Feb 1: Pothôn Mêtêr -- It is, in fact, my birthday, it is nearly Luper season, and so I have pulled out one of my all-time favorite scents, from any company ever. I love it so much, and wear it pretty regularly and yet somehow, miraculously, it is barely below the shoulder. Magic.

 

Feb 2: Gingerbread Zombie -- I have three gingerbread-and-mint combo scents now, including this one (matcha & raw mint and peppermint candies are the other two), so apparently this is something I'm really drawn to. Good thing that they are all very distinct from each other! This one is the softest and sweetest, and dries down to gently spicy chocolate.

 

Feb 3: Endless Corridors -- I went through a phase of wanting to buy ALL THE BEESWAX scents pretty early on, so I have quite a number of them, and this is not my favorite. It does smell like dirty, smoky wax, which accomplishes the atmosphere for sure, but is not something I feel like wearing on a regular basis. It might make a nice room scent, however, or like, as background scent for a tabletop rpg session.

 

Feb 4: Flickering Lights, Fluttering Curtains -- Oh, no I love this. It's lovely, and the white amber is only very gently soapy. It does remind me of some of the Lace scents, but it feels so airy compared to most of the ones I have. It's interesting; it feels like many of these haunted house scents should be layered with each other. Like, I may try adding Endless Corridors to this, though I may end up with something resembling a lighter Young Edith's Bedroom. Which...appropriate, no?

 

Feb 5: The Cherry-Tree Carol -- This was the one I laser-focused on from the Winter collection this year. I'm not sure why, exactly, since I don't generally gravitate towards, and usually avoid, cherry scents. This one is cherry, but it's also woody and resinous and slightly floral and yeah, I really like it. ^___^ I always seem to have luck when I go with my gut on a particular scent!

 

Feb 6: The Icebergs -- Peach & pine! ....I'm not sure how I feel about this one. It's very odd. I can pick out a lot of the notes, but right now it's blending together on my skin in a way that reminds me of pine-scented cleaning products and clay. ...hm. May have to give this some time and test it again later. (eta: it dried down lovely. )

 

Feb 7: Rose-Tinted Mirror (TAL) -- I'm giving myself a sort of mental spa day today so this felt both thematically and emotionally correct. It's very soothing and pretty.

 

Feb 8: 13 (March 2020) -- Sugar sugar sugar!! It's hard to believe this one's less than a year old! But it's already one of my favorites from this series, and completely different from all the rest. I really enjoy the journey through the various sugars on my skin.

 

Feb 9: Sugar Skull '08 -- I'm going to test a week of old Weenie decants (including one I full-sized), because why not. ^__^ Kicking it off with a classic. It's not one of my faves, and the only bottle I have is a very low partial of '04, which is dark and sticky and more brown sugar than this one, but it's weirdly nice. It hasn't made an appearance in a few years, but it was a solid presence in the Weenies for quite a long time! It's good for when you want sweet and fruity but not foodie, if that makes sense? I like it, but I don't find it compelling. (Lol, it's there this year; I forgot to check. ^^; )

 

Feb 10: Frosted Pumpkin Spice Cookie -- ...yep, that sure is what it is. I've gotten a lot less enamored by pumpkin-y scents as time has gone by, but this is still pretty nice. Extremely autumnal and very distinctively frosting-y; I can almost taste it. I'm happy I pulled this one out! It's delicious.

 

Feb 11: All Souls '07 -- How to put it. This smells like a box of BPAL imps. Incense, slightly sweetened, but mostly just blurry, vaguely curranty, incense. I don't think it's turned, it still smells like what All Souls smells like, but the age and leakiness of this imp may mean it's time to chuck it into my freebies box instead of putting it back in the collection. I'm not sure I'm likely to wear it again after this, I have scents with both incense and curranty cake notes that I like much better. (eta: LOL, joke's on me. It dried down absolutely gorgeous and lasted for hours. This is what happens when you have too much perfume, folks. You forget.)

 

Feb 12: Dead Leaves, Chamomile, Red Roses, & White Tea -- I'm not a huge fan of the Dead Leaves series. It's not bad, but every time I try one I just feel kind of eh about it. This was one of a few I picked as decants in 2016, and I still feel pretty eh about it. I like the Lab's chamomile note a lot, and it's very present, but I do not love this scent on me.

 

Feb 13: Perilous Parlor '07 -- This was my first pear scent and I didn't love it. But in early 2012 The Vine was released and I suddenly discovered that I adored pear.   But PP was re-released that fall and ...I still didn't love it, and didn't buy a bottle. It had a dusty, slightly perfumey quality to it (to my nose), even fresh. That said, this decant is perfectly pleasant, and I won't be pitching it post-haste.

 

Feb 14: The Bride (Luper '16) -- Well, it's Valentine's Day, it would be more thematic to pick a Luper, right? This one is so light and lovely and romantic. I love magnolia as a note and it really shines here.

 

Feb 15: The Changeling -- Back to the Weenies for two more days. This is a decant I don't actually remember ever trying before. I probably did, at the time (it's from 2011, when my collection was much smaller and I tried every decant I got as soon as I got it, covering my arms in dots of oil!) but I have no memory of it at all. ...And it turns out it's great. It's pumpkin without spices, plus pale wood and a soft linen note. Reading the reviews makes it sound like it was pretty rough going when it was fresh, but the passage of ten years has made this one smooth and beautiful to my nose. Thanks for the present, past-me!

