 a.m. now, I kind of need to have a decant or two in my wristlette that doubles as a purse. On those days, I figure that I might want something different than the day before but do finding that I actually did want what I wore yesterday. I had kind of figured that when I am about to head out the door a little after 4, I'm not coherent enough to really think about perfume. But having that decant or two really does help with the whole production if I end up running late.

But I have started to go through my collection of perfume and started to wear those neglected bottles and wonder why I am relying on just no 5 and Shalimar. Part of the reason is that I have back ups of those out the wazoo and kind of need to start draining those bottle. I found that point of where you can have one too many bottles of the same perfume and when that happens, I need to get going on finishing a bottle. I think that it will be quite an event just to finish just one bottle but I need to get to get the show on the road with this.

This and That

I have no idea on what has happened to my nose over the past 3 or 4 days but all I know is that my sense of smell seems to be off. Could it be all the drywall dust that has clogged up my sinuses or could it be that I am flirting with a cold? I have no idea because the only perfumes that I can smell with some kind of ease is my Amouages. The rest of my collection I can only smell bits and pieces and it's not funny. So right now, it's the louder the perfume, the better I can smell it.

I did find out that in October, I will be traveling to the Dallas area for a wedding and I am already making plans on what perfumes to take with me. Should I stick with Jicky, a more polite skank and no 5? Or should I just wait it out? I am a little disappointed that I am traveling to Dallas a little to late for me to pick up Aldehyde 44 even though the closest thing that I have to it is no 22. But oh well, I have a few months to figure it out.

What constitutes a big trip to me is when it does involve a day or two in the car or a plane ride. The last time that I was on a plane was a little over 5 years ago and it took months and months of careful planning. But at this point, I'm leaning to flying down to Texas in the name of it would be a little cheaper and I am not spending two days in the car with someone who is elderly. But at this point, I pretty much know where my tax refund is going and it means that until November, I won't be getting anything new in terms of perfume other than the rare decant because it's not like I am going down to see family in Virginia and I could afford to get a couple bottles and some decants.

Wish Lists or To Buy Lists

Yesterday it struck me that my whole perfume wish or to buy list is mostly for backups right now. But my backups are for those pesky discontinued or vintage perfumes. I'm still kicking myself for not getting a bottle of Le Labo Aldehyde 44 when I could but my fun money was used up. But who knew that it would be discontinued and Chanel no 22 smells similar but not quite.

Since I am going through my collection and wearing things that I haven't worn in forever, it seems like that list has really grown. Wanting an extra bottle of Havana Vanille, Amouage Memior and my millionth bottle of Theorema and Shalimar are on the list. But I noticed when running my list, no 5 and Mitsouko are not on there. I'm thinking that because I am not so enamored with Mitsouko as I once was, I figured that I had enough or when I bought a full tear drop bottle with real oakmoss, it was time to stop. No. 5 just seems like when you have just about every concentration and maybe a back up or two of one, it's time to stop.

In a way, the whole back up bottle and having an already kind of large collection is counter productive. Let's think about it, I have probably more perfume than I will use in a lifetime and yet I keep acquiring more. I'm beginning to think that I need to finish one or two bottles in my collection before I go out and getting more.

Hold On Just One Minute

Quite a while ago, I had bought a bottle of vintage Chanel no 5 in EDC form off of E-bay and finally got around to giving it a go before bed last night. It hasn't gone bad or anything but the bottle smells like the middle part of no 5 in EDP form. I'm not kidding, it really does smell like that. But after reading The Guide by Turin and Sanchez and their take on all the variations on no 5, I have come to the conclusion that they haven't smelled the EDC version of no 5. The reason I say that is because I remember reading Turin saying that the EDP version of no 5 has no buisness in the no 5 universe because it smells like something from the 1980's. I have to disagree with that part because I was a child in the '80's and do remember, especially Obsession, what the '80's scents smell like. I have tried and own the EDP, EDT, and the EDC version of no 5 and I like the EDP version the best out of all that I own. In the beginning of my perfume journey, I did own a small bottle of the parfum version and used it up real quick and I can't remember what it smells like anymore but remember a fourth of an ounce was $95 but now $125. Thirty dollars might not seems like a lot, but it can be huge when one is about to get for a quarter of an ounce of perfume.

