Saving Money Sucks...Kinda

Ever since I made the decision to file for bankruptcy, I have been making some strides in saving money. What is pretty much making me save money is the fact that it's in my best interest to get a lawyer for the bankruptcy. They know the ins and outs of this stuff and I don't.

Since tax day happened almost 10 days ago, I have only gotten my state refund and tomorrow I will getting the federal refund. In years past, I would have plans for that those refunds. Those plans were spending it but I had a plan to spend it on certain things. The first thing was to pay my cellphone bill and get some dog food and the rest would be spent on candles and perfume. But that's pretty much gone and the refund is going for the lawyer and bankruptcy fees. It is hard to see that money sitting in my bank account and I can't spend it. Well, I can spend it but it's not a very wise idea.

So this saving money thing kind of sucks. I've had to say no to a few candle sales, I've had to tell my perfume to buy list that they are going to have to wait a while. I mostly by passed the Sephora spring sale and only got a hand lotion and lip gloss. Yes, I want to get those things but I can't quite justify blowing any kind of money on fun things. I am allowing some fun things but I have to keep an eye on the cost and how often I am doing those fun things. I have had to restructure my grocery shopping and tried to cancel my Barkbox subscription. Barkbox is only allowing me to skip 2 months of Barkbox. I might not exactly be thrilled and it's on a couple levels. They made it damn near impossible to just cancel and not so thrilled not to see my dogs tear around the house with their new toys every month. But I think that it's mostly the little purchases that get me in the end. It's not like things were almost 10 years ago. I was working more and that meant that I had more disposable income and credit cards. And that was the beginning of many years of money mismanagement. And now I am paying for that 10 plus years of money mismanagement. I hope things will get a little bit better and I am able to ignore the Bath and Body Works semi annual sale. I would really like to finish off some of my candles before I get more of them.
 

BDK Tubereuse Imperiale Review

Since I went wild with Gris Charnel, I decided to test out another BDK perfume. Luckyscent was having a 10% off and free shipping on everything in their store, I made a jump for the Tubereuse Imperiale travel spray, even though I probably shouldn't have done it. It's not all that often that Luckyscent has a sale. I try not to regret things and I am trying to not spend money all wily nilly here, I have things that I need to pay for and I just have to spend less in general. But I figure for a grand total of $43 (tax included) for a 10ml travel spray, what did I have to lose?

It was my parents' 43rd wedding anniversary today and they decided that I was to tag along for dinner. I was thinking about wearing Tigress Musk but that wasn't exactly suited to the occasion but I wanted something a little different from my normal stuff. And after that 18 hour power outage from Friday night to Saturday afternoon, I was a little sick of CdG Kyoto.

This tuberose is a strange one. It doesn't smell like a fully mature tuberose bloom, more of a young bloom. It's like when a rose bud is just starting to open and give off it's scent. I did notice that it has a marginal green type of smell but also has a little bit of a metholated type of smell, like I smelled in Tuberose Criminalle. But there was something in the whole set up that reminded me of something else that I owned and I couldn't quite put my finger on exactly which one. All through dinner it was bothering me. Then it came to me, the supporting notes gave a distinct the form of the original Chanel Coco. As much as I do like Coco, it does have that 80's vibe to this. But if Coco were to be updated, I would like it to go more of Tubereuse Imperiale without altering it to the point of not recognizing it.

The tuberose does fade into the background but not fully into the background. The spices do come out to play a little bit more and since I am in the dry down, I am smelling a little bit of vanilla, it's not a whopping dose but it's in there. I applied this at 3 this afternoon and it's a little after 11 and it's slowly starting to fade. Personally, I would and will stick to the 10ml travel spray because I can't really justify a full bottle of this, even if I do like it a fair bit.
 

The Eclipse and Amouage Dia

 In spite of working Monday, I did manage to catch the eclipse. Working retail, I wasn't so sure that I would be allowed to see any of it. The store manager had said as long as we didn't have customers in the department or on the phone, we could watch the eclipse. Everyone expected the store to be a ghost town until quarter to 4. It was nice enough but I sure as shit didn't appreciate the idiots in the housing development setting off fireworks during it. Fireworks can be fun but even with the sun being fully covered, it wasn't dark enough for it. Maybe someone wanted to attempt some kind of cool pictures but the whole concept was pretty stupid (setting off fireworks). There was so much talk about this eclipse over the past year, I think that it wasn't really worth the hype.

Usually as a rule, I don't wear any Amouage offerings at work but Monday was a little bit of an exception. I had a wicked craving for it. I remember in my early days of perfume collecting, I wore the living daylights out of Dia. Now, not so much. While I still love the first 10 minutes and it's massive aldehyde blast, there is something that really starts to bother me after about 3 or 4 hours and for the life of me, I can't pinpoint where or why it bothers me. I would still like to give Dia 40 a go. 

