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.