 

Feb 16: Ooky -- I was a little surprised to find I still had this decant, because I used about half of it in less than two weeks and promptly bought a bottle. ;3 I love almond on my skin -- when I was a kid, my mom let me use vanilla and almond extracts as perfume, and that association has never quite gone away -- and this is a delightful little nostalgia bomb of pumpkin and marzipan.

 

Feb 17: Volcano in Springtime -- It's Luper week! I hear rumors they're due to go live soon. This one, from 2016, is pretty meh on me. It's very faint, fairly sweet, and not very interesting. The cream note in it smells a bit chemical on my skin. I do like some of these light, pale, pretty scents, but this one is not a good one for me.

 

Feb 18: Venus Victrix -- Pretty roses and red musk and patch and sandalwood. I think, if I had been newer to BPAL when this came out, I would have really loved it, but it came out in 2015, and I already had several blends in this general wheelhouse by then. Dried down very nice, but still not something I'd have bought a full bottle of.

 

Feb 19: Lady in Speckled Pink Kimono -- Once again, pale, pretty, though fairly distinctively pink. Starts sugary, ends floral, not much else in between. I had to look up the notes and reviews because this was another one I couldn't even remember trying. ... It's fine, I guess? It's funny, for how much I love a number of Lupers and how much variation there is within any given release, I managed to grab a random handful containing a few similar scents and at least two of the remaining four I know I didn't like. ^^;

 

Feb 20: Pontia -- A little while back I finally identified bergamot as one of the notes that makes me think 'soapy' on my skin, so this one really just smells like an exquisite hand soap to me. Welp. ^_^;

 

Feb 21: Inganok Jewelers -- This is one of the two I don't like. I am not really a fan of the 'stone' accord (seen also in Night's Bridge and 13 Hours) and tend to want to wash it off pretty quickly. Adding silver (which I have liked in other combinations) doesn't make me like it any more. I'm putting this one on before a bath because I know it lasts forever and I don't want it to be around later on.

Feb 22: Milk Chocolate, Raw Ginger, and Butterscotch -- Pretty nice, no surprises here. It is, however, a little too buttery-sweet and I love this ginger note more in other things, particularly Mother Ginger and Vespertilio Proterus. I know why I kept this decant, and I also know why I didn't buy a bottle.

 

Feb 23: Love's Philosophy ('16) -- This was one that became somewhat legendary because it didn't come around again for 8 years after its first release. But I hated the first release and got rid of my first decant fairly shortly after getting it. I picked it up again when it finally reappeared just to see if maybe a slightly more adjusted nose would find it more pleasant, but nope. It's very odd, because all the notes (vanilla, saffron, cream) I have enjoyed in other blends, but somehow, all together in this one, they are awful on me. So, verdict from Luper week is that I have four decants to put in the swap/sale box and three to put back into collection. Cool.

 

Feb 24: Licorice Bats -- I think I'll spend this week exploring some of my BPTP bottles. (also I have a migraine and this scent is very mild, which is very necessary right now) This li'l guy is soft and soothing and very gently fruity and doesn't do anything weird on me. It has better throw and staying power than it did fresh, which is nice. It's not one I go for terribly often, but when I do, I'm glad to have the full bottle.

 

Feb 25: Crypt Princess -- Yes, I do have her coffin somewhere in storage. This takes a while to settle on my skin, and the first few minutes are pretty terrible, but then it's pretty good, though still a bit tart, as you would expect from the pomegranate. Definitely related to Crypt Queen and King (I'll get to them later this week), but a bit more floral.

 

Feb 26: L'Estate -- I got this in an Inquisition just a few months after really getting into BPAL. I actually bought two sets, this and L'Inverno, but ended up disliking the latter and sold the full set (perfume, atmo, bath oil) off at some point along the way. This set I kept (and later ended up picking up L'Autunno secondhand) but I never understood until now why it wasn't quite what I wanted it to be, and why it was so lightly soapy for so long on my skin. The answer is lily. ^_^;; It's still pretty nice, but I prefer the bath oil/atmo spray, neither of which have lily. (As a sidenote, the Four Seasons Inquisition was absolutely brilliant. Three [technically four, since there were also extremely limited matching soaps] iterations on a theme, all working together in a delightful whole.)

 

Feb 27: Crypt King -- I'd kind of forgotten how much of a fuss there was about this one until I read the review thread, though checking my email, I actually bought it a few months after the initial release, sans coffin, but direct via the BPTP Etsy shop. It's quite pleasant, that lovely earthy pomegranate with more masculine, cologne-ish notes. I'm pretty happy I have all three members of this royal family; I should pull them out more often!

 

Feb 28: Crypt Queen -- Started the month with one fave, ending it with another, though I still have two more days in my BPTP theme week. This was something I originally got as a decant very early on and didn't like, but a few years later, someone gifted me a low partial of it and I fell in love. It's one of those ones that defies all my usual likes and turns them into a deep love. Everything about it is beautiful.