But I have noticed that STC and TPC haven't been adding a whole lot to their stock or even replenishing things like they have in years past. I wonder if  inflation or shipping issues is to blame. That is probably part of it. I have to keep in mind that Amouage is a pretty expensive brand. STC hasn't had a sale in a long time, the last one was probably shortly before the pandemic and TPC had one at New Year's I think. But I haven't been buying decants all that often. Now is not the time to be seeking out decants anyway.

Getting Back to the Basics

Since I have made the decision to declare bankruptcy and working on scrapping together the money for stuff related to that, I am starting to get back to some basics. I mean really starting to get back to basics.

These past couple weeks have been really hard. Bath and Body Works had a BOGO candle sale and 2 of those 40% off everything in the store sales. I only participated in the first one and that was it and I did get a little bit and that little bit was no more than $25. I had to draw the line somewhere and what I want to start doing is start using up my candle collection. This spring and summer, I really want to make a dent in my collection. Spring is on the way and with working 3 days a week, I believe that I can make a decent dent in my 84 count candle collection. What is working in my favor is that even though there is that Bridgerton collection, I did get the Diamond of the Season single wick candle. If I am not to impressed with that candle, I don't think that I would be too impressed with the others. By September, I want to get down to under 60 candles. I figure with the the temps creeping up and the notion of being able to leave windows open, I can have 2 candles going at a time. If I have 2 candles going on at once, it's probably going to have to be the single wick ones only.

The only thing from Ulta that I am probably going to be buying are the Tula hair, skin, nail and gut health gummy vitamins. I have to remember that I am trying to save money to get rolling on the bankrupcy but I also have to really watch myself during the whole process. I don't want to get the stink eye from anyone and not have it go through. I want to able to explain everything that I can, even though the lawyer said that a trustee is really making sure that I am not hiding assets or money and that I really am broke.

Even though I am on a full bottle no buy type of deal I did partake in the Luckyscent sale but I had only gotten myself a travel spray of the BDK Tuberose Imperial and a rollerball of Clinique Happy in Paradise. Those are birthday gifts so those can be explained, I think that any gift giving that I do, has to be a modest amount. I am almost tempted to hang on to the Happy one even though I have so much of the original Happy as it is.

But where I have really gotten back to basics is with my perfume collection. I've started to really go back to wearing my Chanel perfumes and to a lesser extent, some of my Amouage perfumes. I've been wearing a whole lot more of no 5 and some Coco Mademoiselle. On days off, I have been wearing tons of either Lyric or Epic. But I am trying to see what full bottles I can use up as well. I think that it would be a pretty wise idea to see what perfumes that I can use up and make my collection a little smaller and a little more manageable. So I think that I should start to focus more on 2 or 3 perfumes and see what I can do with finishing some more bottles. But I think I am going to go with the smaller bottles first. I think that I ought to start using up my decants as well.

I do kind of hate having to watch the spending because I am overhauling my life due to money. I got depressed, buy this and you will feel better. I got bored or there was a good sale on something and I would buy something. It's the frivolous spending that gets me and that has to change. I have had to put up some boundaries with the people that I live with. Just because I work at a grocery store, I can't keep buying groceries for family members and not get the money upfront. The excuse of "it just popped into my head and we do need this" can't fly anymore. It's the little expenses that keep happening is wasteful and the wasteful spending just can't happen right now. But I want to see what I can do with the smaller changes right now.
 

Bath and Body Works Bridgerton Collection

 Does anyone remember when Urban Decay did a release of Game of Thrones makeup? I do. The only thing that I was interested in was the lipstick part of that line up. There were a couple shades of lipstick that I really wanted but everything with that lineup was sold out at Sephora but I managed to nab the last White Walker lipstick. Sadly, I wasn't able to score more of the lipsticks from that line. In the past 5 years, it seems like makeup companies are hopping on the whole whatever is hot at the moment and let's do a collaboration type of thing.

I don't ever recall Bath and Body Works doing something like this. Granted, I started getting back into Bath and Body Works in 2019 and their Candle Day was going on. I would have thought that they would have tried some of that a little earlier. Say when Downton Abbey was going on or maybe Lord of the Rings or even Star Wars. It looks like the first foray into this whole thing is Bridgerton. When I went to Bath and Body Works on Sunday, there wasn't any kind of hint of this lineup at my store. I have heard that other stores having some of the collection. I think that they were focusing on the 40% off promo that they had going on. Yes, I did partake in the sale but only bought 1 candle. I hardly ever set foot in a Bath and Body Works brick and mortar store and I was a little disappointed that there wasn't even 1 candle of the Bridgerton line for me to smell. Diamond of the Season was already online and being sold. When I came home on Sunday, I realized that I had a free reward that I wanted to use. So I used that reward today to at least try the Diamond of the Season single wick candle. Even though I did the but 2 for $24, I didn't get the Diamond candle for free. Probably because the candle without the deal is almost $20 per candle.