Still Remodeling and Comparisons

Now I am starting to wonder why I am limiting myself to what I wear. For almost three months, I really have limited myself to maybe the same 4 or 5 perfumes. But it kind of did start out with what is work friendly and wear those to work and on days off, I can wear whatever I damn well want. But then the holidays hit and I just seemed to continue on with wearing the same 4 or 5 perfumes. I doesn't mean that I have drained any bottles but have drained a few decants. I would have preferred to drain a bottle or two but I will take some drained decants. But wearing Theorema at work yesterday made me ask myself, why am I doing this? Is it more than if I have a really bad day at work, I don't want it ruined with an association of a horrible day? Perfume is meant to be enjoyed and worn not hoarded and not really enjoyed.

But since my bathroom is still being remodeled, I have spent time looking at my mother's small perfume collection. It's small to me because I have around 40 perfumes (not including backups) and hers is drastically different than mine. Besides the bottle of Chanel no 5 EDP that she occasionally wears, her collection is either heavy patchouli or some light, aquatic thing. But she does seem to prefer the light, aquatic stuff. Light and aquatic does not suit me and on skin, it's outright nasty in a way because there are just too many offerings just like it. And she finds my collection overwhelming and many of them old lady and weird smelling. But I love my Shalimar and vintage Bal a Versailles and wouldn't change my collection for hers.

Chanel no 5 EDT Vintage Review

After wearing a lot if no 19 and a couple other things in my collection, I realized on how I kind of was getting bored with wearing no 19 and just wearing the same old thing, I kind of needed a break. When I reached into my unworn/unreviewed bag, I pulled out a vintage decant of no 5 in EDT form and decided to give it a go yesterday, even though it broke my rule of not wearing anything new to work.

When I first put vintage no 5 on, it kind of was that whole funky vintage opening and then after a couple minutes, it became what I recognized as no 5. I kept thinking that I was gypped and wasn't impressed at all. Then I was smelling what I think were the nitro musks and I was head over heels in love with the vintage version. The current version is squeaky clean where the vintage version isn't so squeaky clean. The vintage version isn't outright dirty or skanky but hints around at a dirty side. All day yesterday, I couldn't stop smelling my wrist because it smelled that good. I wish that nitro musks and a whole lot of other things were banned because it is really starting to make modern perfumery a joke.

Remodels and Anxiety

I just love it when there is something in the house that is being remodeled. Right now, bathrooms and the kitchen is being redone. Well, one bathroom is gutted and the construction guys are about to install the bathtub and do the tiles and my kitchen is somewhat functional. Needless to say, it's anxiety inducing because of having people you don't know in your house and wondering if they are judging you about lots of things that I won't even mention. Don't even get me started on my dogs. My dogs are going between excited to anxious then not happy because I have to put them in my bedroom to keep them out of the way. Yes, my house has never been the cleanest because of two dogs but it's even worse with no pantry and construction dust everywhere. And remodeling is expensive so that makes the anxiety much worse. I hope that at the end of this month, this stuff will be done.

After helping out some rearranging and moving the computer room to a guest bedroom because I might get a grandmother staying over for a month because of a knee replacement, I was without a computer and internet for a day and a half. It's amazing because my computer desk breaks and I am lugging an old kitchen table to use as a computer desk, on how dependant I have become on a computer and internet for shopping, entertainment, bill pay and much more. Let's just say that I have played a ton on Monopoly on my Kindle than anything else.

But during this time, I have been using up my decant of no 19 in EDT form partly because I am not wild about no 19 in EDT form and the other part is needed something to combat the anxiety. I have been trying to use up my decant of Cuir de Russie as well. With Cuir de Russie, I have that huge 6.8 ounce bottle that I am wondering why I am hoarding and the half ounce bottle of parfum that does need some hoarding due to the fact that I can't afford $200 or more on a half an ounce of parfum every month and a half. I can only afford $50-$100 on decants and maybe a full bottle every month if I wanted to.

Difficult

It's a new year and I haven't really been inspired to blog about anything until today. For the past few days, I have been wearing Chanel no 22, Patou Joy and Shalimar and had a few half baked blog posts in mind but one stuck out in particular when I wore Joy.

Now, Patou Joy is one of my perfume loves because of the huge jasmine note and I love a huge jasmine note in perfume. Joy has that whole indolic jasmine and rose combination going on. It's bright and sunny but not 'heavy' like one would get in Nuda due to my arch enemy, tuberose. But Joy is difficult to wear because of the indoles. On Thursday, I wore Joy because I haven't worn in at least 6 months and people were yapping about cat pee and I realized that I don't wear Joy that often because people keep complaining about the cat pee and I don't even have a cat. Then, I did realize why I really don't wear Joy too often.

Chanel no 22 in vintage form is another one that can be a little difficult because of the powder. It's funny though, in the current formulation of no 22, there seems to be a whole lot less of the powder note but people do say that it smells funny or like bug spray, so I guess winter wear of no 22 is out of the question.