Happy Almost-Friday and happy World Day of Social Justice. Birthdays: Louis Kahn, Ansel Adams, Gloria Vanderbilt, Robert Altman, Sidney Poitier, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Kurt Cobain. What fragrance are you wearing?
I've slept late and my mind is blank...I am going to pick a fragrance from the comments!
Reminder: 2/21 will be Bucket List Friday...think of a place you'd like to go or a thing you'd like to do or something you'd like to accomplish, and wear the right fragrance for the experience.
And for those of you who like to plan ahead, see Scent of the day ~ Friday community projects 2025, where I'll try (but usually fail) to have the next five or six weeks mapped out in advance.
Note: top image is Buckets and Buddha [cropped] by Garry Knight at flickr; some rights reserved.
Hello.
Sotd is Oud Alezan. I know Hermessences are meant to be watercolour in style but I can’t help but wish they would switch to edps instead, like how Chanel did with their Exclusifs. (Oud Alezan is edp and I do notice the longer staying power and potency, but that could also be due to the oud..)
Ack, and I so wish they wouldn’t!
(But our disagreement does not matter since they are going to do what they are going to do regardless of what we think)
When you look “kinda basic” and have a perfume shopping experience like this..😂
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DGOhF0DRG0P/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
Opened my BUB of Omnia today. Same lovely perfume, same 💩 sprayer. The things I put up with to smell good…😉
I laughed at the video and laughed harder at your Omnia sprayer comment 🤣
Omg 😆😆😆 brilliant and relatable!
Perfect, I am joining you in Omnia…
Starting my day in vintage Old Spice, and loving it. Floral, spicy, citrusy, slightly musky. I can’t speak to the 21st century version – maybe it’s fine – but this Shulton, Inc. stuff (out of Wayne, New Jersey!) is wonderful. The aftershave is heavenly, but gone from my skin in half an hour; the cologne does a bit better. Look for Old Spice Long Lasting Cologne – it lives up to its name.
Happy Thursday, everyone.😊
Heavenly indeed! Only 30 min, but what a half hour! You described it so well, I closed my eyes and could smell it vividly.
Great stuff. I miss smelling that all around town.
Commando at the moment since I have a dentist appointment at one. It’s been 5 years since I have been to the dentist. Last night, I filed my taxes and getting some cash back but that money is already spent. After my appointment I think I might wear Shalimar.
Good luck today Dawn!
Yes good luck! And 👍👍👍 for going as it’s so easy to put off! Well done!
Taxes done, dentist visited, grand dame of a perfume applied… you are in Not F’ing Around Mode this week, Dawn!
PSA that Upton’s offering free shipping on $35+ orders for a brief time (threshold is typically $75). My preference leans toward robust non-flavored black teas, and am having a mini love affair with their Kensington Breakfast Blend, so just purchased a large bag. It’s the little things!
We’re going to make it into the 20s for the 1st time in about a week. Planning to take a walk later. In Porter Sa Peau.
Love Upton…wish I could say I would run over there right away but I buy all my teas in big bags and have no problem making the $75 threshold, sadly. The 500g bag of ginger (I drink a pot every night after dinner) alone is up to $46.
I will have to look up my notes and see if I have tried Kensington Breakfast Blend!
I’m about to go to a pre IEP meeting for my daughter. They want my imput on goals for her because they said she gets anxious when they try to talk to her about what her future will look like. I honestly don’t know what they expect from her. It makes me anxious too. I have lost almost all hope that she could become somewhat independent, but I still pray and believe in miracles.
My sotd is Mugler Angel Eau Crosiere 2019 version. I’m trying to stop myself from buying the Fantasm version and think they might be similar. How much Angel does one person need? I feel like maybe just one more. Lol.
Very good luck with the IEP meeting lillyjo!! Every time you post about one I get anxious flashbacks too…
Hoping things go well for you and the kiddo! I think another bottle of Angel, in whatever iteration strikes your fancy, in very necessary.
I hope the meeting goes smoothly and that it doesn’t leave you more miserable than when you arrived. Always remember that you know your daughter better than anyone and you are doing a brilliant job of raising her in a loving, supportive home. You are her angel.