But the biggest shock for me with the whole Bridgerton lineup is the price. Bath and Body Works candles are expensive enough as it is but in a lot of ways, this is pretty telling. If Bath and Body Works is going to keep doing collaborations, it's going to be pretty pricey, even for one thing. A 3 wick will run you a little over $30 and I refuse to pay anything over $14 for a single candle. With how many Bath and Body Works candles get released in a season, some of the pricing for a little extra decoration on the label is a little out there. I am already down and out financially and using up my gift card stash for gifts or to replace things that I use on the regular.

The Hard Decision

Today, I had to make a very hard decision to declare bankruptcy. I am meeting with a lawyer to discuss the next few steps tomorrow morning. 

This step was probably a year in the making but for a good year, I pretty much stuck my head in the stand but with some things being as they are, I can't afford to put off this next step any longer. My mental health has really been struggling these past few months. I've been agonizing over this decision for a couple months. I can't take the constant phone calls and all kinds of threats anymore. I am still trying to make this a better year for myself and it's still questionable at this point. This means that I am probably won't be buying much of anything outside of bare bones basics for at least 4 months. Any full bottle purchases are on hold.

I have always struggled with autism and mental health and one of my biggest downfalls is overspending and executive functioning. Most of the time, I can only think a week ahead of time, two if I am lucky. If something is a month away and I need to save $200, it never happens. Ulta or Bath and Body Works is having a fabulous sale, I'm spending money. I will spend money on things that I don't need but yet don't have the money for the things that I need, like paying my cellphone bill or groceries. I am trying to make some changes now but for the next few months, there will be more drastic changes but I don't know what they will be. Quite frankly, at this point, I'm scared. The only things I own that people might be interested in would be my candles, perfume and maybe some jewelry. Okay, the only thing people might be interested in is the jewelry but I don't have much of that. I don't have anything in terms of assets but the fact remains is that filing bankruptcy scares the shit out of me. I am wondering on what I will be able to do and not do during the whole process.

I still intend to blog about perfume and many things but I might not be blogging a whole lot. Or my blog might take a different direction.

 

Shalimar

 Today seemed to be a day where many people, myself included, wore Shalimar. This is due to the fact that on Now Smell This, the Friday community project is to wear something vanilla in perfume. It looks like a few were starting out the week with Shalimar. But I did get into some thinking about Shalimar.

It seems like in the past year, Guerlain has released flanker after flanker of Shalimar. There were a couple times that I did have the means to get a bottle but something else demanded my financial attention. So the last time I managed to try and really like a Shalimar flanker is when the Ode a la Vanilles came out. At that time, I had managed to get my grubby hands on the Mexican version and not the Madagascar version. So off and on throughout the years, I have looked around to see if I could get a sighting of the Madagascar but whenever I did see a bottle, it was major money. For some reason the Mexican version seems to be the easier to procure one and it might be that more people might have liked the Madagascar one. I know that I appreciated the Madagascar one more. I found it to be richer, a little more smokey and just enjoyed it more. It's not to say that the Mexican version isn't great, it is but I prefer what I prefer. And I am kicking myself for discovering the Parfum Initial version of Shalimar long after it was discontinued.

But I am not exactly thrilled with all the limited edition flankers. It seems like if I manage to get one and either really like it or love it, it's gone before I can get a backup bottle. Then I scout E-Bay and see that it's more than a car payment and the bottle might be half empty. Paying upwards of $150 for a half used bottle of anything isn't happening, those days are long gone. This means that I must make a better effort to enjoy what I have and start using up what I have. But that is easier said than done.

Bath and Body Works Lavender Iris Review

Way back when, I was a huge Bath and Body Works fan girl. This is back when minimum wage was only $4.95 an hour. And this is when I was 14 and was starting out in the working world. So 18 hours a week at $4.95 per hour isn't a whole lot of cash today but at 14, it was a lot of money. Granted, even then, I knew that I couldn't buy a whole lot. So Bath and Body Works was my go to in terms of anything perfume for the most part. For $25, I could get matching soap, lotion and body spray and this was in the mid to late 90's and that was a bargain. Now Bath and Body Works has gotten pretty pricey and maybe a little too big for it's britches. The quality has gradually gone down and the prices has gone up. Eventually, I had to start paying for college and my expenses had gone up. When that happened, I didn't have the extra cash for Bath and Body Works and I eventually forgot about Bath and Body Works and perfume in general.

Candles did reignite my Bath and Body Works interest and have started to explore the bath stuff again. I became fixated on the aromatherapy line and saw the Lavender Iris line up and had to try it. I haven't broken into the body wash and lotion yet but decided to give the essential oil stuff a go.

