Amouage Guidance 46 and the Exceptional Extraits Thoughts

What was it, a couple months ago that Amouage released two more Exceptional Extraits? I know that Dia and the men's Jubilation were the two and now Amouage has come out with a new one. This time, it's Guidance 46.

I haven't paid too much attention to Amouage since the release of Beloved. With any perfume house, after a while, it becomes to be almost too much work to keep track. Too many perfumes and never enough money to get samples. I think when Epic 56 was released, I started to somewhat follow Amouage again.

In some ways, it's a little bit of a relief that it would be Guidance 46. I have yet to test out any of the new Amouage offerings after Beloved. I adore Epic 56 but can't afford it. But I would be really screwed if Lyric came out as an Exceptional Extrait. I adore Lyric. I love it to the point of where I had to have the travel spray, two full bottles and a couple decants of the extrait. The only reason that I don't have a full bottle of the extrait is that the stars and my bank account never quite aligned themselves to where that was possible. I am on the last little bits of the Lyric soap and lotion and probably will not be getting more. The Amouage bath stuff is more on the difficult side to locate and buy. If they cam out with a Memoir or a Jubilation 25 in the Exceptional Extrait version, I would be truly screwed. I am not so eager to test out Dia. I find that Dia can be a little hard to wear and I do love Dia. But I would love to see Lyric as an Exceptional Extrait and would probably find a way to get my hands on a decant.
 

Feeling a Little More Depressed Than Normal

 It seems like I have been back sliding in lots of ways at the moment. It seemed like I was doing alright with starting to save money for a bankruptcy lawyer and the nonsense that goes along with it but I am not fully sure what happened though. Maybe I started to get a little reckless. The recent Luckyscent purchase of Pichola was reckless and it doesn't matter if I used Afterpay or not, it was still reckless. My budget was a whopping total of $50 and it was a gift card through Afterpay, That was a little on the reckless side, I probably could have made due with only $25. But there were a couple Ulta orders that would be okay but would have been better off not spending that at all. I will admit that it felt good to actually pay my cellphone bill in full and on time for 2 months in a row. I struggled with the cellphone bill. I would always be waiting until a week after my cellphone bill was due to make a partial payment and then on my next paycheck, pay the rest of it.

The last of my packages came today, I am going to see what I can do to get myself back on track. First thing is to work on paying off my Afterpay balance. While I am working on the Afterpay balance, I have to work on getting back to basics in terms of spending. That means that I either have to fully stop any kind of frivolous spending or cut way back on it. I am not fully sure on why my depression felt worse. Every time my depression gets the better of me, I do have the tendency to do some retail therapy. Getting a package in the mail can give me something to look forward to but I can't do that so much anymore. The only thing is that my dad's birthday is in August and I am still picking my brain on what to get him. So I am working on banking my Rewarded Play point balance so I am able to pick out something on Amazon. I was thinking about an Xbox game but something else might catch my fancy.

This is some of the issue with Afterpay, you would be amazed on how many things become more "affordable". Yes, there is no  interest but it lets me pay for things in 4 installments and I have to pay every 2 weeks. It's great until you have a bigger balance and all these payments to make. It might be a wise idea to take the Afterpay app off of my phone when I pay Afterpay off. Then I cannot use Afterpay if I have less access to it.

The health insurance that I have only covers so much. I don't know how mental health has become to be viewed as something that should be limited. Just like I have teeth that need crowns, health insurance considers that cosmetic. So I am limited on where I can go when it comes to therapy if I want to get as much therapy as I can possibly get.

Neela Vermeire Pichola and Luckyscent

 Ever since the verdict for the Trump trial came down on, what was it, Thursday, I have been avoiding Twitter and most news sites. Too many people saying that the former president wasn't guilty. Well, the justice system worked as it should have and we don't always get the outcome that we want. I won't comment anymore about that other than I was wearing Mitsouko that day.

For the most part, I have been avoiding Luckyscent. If I do go to the Luckyscent website, it's mostly to window shop. But this time I wasn't quite so lucky. When Luckyscent sends me emails about discounted items, I do look but I don't partake. Most things, even when discounted are either out of my price range or sounds like something that I would hate. I was just poking around the sale items and stumbled upon the Neela Vermeire Pichola travel sprays. The going rate for 2 15ml travel sprays  was $96. I wasn't exactly going to complain about the price for an ounce of niche perfume. So this purchase was unexpected and will have to be probably the only perfume purchase that I will make for the year. Mind you, I know I have a Neela Vermeire sample set running around somewhere but I just don't know where.