Good luck lillyjo!!!!! I don’t like IEP meetings either. I hope it all goes smoothly for you and your daughter.
Good luck Lillyjo. We are all pulling for you. You do such a good job with your daughter.
I join others in saying good luck! When my siblings and I were growing up, IEP was not a thing but of course it was also probably because none of us needed it.
IEPs have been around since 1975. Special education services since 1973.
Good to know! My conclusion: we must not have needed it although we drove our mom crazy 🤪 😜 but that does not qualify one for an IEP.
Fellow IEP mom rooting for you! I hope it goes better than you braced for!
Good luck w the mtg lillyjo! ITA w the others- you are her angel! Therefore spray away in Angel!
🍀for the meeting, hope it’s more productive and less stressful.
Your meeting has probably come and gone by now, but I hope it was productive and didn’t stress you out too much. IEP moms have to be fierce to advocate for their kids. She is lucky to have you in her corner. I hope you can treat yourself to a much loved scent you keep for special occasions this evening.
I hope the meeting went better than you expected, lillyjo.
Thanks for all the encouragement everyone!
I hope all went well. I also have an IEP kid, and the meetings are generally very helpful, but I always have to be in there begging them to take her IEP seriously. She’s been able to cover for so long
…and I hit a key by mistake and posted. Anyway, I do hope it all went well.
Hope your meeting went well! Sending you hugs and of course you need more Angel!!! 🥰 I am curious about Angel Stellar…has pistachio I think… 🧐
Oohh.. looking it up now!
Wearing Douceur de Siam…intending to have a gentle year…?
Great scent AnnieA!
The last year I have been thinking more and more about starting a degree at art school. I know I could “ do” art at home or night classes but I would really welcome the stimulation of being in an environment with a sense of community and purpose that doing a degree course might provide. I almost went to art school back in the 1980s but followed a slightly safer option. I’ve spent the last 25 years working on writing ( which I love) but I wonder if I need to get out and try something new. Anyway, so a kind of bucket list and matching with Interlude, which is swirly whirly and a bit of an enigma.
Do it! It’s always a good thing to get more interaction and stimulation, and if you were thinking about it so long ago, it must be something you have a real interest in. I think your skills as a writer, someone used to observing and describing things, might translate in some very productive ways into doing visual arts. I’m very glad I began taking art classes in the last few years–while it’s not something I want to make a career out of, it was just so very stimulating and kind of freeing, too.
I’m seriously considering it. I would be doing it more for ‘ fun’ than anything, so I would not feel the pressure to succeed but rather to explore. I u to do a lot of printmaking ( etchings etc) and painting and enjoyed it. I have art history degrees etc. so the critical side would be fairly straightforward. It’s the technical ( digital photography) and fiddle ( jewellery) that would be most challenging during the first year but once I specialise it could be cool. I can always do one year and then drop out. I think it’s a 4 year course. But it’s now or never, really.
I’d say go for it- nothing like going back to school 🙂
Gosh, if you can do it, do it! If you end up not liking it, you can stop.
If I had the means I would go back to school in an instant.
I think I will do a couple more night classes this year to get a feel for things and then enrol next year.
I agree you should go for it!
Art school is a life-changing idea to me. Think, not only of what you’ll learn, but the also the instructors and your fellow classmates. It will be a creativity submersion!
I too encourage you to pursue this long held wish of yours. No time like the present, and if it doesn’t work out to be what you want, you can always gracefully exit, but at least you won’t always be wondering what if I had done thing I had thought about for 40 years! Also, I think that pursuing this in an academic and group setting will force you to produce, whereas if you do it on your own you can always procrastinate. Just my 2 cents.
Yes, do it!!!!
I’m team do it!
I love it — you should go back! I’ve contemplated trying to go back to study design pretty much every time I’ve felt stuck in my career. My MIL went back to get her art history degree (she dropped out in the middle of undergrad) when she was in her 60s, so it’s always possible.
Firmly Team Art School too! 🎨
Chants Daromes
chant D’aromes…. I give up 😂
We all knew what you meant 😉
🤣
That’s a lovely perfume!