This essential oil mist is sold as a multi purpose type of thing. You can spray it on clothes, bedding and on skin and I decided to wear it as perfume. I will say that the biggest note from start to finish was lavender and it was especially huge in the beginning. I kept waiting and waiting for the iris to show up and the faintest whisper of iris did show up. The iris that I am used to is what is in Infusion d'Iris, no 19 and Iris Silver Mist. No 19 and Iris Silver Mist is a carroty, root like type of iris and Infusion d'Iris is more of the higher class type of iris. There was a review somewhere that said that Lavender Iris was like Prada's Infusion d'Iris and truth be told, I am not smelling any resemblance to it. I almost got a Jicky type of vibe to Lavender Iris. I know that it is something from Bath and Body Works is not exactly high end stuff but for the price point and brand, I kind of do expect something a little better put together. This is pretty much a glorified room spray trying to masquerade as a perfume. Until they bring back Milk and Honey, Gardenia Lily or Night Blooming Jasmine, I will stick to the candles.

 

More First World Problems

 It looks like Chanel has raised their prices, again. I know this is a first world problem but it seems like three or four months ago, they jacked up their prices. The regular lineup (no 5, no 19, Coco etc) is at least $10 more but the Les Exclusifs line is a different matter.

Chanel's Les Exclusif line started out as 6.8 ounces of the EDT for only $200. Twelve years ago, that was a bargain but that has changed. But lots has changed with the Les Exclusifs line. Now they offer a 2.5 ounce size, the line has expanded, EDT to EDP changes and some have a parfum version. In those twelve years, the prices have gone up. Back in March of2021, I had bought the Coromandel EDP and the cost was $200 for a 2.5 ounce bottle. Then in December of that year I had bought the parfum version of Coromandel for $240. The price of Coromandel parfum will set you back $305 for a half an ounce. The EDP of Coromandel will cost you $325 for a 2.5 ounce bottle and a 6.8 ounce bottle runs at $500. And that means that I won't be getting any of the Les Exclusifs line any time soon or any Chanel perfume for quite a while. I do wonder if Chanel wants to compete with Amouage in price. Amouage has always been expensive from the get go but the quality has always been there. The quality of Chanel can't compete with Amouage.

I do own quite a bit of both Chanel and Amouage and there are ways I can get bottles of Amouage for less. I can get an Amouage offering for less on Fragrancenet or Beautyencounter but Chanel keeps a vice like grip on who can and who cannot sell their stuff. But I think that Chanel has gotten greedy and at this point, I won't be getting anymore Chanel perfumes.

By Killian Good Girl Gone Bad Review

 Last year, my friend got me a Sephora gift card for Christmas and I wondered on what I was going to get with the gift card he got me. There is nothing that is inexpensive at Sephora and due to that, I don't really shop at Sephora. After poking around the Sephora website, I found a By Killian sample set and with the gift card and $10 reward that I had, I had only paid something like $10 for it. So it's been sitting around for a while and now have gotten around to trying it. I've never paid much attention to the By Killian line up because I can't afford to fall in love with another expensive perfume brand. Off and on, I've wanted to try Good Girl Gone Bad.

When I first put Good Girl Gone Bad, I was quickly hit with the D&G Light Blue vibe. I couldn't help but be pissed. It's bad enough that I smell Light Blue as it is. My mother adores Light Blue and tons of people at work wear it as well. I despise Light Blue and things similar to it, there is something about it that rubs me the wrong way. After about an hour, Good Girl Gone Bad had changed. The Light Blue vibe was still there but it had turned to Feminite du Bois. At that point I was like, what in the actual fuck? I do love Feminite du Bois and own a couple bottles but this was crazy and not really in a good way to my nose. I'm not going for a Feminite du Bois knock off and if I wanted to layer both Light Blue and Feminite du Bois, I would do that. I'm guessing the Light Blue is the Good Girl part and Feminite du Bois is the Gone Bad. Maybe I have been huffing to much MKK or Bal a Versailles but I am getting nothing that would be remotely sexy. Maybe sexy has been sanitized a little too much but this isn't doing it for me. So I am going to give God Girl Gone Bad a pass.

Coty Sand and Sable Review

No more than a month back, Tom and someone else over at Perfume Posse was talking about Coty's Sand and Sable. Coty is probably the most prolific perfume house out there. It seems like every celebrity who wants to make a perfume goes pretty much through Coty. Even when they aren't doing a celebrity scent, they will release perfumes like Sand and Sable.

Coty must take Estee Lauder's advice of perfume should be an everyday luxury to an extreme. Just about every Coty perfume that I have ever seen has been dirt cheap and Sand and Sable is not exception.

When Tom mentioned that he got his bottle for next to nothing, I bopped over to Fragrancenet and Sand and Sable cost next to nothing for a little over a third of an ounce. The price point amazed me and I figured, how bad can it really be? I already had a Lolita Lempicka travel spray in my cart. So I got them and waited for them to show up on my doorstep. Did you know that Fragrancenet now has some kind of rewards program going on? I did know about it last year when they launched it but promptly forgot about it. I hardly shop at Fragrancenet anymore and never really shopped there to begin with. I have gotten more mileage with the rewards system at Ulta and even Sephora. If Luckyscent offered a rewards program and years ago, I might have started to shop there more consistently.

