Many Things and Some of it Bad

It's been a rough few days in my neck of the woods. On Thursday, we got a phone call from my grandmother's memory care letting us know that she did pass between 6am and 7am. We are just waiting for the doctor to sign off on the death certificate before we finish planning the funeral. Her death wasn't really a surprise between her dementia and her kidney disease. 

But this got me to starting think about what I need to wear in terms of clothing but I started to mostly about which perfume to wear. I have more of what I want to wear in terms of clothing. The choices are Jicky, Infusion d'Iris or De Profundis. Even though I have a mini of Calvin Klein Euphoria but I think is inappropriate even though it was my grandmother's signature perfume. 

Since I have a dentist appointment today, I decided to give Lush's Sleepy body products a go. Wanted something a little more soothing for today. With the whopping dose of lavender, I am thinking that this one can be layered with Jicky since Jicky has a huge lavender note. I figured that why not give layering a go. I haven't applied Jicky yet so I can't tell if that combo is any good. When I get around to using some Rose Jam, I can probably get away with layering it with Lyric. Eventually I will report back and see how it goes.
 

Stuff to Cull

After all that moving stuff around and putting things away on Monday, I still haven't even tried to tackle my closet. There is something about cleaning out a closet that is kind of overwhelming. Sorting through things is tough. What to throw out, what to donate or what can be sold is tough work. I think that tons of people like me probably have more of an unhealthy attachment to stuff.

I am looking to sell quite a bit of my perfume collection. One reason is that my collection has gotten a little too big. When you have over 200 bottles of perfume, how can one go through all of that? Some things I have outgrown, some I hate, and there are some that I have too much of. I have some idea of which bottles that I want to sell off and which ones that I definitely want to keep.

The first perfume house on my list is Serge Lutens. I want to keep Arabie, Cherugi, one bottle of Feminite du Bois. The ones that I really want to hang onto is De Profundis and Sarrasins. De Profundis and Sarrasins were the bell jars that I had wanted for so long. I had gotten both of them off of E-Bay before the bell jars became not so exclusive. I fell in love with Sarrasins because of it's slutty, leather/jasmine combo. But I was attracted to the deep purple color first before I smelled it. De Profundis was based on either the Oscar Wilde reference or Bible. The color of De Profundis didn't help either. I enjoy the chrysanthemum note in De Profundis as well, you don't smell that too often in perfume. Maybe Serge Lutens eventually realized that he was cutting off his nose to spite his face by kind of ignoring North America in terms of the bell jars. I still want Iris Silver Mist and Rose de Nuit but that's not in the cards and I am trying to get rid of some stuff and make some money.

My second house has to be Amouage. I want to get rid of Beloved and Gold woman. I could never truly like, let alone love Beloved enough to wear it too often. And let's just face it with Gold woman, it smells like I stepped in dog poop and it never seems to come off skin so easily. I am on the fence the Ubar and Memoir. But Lyric is my first love from Amouage that I fell in love with. If I had a bottle of the extrait, I would be really happy but I am trying to get the collection down to a manageable level. The other two that I want to keep is Jubilation 25 and Epic. It took me a while to come around to Jubilation 25 and Epic and I are kind of feuding a little bit. It has to be the oud in Epic and I don't like too many oud perfumes. It was that one really hot summer day with stupid amounts of humidity that soured my relationship with Epic right now. But I should still keep one bottle of Epic.

The third perfume house on my list right now is Chanel. I want to unload most of my no 5 bottles and probably Sycomore. I haven't fully thought about all the Chanel offerings that I own but do have an idea of what I want to keep. My bottle of Coromandel stays along with one bottle of no 5 edt, no 19, and no 22. I have so much no 5 it isn't funny so a large chunk of that would go. I would probably want to keep my massive bottle of Coco Mademoiselle Intense as well.

There are other random perfumes that I know I want to keep. I do want to keep my vintage Mitsouko and Deneuve along with a healthy chunk of my vintage Bal a Versailles bottles. I spent a good chunk of money on those and they smell so good. I can rebuild a my collection but some sacrifices have to be made in terms of my financial health and I need some physical space at the moment.
 

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.

That Shit You Ain't Ever Going to Afford

Did you ever have those types of perfumes that you know damned well that you will never be able to afford? I have a few that I will never be able to afford. Unless I come into some kind of cash. My tax refund is going to be used on sensible things that I need. But that tax refund is going to be tiny this year because of tax law changes.

There are a few that I know that I will never be able to afford on my own. When the price of food, rent and other necessities take precedents and paychecks are not that huge, some of the things I want are way out of my price range. 

I want that trip to either Iceland or Scotland but I know god damned well that's not happening anytime soon. There are places even in the US that I want to go but I don't have the cash to go do them. I keep hoping that something works out for even a weekend get away. Every time I get asked from family on why I don't go anywhere, I get a little snippy. It's great that my cousins make enough to afford to go on these vacations but I don't have the financial luxury to do that. I'm more interested in keeping a roof over my head and food on the table. My priorities have to be a little different.

But right now I am looking at the Amouage extraits and the prices. I'm looking at Lyric, Epic, Epic 56 and Jubilation 25. But who really has $400 or more lying around to spend on a perfume? I sure as shit don't and would love to spring for one of those bottles but have to content myself with the dabber vials from either TPC or STC. Rarely to I take a look at perfume discount sites for Amouage.