But with the Prada Infusion d'Iris travel spray (Sephora now carries the Prada Infusion line) and now the Pichola travel spray, it seems like I am really starting to get into the whole travel spray thing. I have plenty of the Chanel travel sprays but I find those to be a little on the bulky side for travel sprays. If space in my purse is at a premium, why do I want to have something so bulky? Most travel sprays that I have are pretty sleek and don't take up the amount of space that a Chanel spray does. I love travel sprays to keep in my freezer coat for when I need to be in the freezer.

I am going to have to kind of take back about not being able to spend money on perfume for the rest of the year. I have a little over $250 worth of Ulta points that I can use. What I am probably going to do is see what I can bank towards either my birthday or maybe around Christmas. I think that those Ulta points might come in handy later on in the year. Since Ulta has started to carry the Tocca line, I have been eyeing the Guiletta perfume. Maybe I will get Guiletta and another bottle of the original Coco but we will see that the end of the year will bring.

Worth Courtesan and Door Dash

Since today is the unofficial start of summer in the US, I got to thinking about some of the summer like perfumes that I have and how I can't access most of my collection. The only on that I was able to get a hold of was one of my unopened backup bottles of Worth Courtesan. Courtesan is probably the most summery perfume that I own. But I noticed some things with it.

The first thing that I noticed was that the cap and spray mechanism are not compatible. The cap takes the little spray part right off the rest of the spraying mechanism and the base that is attached to the bottle has condinsation issues. So the cap, more often than not has some of the perfume itself in it. Who ever did the bottle and spray design was an idiot that didn't think this through. Courtesan isn't so easily purchased like Chanel no 5 is. Online retailers only have it intermittently, making backups a little harder to procure. With the sprayer being all wonky means that evaporation is a massive threat.

The second thing that I have noticed with Courtesan is that Courtesan has the lasting power of nuclear waste on my dry skin. With how fruity and light Courtesan seems to be, that is a remarkable feat to be that long lasting. My dry skin eats perfume like there is no tomorrow. I can apply Courtesan at 8 in the morning and I can still smell it at 8 the next morning. I had forgotten how long lasting Courtesan is. So with those two issues, I think that I will be wearing Courtesan a whole lot more.

Two or three years ago, one of my guy friends had gifted me a Door Dash gift card. Some of it was a joke but maybe he might have gotten it from someone else and he had no use for it. Maybe he figured that since I don't drive, I would probably have a little more use for it than he would, since he drives. So I used that gift card today. I had a hankering for some fast food, a promo code to make the price just right for me to use. There have been a couple times where I was in a bind where I had to use a delivery service for groceries. Delivery services like Door Dash and Instacart are freaking expensive so I make an effort not to use them too much. I know it's about the convenience but a $10 fee at the low end and a tip kind of makes that a little out of price range to have it on a regular basis. One of my friends is totally blind and only gets $600 a month in disability is reliant on these services. She has said that even with a roommate and having food stamps, it's something she has to use because it's difficult for her to find any kind of ride or help to go grocery shopping. Yeah, having a disability can be expensive and time consuming. But it was kind of nice to just get a burger and fries and not have to deal with any kind crowds
 

Vacation is Over

Tuesday was the first day back from my vacation. When my alarm went off, I grudgingly got up and grudgingly went to work. After having 9 days off, I wasn't happy to go back to work. But I knew that the bills were not going to pay themselves, so I had to go back to work. Taking this week as a vacation week wasn't an option due to the fact that we are coming up on Memorial Day weekend. The corporate suits made the decision that no employee could take a vacation during holiday weeks but yet they are probably able to.

I have said in the past that I am not one that shops at Sephora too often, Ulta supplies most of my makeup and body care needs. I am still hoping that Ulta will start to carry either no 5 in extrait form or any of the Chanel extraits. But I'm not so interested in that at the moment. I was just window shopping and I don't know how or when Sephora started carrying Prada's Infusion lineup but they are now. This must be a new thing though. What excited me was Sephora is carrying travel sprays of the Infusion d'Iris and probably carrying more of the Infusions in travel spray form. I do love Infusion d'Iris and the price was right for the travel spray and I snapped one up, even though I really shouldn't have. What would really make me shop at Ulta exclusively would be Ulta carrying the extrait version of no 5 or even carry the edt version of no 19. I have enough points to pay for both. Well, I have enough points to pay for one of them but would be able to pay for the other down the road when I build up enough points.