I wasn't expecting too much out of Sand and Sable. By the notes, it sounded like it was going to be a big white floral vibe going on. Truth be told, it isn't as big as I thought it would be. I do see gardenia listed as a note but a serious perfume snob is going to know that there is isn't any real gardenia in perfume just like there isn't any real lilac in En Passant. But there it is, something that kind of smells like gardenia but I am mostly smelling tuberose and this tuberose isn't cloying like Fracas  Tuberose can be a tough note to love because it can be suffocating. This tuberose smelled beachy and there was a sunscreen note to this one. I did smell a little bit of jasmine in there along with a hint of musk. For a cologne, the longevity was pretty good and I don't think that it was a heavy or dense perfume. It would be heavy and dense if I over applied Sand and Sable. The bottle that Sand and Sable comes in is incredibly plain and if I was vaguely looking at the perfume counter at CVS or any drugstore, I wouldn't have looked twice at it or picked up on it at all. I think that the third of an ounce that I do have is more than enough for me.
 

I've Changed My Mind...Sort Of

Earlier this year, I have made some resolutions. The first one was not to buy anymore candles. I failed pretty early on but I got back on the band wagon. I haven't really been using my candles so much but when the weather gets warmer, I will start using them. My candles have been a bone of contention at my house and the only time I can have them lit is if I have a window open. Since we are in the ugliest part of winter, it's not a wise idea to have windows open. So I have to wait until the temps warm up and will stay warm before I can have a candle continually lit.

My second resolution was to limit myself to buying only two full bottles of perfume this year. Those bottles could not be back up bottles of anything. While I do love the extrait version of Gris Charnel, I don't think that I really want a full bottle of that this year. I know that the Eau de Hongrie is still in the cards but due to some more serious financial constraints that are popping up, I might not be able to get any perfume until maybe October of this year or maybe next year.. But that let's me work on seeing what I can do with finishing up some bottles of perfume and using up some decants. I do have quite a few that I haven't tried and really need to start wearing those and get on a regular schedule when it comes to writing reviews. But frivolous purchases are on the back burner for a long time right now. And that means anything that sounds like it might be considered "fun" is going to have to wait if it costs more that $25. I honestly thought that things were turning around with the finances but I was wrong. Trips are out of the question and the ghost hunt that I was thinking about is pretty much postponed until a later date.

Today was pretty interesting. The decision was made to replace my old bed frame with a new one. This new bed frame is going to take a little getting used to. My old bed frame sat fairly low to the ground and this new one is pretty high up. While my dad and I were putting this thing together, I couldn't help but think is how much more vacuuming that wasn't getting done with the old bed frame. I was thinking of vacuuming after my new bed was set up but by then, I wasn't so willing to do it. Since I don't have to work tomorrow, I can get it done then. Today was the first Sunday that my mother didn't have any football (not soccer) to watch and she was a little depressed over that and tonight was the season 4 finale of All Creatures Great and Small. Now there isn't anything too interesting to watch on TV until Call the Midwife begins on St Patrick's Day.
 

Valentine's Day

 It's Valentine's Day here and for those who follow the Catholic faith, it's Ash Wednesday. I work in a bakery and had to deal with the overload of paczi yesterday. If I didn't work at a bakery, I wouldn't have had a clue about Fat Tuesday or Ash Wednesday. But the paczi that we sell at my store is an overrated jelly doughnut. You would probably have a better paczi if you went to an old school Polish bakery.

I'm not following Valentine's Day either. I might be off but I am not with anyone, so I have nobody to celebrate it with. I am waiting for tomorrow because I want the half priced Valentine's candy. But we shall see if I really want to be out and about tomorrow. Probably not though.

I'm pretty sure that many people have bought their significant others jewelry, candy, flowers and perfume. I was thinking about that I think would be great perfumes for a Valentine's gift. Then I got to thinking about a list of solid choices for Valentine's perfumes, even though I am bathed in the traumatically discontinued Fendi Theorema. The people at Fendi were total morons for getting rid of Theorema.

I have to start off with Lyric. Since the Valentine's colors are red, pink and white, the bottle fits with the general color theme. Since roses seem to be the most gifted flower on this day, the spicy rose of Lyric fits the day. Lyric is one of my most loved perfumes and probably the first Amouge that I fell head over heels in love with and then Epic was my second. Yeah, Amouage is expensive and probably the most expensive brand on this list but you only live once.

The original Shalimar is going to have to be my 2nd choice in all of it's vanilla goodness. Shalinar isn't a straight up vanilla thing, there are more moving parts. There is the citrus aspect of it and whatever else is in there to make Shalimar a little on the slutty side. I haven't tried too many of the Shalimar flankers outside the Ode a la Vanilles. Shalimar is pretty affordable but the Ode a la Vanilles from around 2010/12 and crazy expensive if you can find them.