Outside of those bells jars of Sarrasins and De Profundis that I got in more financially stable times, any other bell jars are out of the question. It's not worth looking at the Serge Lutens website. I just don't want anymore sticker shock at this point.

 I do have perfumes that I would like to get but I have to take stock on what I can really do if I save my pennies. I wonder what other people's limits are in terms of price when it comes to perfume.
 

De Profundis and Other Stuff

Saturday, I had to attend a funeral in the family and I wore De Profundis. Now I haven't worn De Profundis in a very long time and De Profundis seemed to be the most appropriate for the occasion. I have the old bell jar version and was thankful that it was a dabber. I think spraying De Profundis would have been a little much and most of my collection would have been too much.

I could have gone commando to the funeral but I seem to have a perfume for just about any occasion. I don't wear Serge Lutens offerings so much anymore. After a while, I had lost interest in trying out Serge Lutens offerings. Price point was one factor and the other was availability. Anything from Serge Lutens has gotten a little harder to find without paying sky high prices.

It seems to be the final push for many retail companies for online orders. I know that Ulta has sent me e-mails telling me that the 14th is the last day to order anything online for order to reach doorsteps by Christmas Eve. At this point, Christmas shopping is pretty much done. At this point, I am just exhausted. Exhausted because it's the holidays. Sick and tired of hearing a million different versions of Jingle Bell Rock, Santa Baby and all the rest of  Christmas music. People somehow get nastier this time of year. Only a week and a half before Christmas Day arrives.

I don't know if this is good news or bad news for me but I have so many points with Ulta that I can load up on Chanel perfume and not bust a sweat. And I mean really load up on Chanel. What I would like to see from Ulta is no 19 in any concentration or the gigantic bottles of no 5. Hell, I would love to see is the extrait version of Coco Mademoiselle or no 5. I am not going to hold my breath anytime soon with that.

Vacation is Over

Well, my vacation is over and I must go back to work.I didn't exactly do a whole lot. I set up doctor's appointments early in the week just to get them out of the way. There were things that I wasn't expecting but kind of was. I have to fight with my health insurance about the crowns that I need on two back teeth. For some reason, my health insurance considers dental crowns as cosmetic and not something necessary. So I must fight with them because I would rather keep those two teeth.

I thought I would be testing out a few perfumes on my vacation but that never happens. When I started my blog, I was reviewing just about everything under the sun but that's not happening now. It's come down to the fact that I have gotten pretty lazy. I want to blame it on the fact that most of what I have tried, I haven't liked. Every time I try a new perfume, I want the clouds to part and the angels to start singing but it rarely happens. There are too many new released for me to even try to keep up with and I have a huge pile of things to test out and review.

While I was on vacation, I was going through all of my reviewed and worn decants. Seeing what was evaporated, what I had multiples of. There were a couple of them that were totally evaporated and I threw those out. But noticed real quick that I had quited a few multiples that were of various stages of fullness. I had combined all of those multiples and was able to make some more space. Those decants of De Profundis and Sarrasins went right into the mostly full bell jars. The 8mls spread out over 3 decants of Noontide Petals, went into a bigger decant. Some of those multiples were not emptied enough to be combined. Some of you are probably doing some pearl clutching but I had to make some space and haven't had any mishaps with this.

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.

Of Dogs, De Profundis and Death

The past couple weeks haven't been exactly good. The week proceeding Labor Day and a few days afterwards are defiantly good in my family. It always seems to be the time of year where it's either one of my dogs gets really sick where we might have to put them down or we do have to put them down. This time, we did have to put down my elderly dog, Bailey. Bailey was always a special needs dog that always had the odds stacked against her. When she was four months old, she was diagnosed with epilepsy and 3 vets counseled us to put her down because they thought she wouldn't live to be a year old but we didn't give up on her, knowing that it would take time and the right dose of medication. Bailey was put to sleep two days ago and I haven't really been able to stop crying since. I know that she was 14 years old and she was really old for a Lab but I knew that it was time. I just wanted her to have one more good summer before things got really bad. For some reason, the day she died, I sensed that it was her last day on earth, I gave her tons of her favorite dog treats and a rawhide before going to the vet to look at a huge blood blister on her ear. On the way to the vet, she had a huge seizure that she never really came out of, then I knew that it was time to let her go. On the day she died, I do not know why I decided to put on Serge Lutens De Profundis but I did and I wore it yesterday as well.

In Bailey's 14 years, I dealt with her chronic ear infections, many allergies, getting into stuff that she shouldn't have, eating a 3 pound bag of M&M's, almost getting hit by cars and yet she survived it all. And gave me many kisses, brought me shoes and showered me with love.

Serge Lutens De Profundis Review

I have been wearing Serge Lutens' De Profundis off and on ever since I had gotten a decant a while back. I was attracted to De Profundis because it was based on an Oscar Wilde letter and the color of the perfume itself. De Profundis doesn't have the intense purple of Sarrasins, but I don't see very many perfumes that are colored purple. Take that back, I don't see it outside of what Bath and Body Works sells.

Serge Lutens creations can be difficult for me. Maybe it is his use of spices in his perfumes that make it difficult for me. De Profundis is more of what I am used to smelling even though it is slightly odd. De Profundis reminds me strongly of fall. Just when the leaves are changing, some people are really getting into having bond fires, there is more of a need for long sleeved shirts and long pants. De Profundis is a muted floral/green scent. I find it to be more green stems than flowers though. On skin, I get about 4 or 5 hours of wear then it's gone. While it's likable at the end of the wearing, I'm not in love with it.