Agree!!! I’m revisiting my Guerlains and wondering if I need more LOL because they are showing up discounted online
Of course you need more!
One of our last bitter cold days for February so went with Coco Noir.
I sure hope this is one of the last bitter cold days…snow is swirling outside my window as I type.
Yes! I heard a bird this morning!
Had to get to the Apple store yesterday and stopped at le labo counter at Nordstrom.
Got a sample of Eucalyptus 20, which I will try post shower and report back.
I know they usually eat bamboo, but I somehow get the idea you should try Eucalyptus 20 on one wrist, and Zoologist’s Panda on the other 😉.
Or Koala! They DO eat eucalyptus. I think I’ve mentioned on here that I got to hold a koala (very heavy and solid little animal!) at a wildlife park in Australia, and it definitely smelled of eucalyptus.
Also Zoologist Cockatoo as they eat the seeds of eucalyptus.
The only Zoologist I own is Camel.
Right now I am getting some camphor, fresh, bit of hinoki?
Too soon to tell.
Looking forward to hearing your opinion!
Good morning, I’m off to a slow start on my day off. As I’ve observed before when I’m visiting my mother, things don’t move fast when you’re 94.
When we do head out in a while, I’ll wear Guerlain’s Encens Mythique d’Orient. I bought it about 10 years ago, and the bottle is getting down to half. That feels worrying, but then I consider that I’ve got enough for at least the next 10 years and that’s probably OK 🙂 .
Gaynor, I have a bottle from 2013 that is less than half full. I worry also, but I think I’ll make it:)
My mom lived to 94, I know how the mornings can go. Enjoy your day.
What a blessing to have her with you still and she knows you! Enjoy the time with her and smelling amazing!
Second this!
Well, just a PSA, no affiliation, Jomashop still has Encens Mythique for under $100. I have thought about a BUB since I like it so much.
I’m in Fleur de Cassie. The mimosa note is great.
Such a classic beauty!
Beautiful!
SOTD = Mugler Les Exceptions Supra Floral
Green floral, so good! I am copying AnnieA from yesterday.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DGTxefYRpel/?igsh=dTFrZnZuNWd5M2Yy
It looks like it is safe for me to delete the texts about unpaid tolls. Thanks for your input.
If you are sitting around with nothing better to do (of course, I jest), here’s a gift article on the 25 most influential shoes & bags made from 1925 (too lazy to look it up for sure) onwards. I don’t own any of these from least expensive to most expensive although I was thisclose to getting one of them a while back!
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/t-magazine/most-influential-shoes-bags-fashion-accessories.html?unlocked_article_code=1.yU4.GC1n.xOTEhzn7cmfT&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
I missed out on the Supra Floral because at the time I didn’t think I liked green perfume. Lol.
You smell great!
As a French language learner since I was first exposed to this beautiful language in elementary school, I am able to hold conversations and read at an intermediate level. But I would love to be more fluent and look forward to spending more time in France as an eventual retiree. For now, I have been wearing French fragrances with French names this week. Yes, I’m making this quite an easy CP for me🥰🇫🇷
Shout out to other NSTers who speak French fluently and those enjoying learning to speak more fluently❤️
Today is L’Artisan Parfumeur Mon Numéro 10 by Bertrand Duchaufour.
Kudos to you for improving yourself. Way back when it was easy for me to get to Alliance Francaise in New York City, I tried to learn but my French “skills” had been turned off. As a non-native Spanish speaker, I get by!
Duolingo! The app was recommended to me by two English-speaking French automotive journalists who greeted my enthusiastic yet atrocious French during a tour of our local car museum with a bemused demeanor, but were determined to channel my energy in a positive linguistic direction.
YMMV with Duolingo, at least in my experience. I’ve been doing it for four years and can’t speak a word of French on my own, though I can get the gist of things I read. I find Duolingo a hard way to learn a language, at least for me. They don’t teach grammar, and there’s no emphasis on active language production. I learned German and Latin in the years before Duolingo, and I need to explicitly learn the grammar…I can’t absorb it by osmosis.