My third choice would have to be the tried and true and probably my lamest pick on the list is Chanel no 5 in extrait form or the edt form. You could possibly get away with the edp version but the extrait and edt are the first two versions of no 5 that came out. I would ignore all the other no 5 flankers for Valentine's Day. Coco said that she wanted no 5 to smell like a woman and not a flower. In the '20's, that was revolutionary in terms of perfume but that would be a whole different post. With no 5, outside of the aldehydes, no other note sticks out but no 5 wants you to move in a little closer.

I was thinking of putting Mitsouko on the list but outside of perfume nuts, who really would seek out Mitsouko? She is a little too strange and maybe a little too harsh for a lot of people. I am thinking it's a little too strange. I am leaving out vintage Bal a Versailles due to the fact that it's vintage and can be a little on the pricey side. Plus I don't think that most can deal with the outright slut in vintage Bal a Versailles.

Not Exactly Amused

I have blogged about having my Afterpay account frozen and wanting to pay it off before I thawed it out? I decided to pay the rest of the stupid thing off a week early and thawed it out. Because I was stupid and needed to make a payment arrangement to make sure it was paid off, Afterpay has reduced my limit to $100. I fully expected them to reduce that $1,400 limit to maybe $200 at worst and maybe $400 at most. Between those two numbers, it was a usable amount  and very workable amount. I just wasn't expecting something that severe. Afterpay's reasoning was to "encourage responsible spending" but after reading tons of posts on Reddit, Afterpay seems to be on everyone's shit list. People who have never paid late or made excessive purchases are getting denied for orders or their limits reduced. Some are only getting a limit of $50 and that isn't a usable limit at all. I am going to use the $100 that I have and maybe use that for gift cards and then get the things that I will need. Maybe by March or April, May at the very latest, I might have a $300 limit. So perfume purchases have been pushed back and probably way back. I am okay with that though. With having Afterpay paid off and the rest of my cellphone bill will be paid next week, I can rework my budget and I am a little more relaxed at this point. Paying $75 every two weeks was starting to kill my bank account. But it looks like Afterpay might not be doing all that great if orders are being denied or limits being slashed to something unusable along with taking away the no upfront payment feature.

Tax season has started in the US and I got my W-2 in the mail a few days ago. I could have filed it yesterday or today but I am being a little lazy about it right now. I don't want to file it right now, even though I am going to receive a small refund. The extra funds would be beneficial to me but I have to wait until what others decide what is about to happen with the cellphone business that we have going on. Are they getting their own plan or wanting to stay on my plan and just upgrade their phones? And this is another first world problem. I had let someone know that if she wants an iPhone, she either pays for the entire thing upfront or she goes and gets her own plan, my budget doesn't support an iPhone. What I would really love to do is upgrade my phone, pay the activation fee and just bank the rest of the money.

I am trying not to go out and get back ups of anything this year and mostly succeeding at this point. I would love to get a backup bottle of Chanel no 5 in extrait form. Even though Sephora has it and will have a spring sale around April, I must remind myself that I have tons of no 5 already and I don't need more of it. I want to finish up another bottle or two of no 5 and must finish the extrait bottle that I already have before I can consider getting another extrait bottle. This is a year were I am more motivated to make some changes to my life. To have a better relationship with money, to use up more things (like candles and perfume) and actually go out and do more. By trying not to buy stuff, means that I can save some money to actually go out and do things. At the end of the day, I just want to enjoy life a little more. I am tired of being invited to go out and do something but have to turn down the invitation due to money. I would like to live a little bit more and live a little better.
 

Trying to Use Decants and Vintage Bal a Versailles

 I've started to do a little bit of what Portia from the Perfume Posse is doing. She is using up some of her decants and maybe some bottles. The idea makes perfect sense though. When you've got a million bottles of perfume already and billions of perfume decants running around, things start to happen, especially if you have some dabber bottles of perfume. So after finishing off that bottle of Chanel no 5 edt, I want to get into the spirit of that and actually do it. Thus far, I have finished a dabber decant of Lyric edp and a decant of Lyric extrait. I have tons of Amouage Lyric and I figured that it would be a great place to start. It's all in the baby steps people, all in the baby steps.

I was rooting around that huge perfume tub that I have in the "guest" bedroom. That guest bedroom is kind of like our formal dining room table. The rooms that nobody in my house really uses but it's a place where tons of things just end up. I am not exactly sure why a was rummaging around in there but I was. Two things occurred to me. 

The first thing is to organize the stupid tub. Things are on their side and they shouldn't be. That makes everything more prone to spilling and what is even more important is the potential for things to break. When you have a fair bit of vintage perfume, you can't afford either of those. Because vintage is, you know, expensive.

