Of TV Shows and Rewards

I am not the biggest TV show watcher, I have a select few that I watch. But sometimes I do have to call it quits on a TV show. The longer the show runs, the more potential of it going bad. I was really big into the Chicago series (Med, PD, and Fire) but now I have given up on them. Chicago Med hasn't been that great for the past two seasons, PD wasn't that great last season but Fire isn't worth watching anymore. I was a fan of Fire since day one but the beginning of season 8 was what made me give up on the whole series. I would have went with someone else dying and the story lines are stale at this point.So yes, I have got to find something new.

This past month, I have spent quite a bit of money at Ulta. Since September was my birthday month, I was able to score double points. Then there was a double points promo that was going on and scored a little more in the points department. I log onto Ulta to see how much I have accumulated so far and my jaw dropped. I had managed to accumulate 755 points and that equals out to $30 that I can take off my next purchase or save them and rack up more points and then get something else for myself. This is what I love about Ulta, is how the rewards system works. The most I have ever accumulated in previous years was about $15 or $20 and this is a record.

At this point, the past few days have been strange.Today and tomorrow, people are filming a movie. It is pretty cool to have that happen in my small town. But that means, I am boxed it at the moment. Can't exactly leave my street at the moment but that's okay, I don't have any place to be. I am currently poking around the Internet for the best price for the Amouage Lyric body butter. So far I am not having a whole lotta luck but found something strange. Walmart is now selling Amouage product from their online store. I had to take a look ar it and after taking a look, most of them are being sold through third party sellers. Some of the prices are pretty good but I am not willing to take that chance of it being fake. I would not have pegged Amouage allowing Walmart to sell their stuff.

La Maison de la Vanille Vanille noire du Mexique Review

I have been dithering on writing a review for far too long at this point. Now it's off to the races with a review.

Off and on for the fast couple weeks, I have been wearing La Maison de la Vanille's Vanille noire du Mexique. It's a goofy one to me. I get the basic layout of two different perfumes. I mean, really I do. I get Shalimar Ode a la Vanille (the Mexican one) and L'Artisan's Havana Vanille (or Vanille Absolutment or whatever they called it before the discontinued it). It has the basic Ode a la Vanille layout nut without the naughty bits but also had the thinker's parts of Havana Vanille. Havana Vanille was huge on the tobacco and the rum and Mexique doesn't have any of that but hints around at it.

Mexique is kind of a funky perfume because it plays off of two perfumes but yet, it's it's own perfume. I consistently get about 7 hours of wear out of this and make skin eats EDT's for breakfast. What I am really loving is the price tag of Mexique. For $60 and a 100ml, that's a really good bargain in the niche/hard to find. What makes me a little hesitant of purchasing a bottle is when I bought the sampler, the spray mechanisms caused for quite a bit of evaporation. That's what happens when spray mechanisms are put on by manufacturers. I hope that in the next couple months, I will take the plunge and just get a bottle. Since Shalimar Ode a la Vanille was a limited edition and Havana Vanille was discontinued, this fits the bill for me in terms of a vanilla.

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.

CdG Monocle One Scent One: Hinoki

For a while, I have really liked the smell of incense and a little bit of a fan of woody scents. For the past two weeks, I have been on and off wearing Kyoto, Avignon and Incense Flash and remembered that I did have CdG Monocle One Hinoki to try out.

I wasn't exactly sure of what I was smelling at first. Something chemical like. It's been forever and a day since I have smelled turpentine and I think that that is what I might be smelling. Then I smell the cypress and cedar but I don't get a whole lot else except for hints of pine.

This one smells almost identical to Kyoto and with a lasting power to match. My skin eats EDT's for breakfast and I only get about 3 hours worth of wear. I find that Hinoki to be pretty harsh and not very wearable to me and definitely not worth the $120 price tag. Shit, I find that the incense series from CdG a little pricey for what they charge. If I am going to spend more than $50, I do want a little more than 3 hours of lasting power and something a little smoother than this. It's been a difficult couple weeks for me and I am not in the mood to deal with perfumes that charge tons of money for a full bottle but smell like a hundred other perfumes that I can get for $30. I'm tired of perfumes that charge an arm and a leg and smell like someone put a perfume together in 10 seconds and they end up smelling harsh or just a hot mess. It makes me wonder about the state of perfumery.

Viktoria Minya Hedonist Iris Review

Another birthday has come and gone and I keep going back and forth what I want to do for my birthday perfume. I keep debating on if I should get the new Andy Tauer release, as a blind buy or should I hop on over to Luckyscent and get Lonestar Memories and punch in the code to get a 5ml mini. I hope I can make a decision soon.

After getting my entire collection back where it should be, when I saw my full bottle of Hedonist, I remembered that I had a decant of one of the Hedonist flankers that I haven't tried, Hedonist Iris.

I was expecting something that would live up to the name. A decadent iris but decadent it was not. Hedonist Iris was a straight up floral with the main note like the iris of Chanel no 19 extrait. So much of the composition reminded me of the no 19 extrait but without the green and the bite. I got the barest hint of cedar but it didn't help much. Can you tell that I didn't really care for it and was disappointed?

For the price of a full bottle (I am happy that I just had a decant) and the looks of a full bottle, it's not worth it to me. If you are going to name something Hedonist, make it live up to it's name. The original Hedonist did.

New Releases

There was a time where I did pay attention to new releases. After a while, I only paid attention to only a few houses that were releasing something new. Amouage, Chanel, Andy Tauer and Serge Lutens were the ones that I did pay attention to. For a while, most of those houses have new releases every couple months and I couldn't keep up with all of the new releases. So many of the new releases have smelled like so many other perfumes that I have tried before or smelled on other people before. Except Andy Tauer.

Andy Tauer has been one of those perfumers that doesn't release a perfume every few months. Seems like every year and a half or maybe two, he does release something; so he takes his time with something. I have been eagerly awaiting his newest release and found out through his Facebook page that his newest creation is going to be released on September 15th. The funny thing is that it happens to be on my birthday and I am a huge Tauer fan. If it is full bottle worthy, I won't be able to sink money on a bottle but I am waiting for the moment that I can get my hands on a decant.

First World Perfume Problems

I have been going on and on about the whole cleaning out stuff and furniture but I do have two extra dressers and a nightstand. New dressers and a nightstand were needed, the ones that I had were small in so many ways. Since they were not that tall, it was easier for my dogs to go and knock things over. I had lost a few perfumes over that past few years with the dogs looking to see if there was anything interesting to swipe.

Now the guest bedroom is in chaos with so many of my clothes just piled up and there are other things all over the place. That means that I don't have access to at least 98% of my perfume collection. The only ones that I have access to already sit on my new dresser. A full bottle of vintage Jicky and Mitsouko, Kyoto, Noontide Petals and Chanel no 5 EDT. I am happy that I was able to swipe a mini of L'Air du Desert Morocain and all of my Andy Tauer samples and a decant of vintage BaV. Everything else is in cardboard boxes in a corner of the guest bedroom where I cannot get to it yet. So in a way, I am incredibly limited on what I really have available to me perfume wise. In a way it's hard because my perfume collection is there but right there, in s spot that I can't get to it. At least not yet. Today is not the day where I try to liberate my collection because I have something at least in the world of perfume but it's not going to be what I want. I want my bottle of Cuir de Russie, my decant of Coromandel, etc. I think that I will tackle this problem on Saturday and hopefully, I will have space for my Galileo thermometer collection too.