With it being almost June, there has been talk on Reddit on the upcoming semi annual sale. Usually there is a semi annual sale after Christmas and another one that begins in June. I am a little bit interested but not really. When the after Christmas one happened, I was always a day late and a dollar short when I would try to snag a couple Sweet Whiskey candles. The reason I am not so interested is that I haven't been excited about this year's candle releases and I have so many candles already. If they release some of last year's fall/winter candles, I might get one or two. I am not setting aside a lot of money to partake in the sale since I have bigger things to worry about.

Hempz Lotion

 It's rare that I deviate from unscented lotions. With my perfume collection as it is, I don't want my lotion to be scented. I do have scented lotions from Chanel and Amouage but those are not my day to day kind of lotion. I usually use the Cereve lotion but I was running out of that but found a small bottle of the Hempz Age Defying Peptides and Caffine lotion. So in that went to what is left of the Cereve bottle. I like to eek out everything that I can with soaps and lotion.

The first time that I went to use the lotion, I was a little puzzled. I have never tried any of the Hempz products and didn't think that there would be a smell. But there is a smell and I was thrown off by it. The age defying lotion has a musky kind of smell. The smell reminded me of MKK's last hurrah before it leaves my skin for good or the base of Tigress Musk. I will admit that I had to laugh though. Are lotion companies trying to make their suppoesedly unscented things smell more like perfume without being perfume? I have had some lotions that did smell good but the smell faded after about 10 minutes and then I could put on perfume. But the smell to this one just does not fade, there is a lingering musk note. It's a little on the dirty side. I can see myself pairing this with MKK, Tigress Musk or vintage BaV. I am not so sure if it would work so well with Shalimar but will work with any kind of not so clean musk note.

Part of me wants to purchase this again but another part doesn't. I am working on trying to use things up and not buy so much stuff. I still have a ton of Drunk Elephant lotions and soaps that I want to use up and a couple Amouage lotions that I want to use as well. I more of want to have more space in general and a little more money in my bank account at the end of the day.

My Chanel no 5 Journey

 It's a well known fact that I do love Chanel no 5. The first bottle that I had purchased was the extrait version around 10 or 12 years ago and promptly drained or my mother nicked it. Then I got a 50ml bottle of the EDP that is about two thirds empty.

Before I got serious about perfume, there was a time that I tried the no 5 hand lotion at a department store and I promptly hated it. I don't recall exactly why I hated it but I honestly think that the lotion might have been improperly stored and had gone rancid or I was trying the wrong no 5. But when I had bought my first extrait bottle, it was $95 for a quarter ounce bottle. But the first version on no 5 that I really understood was Eau Premiere when I tried it at a department store and bought a bottle. But when I arrived home, I realized that I had bought the Sensual Elixer, which has been discontinued for years. But I ordered a bottle of Eau Premiere a couple days later.

So fast forward at least a decade and how many bottles of perfume later, I have tons of Chanel no 5. The only no 5 that isn't in my stable is the L'Eau version because it has no resemblance to any other version of no 5. But when I finished that bottle of no 5 edt, I kind of took a little bit of a break but opened a brand new bottle of the edt and almost physically recoiled. Chanel has messed with the edt version. I knew that the edp version was messed with and kind of liked it. But after wearing my first bottle of no 5 edp, I am pretty annoyed with Chanel at this point. Because no 5 isn't something that I exactly recognize anymore. No 5 has been reformulated. Reformulations do happen but not to this extreme. I can't comment about the extrait being reformulated because I don't have any older bottles to compare it to. But the luminous nature of the edt isn't there and the sharpness of the edp isn't there. So it looks like I am going to be sticking to Eau Premiere for a very long time. 

I will admit that I would love to have another bottle of the extrait version of no 5 but the prices of Chanel have gotten to the point of being ridiculous. To the point of I can't exactly justify buying any of Chanel perfumes. Out of all of the no 5 offerings, Ulta doesn't carry the extrait version of no 5 and I have almost enough points that I would get a quarter ounce bottle. But things haven't worked out that way at Ulta.