The second thing would be evaporation from the dabber bottles. I had found what is probably my largest bottle of perfume. My 9 ounce lyre bottle of vintage Bal a Versailles showed some signs. I'm thinking that 2 forces with that bottle are at work. The outside of the bottle smelled like vintage Bal a Versailles but the bottle was sealed and I remember the bottle being a little fuller than it is now. I'm thinking that since I found that bottle more on it's side, I think that the alcohol content of the perfume started working on the unbroken seal of it. I think that I probably have more vintage BaV than I know what to do with but I am not exactly a fan of evaporation. It's all the more reason to go through all of my perfumes that don't have a spray mechanism and really start using them up. Then I won't have to freak out so much over evaporation and I might manage to create some space. Now if my candles would quit multiplying, I would be happy.

Gris Charnel Extrait Updated

Back in April or May, I did a review on the extrait version of Gris Charnel. At that time, I had just a little dabber sample and the full bottle version is a spray. Now that I have a spray decant of it, I can review it a little better.

There is a bigger depth and richness in the extrait version. I will make a note that the fig seems to be kind of buried in other things like vanilla and there isn't that kind of mouthfeel that I am familiar with in the original Gris Charnel. The extrait version is pretty intense and lasts a good long time on skin. But I think that getting a bottle of Gris Charnel extrait is going to be a purchase for late this year or maybe even next year and I will tell you why.

Sometime between May and today, there was some kind of price hike for the extrait version. The original price for the extrait was $280 and now the price has been jacked up to $305. It might be a $25 price increase but a $25 price increase for a bottle of perfume can mean the difference on if I will get it or not, even with Afterpay. So a Gris Charnel extrait bottle is not in the cards right now. But I have a couple other ideas on what can replace the Gris Charnel extrait. Maybe the Phi Une Rose Kandahar from Andy Tauer and the Eau de Hongarie from Viktoria Minya would probably work. I am holding off on getting any kind of perfume right now but come February, that might be a little bit of a different story.
 

It's Been Two Years

It's been two years that Jake has been gone and the grief hasn't lessened too much. In some ways, I can't believe that Jake has died. I am still waiting to hear him "talk" to me about feeding him his dinner a little earlier than normal. There are so many things that I did with Jake that miss terribly. The funny thing is the last few days that Jake was still alive, we had a pretty big snow storm and we just got through one yesterday. Every night, I still have to wish Jake goodnight before I fall asleep. I still remember how his coat felt under my hands when I would pet him and the look he would give when I stopped petting him. I still do not regret taking those calling off work for those two days to spend that time with Jake. It was extra time with Jake. What I miss the most is just being with him. Even when we were not doing anything, it was the being together that meant the most. I have been trying to keep myself busy the past few days to keep from not stewing about the things that I might have been able to do differently the last couple months that Jake was alive. At the end of the day, I don't think that it would have bought me extra time with Jake or improved his quality of life. The most important thing is that Jake was loved all of those eleven years that I had with him and we gave him the best quality of life we could give him.

I am just two payments away from paying off my Afterpay balance. I am debating on if I should keep my account frozen for a couple weeks after it's paid off or unfreeze it and make a Luckyscent order. I keep window shopping Luckyscent website and I have taken to window shopping the Nordstrom website. I keep promising myself that I wouldn't go and buy more than 2 full bottles of perfume this year. With that resolution, even though I haven't bought any new bottles of perfume, I am wavering on it. I want the back up bottle of the Chanel no 5 parfum. I doubt that it's going to discontinued any time soon but with Afterpay, I have the "funds" to get a bottle. My whole New Year's resolution is mainly to spend less money and not be living paycheck to paycheck so much. I am seeing some results of not spending so much. I am not quite as worried about being so thin on funds by Monday. I might have hiccups along the way but I really want to work on building a better relationship with money and shopping. I would love to  be able to take a short trip in the next year or two and if I can build a better way to spend money, a short trip is possible.
 

The Weather Outside is Fightfull...Sort Of

Supposedly we are in the midst of some winter storm weather. For once, it looks like the only time I have to be at work is 4pm on Saturday or out of the house in general. I've already been to the grocery store to make sure that I had some milk, bread and one or two other things.

With winter storms it's always the same old song and dance type of thing. Make sure that the house it cleaned up. That cleaning means that vacuuming was done, dishes are done and 90% of the laundry has been done. But I do have to remember that I live in the snow belt of Ohio. It could be a couple inches or a foot of snow. I just wanted to make sure that many things are in order if I lose electricity. The less dirt I have to look at, the better when the electricity goes out.

If I do lose electricity, I have plenty of candles to get me through at least a couple weeks. I still have a Leather and Brandy candle going and the next two candles that I have picked out are Vanilla Bean Noel (three wick and single wick). If I lose electricity and use those candles that I picked out already, I have no idea on what candle that I will use up next. I really do want to start using my candles but when family members have complained, I guess most of my candle burning will have to wait until spring. You know, when the weather warms up and stays warm.