I’ve had the same issues trying to use Duolingo to learn enough Spanish or Portuguese or Greek to get through a trip. (In Spanish, it didn’t teach me how to ask what something cost until the 20th unit or so, and then it didn’t teach me the numbers beyond 1-10, so I couldn’t understand the answers I got when I got to Mexico. In Greek, it kept making me learn how to say “pink water” or “pink disco museum” — and there are no disco museums in Greece — I googled just because!)
But I can see where it’s a great way to brush up on a language if you already knew the grammar but weren’t fluent before, and were comfortable with basic active language. (It doesn’t work if you’re *too* fluent, too, I’ve found with German, because you know too many ways to say things and might not use the one word they want to train.)
I’ve been thinking about taking adult classes at Alliance Francaise, but haven’t taken the placement test yet. One of these days…
You’re absolutely right about the grammar ockeghem! Gamification is a poor way to learn grammar. What’s really helped me is the AI available under Duolingo Max. In real time the AI adjusts to what you’re saying during g a conversation and responds.
I’ve wondered about the AI, but I’m too cheap to pay for it. 🙂 For the same price as a month of Max, I went out and bought a French grammar book. Now I just have to get disciplined about studying it.
It’s such a gift to be able to speak even a little bit of another language.
I wish someone would convince my kid of that! 🙂
😊
Coucou ma chérie! C’est fantastique! Peut-être qu’un jour nous irons ensemble en France, visiterons Grasse et achèterons des parfums exquis.
Hello dear friend ! That’s great ! One day maybe we will go to France, visit Grasse and buy exquisite fragrances together!
Volontiers! Willingly! Bisous!😘
Emojis need a European one w a kiss on each cheek!
Testing A City On Fire by Imaginary Authors today, which may be a little too on point for this Angeleno at this time. Even though I get more berries than smoke five hours in. Good longevity on my skin, which usually eats perfumes. Next up is IA Slow Explosions. These must be part of Josh’s ‘urban apocalypse’ line.
I feel ya on that. I tried wearing hypnotizing Fire by Abel, and it wasn’t a good experience. #FireBrain
That one was fun for me, but I did not have the association.
Frozen cherries and yogurt smoothie
Noa this morning then tonight I hesitated but chose Angel’s aldehydic cousin Miroir des Secrets, so unique.
Miam ! Miam !
Diptyque Tam Dao today. I sprayed my neck under my hair, so when i move my head around I get some wafts. Very comforting scent, like the inside of a sauna the day after it was heated. Reminds me of my great uncle’s lake cabin with the sauna he built. (He built the whole place! summers there were awesome.)
You smell great.
Today’s fragrance is La Treizieme Heure XIII. Per my post yesterday, I thought a detected some similarities with my fragrance from yesterday, Papyrus Oud 71. However, I’m finding that less so now that I have the Treizieme on.
And I also think Treizieme has connections to LL Patchouli 24. So that will be tomorrow’s fragrance as I suss this out. All 3 were included in Persolaise’s recent 5 part series on best fragrances of the century thus far. And I’m quite sure that I’ll be able to find a bucket list item for the LL.
I think I have a sample of LL Patchouli 24, if I find it I will wear it this weekend!
NinaV – in other news, I was given some daily contacts today that are super comfortable and fit so much better than what I tried last year. Called Infuse by Bausch & Lomb. I believe they are new in the last year or so. Also, the optometrist (she is new to me) adjusted my prescription and they fit so much better than anything I tried last year.
Oh good, I am happy for you!
I’ll check if those contacts arrived in my country 🙂
Hi everyone!
I am copying someone who recently posted about Rose & Cuir here🌹
This week feels like 10 days long, I can’t wait for the weekend…
Ack, and February feels like it’s already been 50 days long. I hope the weekend gets here soon for you…
I’m LADDM today, because a) Morocco is on my bucket list, and b) Mr. Ockeghem gave me his cold and I can smell it, but I don’t trust my nose with anything else.
Prior to the onset of the cold, I’ve been trying some samples sent by a generous NSTer with great taste! I suspect she has enabled an upcoming purchase of Lush Ginger and CdG Black. Heure Exquise was also lovely…they were all lovely, actually.
Ugh, sorry ockeghem! Hope you are better soon.