In terms of perfume, I was doing some cleaning and found that my full bottle of Lolita Lempicka was on it's side and most of the perfume was gone. There was only a smidge of it left. So the bottle was thrown in the trash and it was a shame since the bottle is cute. The only saving grace at this point is that the original Lolita Lempicka is cheap enough but I am not exactly sure if I want to go replacing it. If the top make it easy for the perfume to either evaporate too quickly or spill out if it gets tipped on it's side, I am a little reluctant to go replacing it. Maybe way down the road, I might consider it but I am trying to keep my perfume resolution here.
 

Serge Lutens Tuberose Criminelle

It always seems to take me forever to test out anything new and then blog about it. Back when I was new to the world of perfume and niche, Serge Lutens was the first house that I started with. Even when I first started, I didn't try anything of the Serge Lutens lineup. For a long while, I didn't pay attention to Serge Lutens. I think that it was after De Profundis is when I kind of lost interest in Serge Lutens.

For a very long time, I hated tuberose as a dominant note in perfume. I haven't done a complete 180 on tuberose but I have started to enjoy it as a dominant note. I think it was Narcotic V that made me start to see the light.

A week or two ago, I won a raffle for a Surrender to Chance gift card and decided to get a tuberose sampler set in my order. And in that sample set was Tuberose Criminelle. What I am going off of is a dabber but that's alright, I have a bell jar of Sarrasins and De Profundis and dabbers are nothing new in the Serge Lutens lineup. I had bought a spray decant of the Gris Charnel extrait to really make sure that I still really love the Gris Charnel extrait. But onto Tuberose Criminelle.

 Tuberose Criminelle starts of kind of like Sarrasins does. That wintergreen candy like blast followed by a whopping dose of jasmine. The jasmine stays pretty strong throughout the entire wearing but not quite the star player. Then the tuberose comes roaring onto the scene and never leaves. I do detect a smidge of leather once in a while but not often and leather isn't even listed as a note. I did notice some oily notes in the whole thing and I am thinking that the hyacinth is probably doing that and I don't really smell the hyacinth nor the vanilla or orange blossom.

This isn't what seems to be the queen of tuberose perfumes, that's pretty much Fracas. I do really like Tuberose Criminelle and I mean like it. I would like to get a bottle eventually but it's one of those exclusives that are horribly expensive and that is going to have to wait before I hop onto the Serge Lutens website to pull the trigger to get a bottle.

It's the New Year and I've Already Failed

 We are not even a week in to the new year and I've pretty much blown one of my resolutions. I hopped on the Bath and Body Works website and spent that $50 gift card and a little bit more. I promised myself that I would wait a little while before I spent that. I over by $10. But the fact remains that I still failed at it. I guess I have to get back on the bandwagon and seriously get moving on trying to keep my resolutions. I haven't broken my perfume resolution yet but I want to work on saving money.

I am working on cutting more subscriptions in an effort to do that. I don't watch Hulu that much and that went and my PBS subscription that I had tied to my Amazon account went as well. Amazon Music had to go as well since I wasn't really listening to it. I downgraded my Barkbox subscription. I used to have all of these add-ons with my Barkbox along with a double Barkbox but my dogs are going to have to content themselves with 2 toys and 2 treats every month. Yes, I am too much of a wimp when it comes to the dogs. Between my dad and I, Amazon Prime pretty much pays for itself so Amazon Prime stays. That let to a $45 a month savings and that will lead to over $500 per year.

I had to strip down my cellphone plan as well. Take my word for it, those plans can get expensive and expensive quick. I might have only been able to shave about $15 per month but with small changes, I have to start somewhere. And those subscriptions and the cellphone stuff were the first things that I had to start somewhere. What is working in my favor at this point is that I am 3 more payments away from having my Afterpay balance paid off. Having to pay $75 every 2 weeks eats in to a budget. I might wait a week or two before having that account unfrozen before I will use it again.

I am starting to rethink my grocery shopping. I'm trying to buy less soda, frozen meals and junk food along with shopping that sale fliers. I'm not exactly trying to eat healthier but want to see if I can stretch my groceries a little farther. Cutting back on the soda, junk food and frozen meals might be convenient but it gets to be expensive you get in the habit of buying those things. So I am trying to plan meals around sale ads. What is working in my favor is that with Costco runs, my freezer is to the point of over full with frozen meats. All of the meat has been all separated into manageable portions. That way, I am not throwing out a whole lot of food.

What I am planning to do in the next 2 or 3 months is go with a friend to the Mansfield Reformatory for a ghost hunt. For a shade over $100 per person, from 7pm to 3am, you will be locked in the Reformatory to ghost hunt to your hearts content. If we go, we will probably get together at about 3 or 4, grab something to eat and start to head down. It will take about an hour and a half to get down there and eating takes some time. I think that I will pick up either a Panera of McDonald's gift card well before then. Nothing is finalized yet but we are planning to go when we get some kind of tax refunds.