meaganola

I've got a couple of nephews who I inadvertently got hooked on BPAL when I gave my sister-in-law some Yule decant circle leftovers (the biggest hit: Ded Moroz). I found this out too late to order some for Xmas for them (and so they're getting nail polish instead), but they have birthdays coming up, and I'm planning on giving them sets of their own BPAL rollerballs. The problem: I don't know what is appropriate for kids. So. I looked in here for suggestions for kids, but all I could find was a thread for very young kids, but I think these two are past that age, and another for girls of all ages, but they're not girls, and my brother would get upset if I gave them girly perfumes (he doesn't care about mixed gender roles, but he does not like notes that have traditionally been used in perfumes aimed at women. All of the females on Mom's side of the family -- including me -- tend to have headache problems with most floral notes, so flowers were pretty much banned in our house growing up, and he still has a "FLOWERS ARE EVIL" reaction to pretty much anything floral, and most perfumes deemed appropriate for girls seem to tend to be on the floral side). Anyway, all of that is to ask: Any suggestions for seven- and ten-year-old boys? As an _Alice in Wonderland_ fan, I'm particularly interested in pushing selections from Mad Tea Party. The only one that really stands out to me as male-friendly is King of Hearts, but that just seems too grown-up for grade-schoolers. I just don't know anything about what is or is not appropriate for kids.

This smells like soap to me. But not just *any* soap. Oh, no, *this* soap is the fancy stuff at that hotel my family stayed at on a trip to Disneyland. I snagged the bars every day because of the fact that they were solid carnation-y goodness until the maids started leaving regular (boring) soap. *Loved* the first stuff, hated the second stuff. And my month birth flower is carnation, and it was my mom's favorite flower, which is why I have that tattoo. So. The scent itself. All I get is carnation. Wonderful, creamy, spicy carnation. In my mind, this is what single-note carnation would be. It smells the same to me whether I wear it in my Clocket or on my skin. When I stopped by the drugstore to pick up some nail polish pens for my nephews, all of a sudden the cashier ringing them up looked at me and said, "*What* is that *wonderful* smell?" I happened to have a decant in my pocket, so I had her sniff it to see if that was what she was smelling. Her reply: "It doesn't smell good in the bottle, but on you, it's *fantastic*." It's a hit! I have a half-bottle left over after decanting, and I was planning on keeping that anyway, but I guess I'll have to get another full bottle and tuck it away for times I need to slather on the soothing comfort. As for comparisons between Hod and Alice, there are no similarities between the two to me, and I had originally thought that Alice would be sufficient for all of my carnation needs, as infrequent as they are. In short, nope. I rarely try one of these long-sought-after ultra-rares and fall instantly in love, but that's not the case here, and I'm very glad I didn't get a decant in a swap because I would have never been able to track down a bottle, and I'm *very* happy that it has been resurrected because now I *will* be getting a bottle, and that should be enough for me since it takes me a year to go through a bottle even with daily use, and I wear a different scent pretty much every day, so one bottle is likely to last me *forever*.

This is a worn-in-Clocket review: I have a bit of the 2006 version left (and a whole lot of the 2008 incarnation), and I can barely smell anything right now, so I decided to go for one of the older Yules in my collection that has just been sort of languishing for a couple of years rather than test something new since I won't be able to tell anything apart. But I *was* able to smell this one despite my congestion, and it's all spicy sticks. Not really something I would reach for on a regular basis, but it will be nice to have the decants for future use. It's probably just my childhood, but, curiously, this reminds me more of camping in the summer in the '70s with my cousins than Christmas. (If this doesn't make sense, we can blame the Ambien! Time to stop posting!)

I've been noticing lately that even for domestic packages, the tracking info isn't getting updated until packages arrive, if at all. So you get the CnS notice when the label is generated, and *sometimes* it gets updated when the package goes through the originating post office, but sometimes not. Up until a couple of months ago, I would also see when it hit my local post office, which would mean that I would see the package the next day, but that doesn't seem to get updated any more.

One winter about fifteen years ago, it snowed so much that a Hummer got stuck on the hill outside my apartment for a week. My office closed for a couple of days. 24-hour grocery stores shut down at 5pm. The buses weren't running. The liquor store was open, though. I bought stuff to make margaritas and cookies (cactus-shaped, to match the margarita glasses, and, wow, *that* is a random detail to remember right now), cranked the heat in my apartment, and broke out the Jimmy Buffett. This oil is that weekend in a perfume. And now I want margaritas. And this is a perfect scent for me today even though it's technically still fall because it's damned cold here today, and I've got the heat turned up, although I haven't broken out the Jimmy Buffett or the margaritas. Not *Christmas-y*, but very *it's been so damned cold I'm losing my mind, so I'm going to turn the heat up and pretend I'm in the tropics today*. Or last December, when my family went to Disneyworld for a week right before Christmas, and my sister-in-law and I drank our way around the international part of Epcot one day while the boys (my dad, my brother/her husband, and their two sons) went on kid-oriented rides on the other side of the park. As for the actual *scent*, it's in the same family as Velvet Tiki and pretty much everything in the Atomic Luau Lounge. Fruit, floral, and fizz. It started as super pink floral, but as it dries down, the grapefruit and yuzu come out. Very nice, and I'm a floral-hater. If I didn't already have about a dozen other oils in the same family, I would pick up a bottle, but I'm set. I'll keep the decant, though, because it's just different enough from the others that I just *know* I'll end up getting hit with a craving for it. Most likely on a Friday once I start working again, since Fridays are when I usually break out these sorts of scents.

I actually wasn't going to try this one because it's basically two notes, both of which are problematic for me, but I got some oil on my fingers while decanting, so I inadvertently give it a shot. As expected, gummy bears and wine, both turned up to eleventy billion. That is all. When I sniff it in the vial, it's mostly red currant, which becomes gummy bears on me, and the port is just your basic red wine, which I amp like you wouldn't believe (Wanda and Blood Rose might as well be red wine single notes as far as my skin is concerned). The bad news is that red currant makes me queasy, and I always feel weird about smelling like wine, so I'm finding myself extremely reluctant to even thoroughly skin-test it. The good news is that I already found a nice new home for my half-bottle left over from decanting, so I just have one lone decant to sniff when I start thinking that I want a bottle, which is perfect for me.

This is one I had a feeling I was going to love based on how much I dig Season of the Inundation. I was right. Snow and dirt has turned out to be one of my favorite combinations. If anyone had told me that a year ago, I would have thought they were insane. Dirt held no appeal, and the stuff I had tried with snow caused extreme pain. Then SotI came along, and I discovered that as long as it's not accompanied by tons of evergreen notes, snow is *awesome*, and snow plus dirt demonstrates why the Lab's full name includes the word "Alchemy." The nice thing about this one is that it's missing something that makes SotI a scent that only feels right to wear in the spring, so I can wear this one in the colder part of fall and winter! *Very* excited about that. And I thought I was going to be the only person I knew outside of fellow BPALers who liked it. I was wrong: My aunt's housemate spontaneously commented that it's really pretty. This is going on the upgrade-to-bottle list. Other snow scents (so far, that's Snow Maiden and First Soft Snow) will have to go head-to-head to get to be on that list, but this is just such a singular standout that it doesn't have to compete. It just has to be itself.

Crappy cellphone pic, but it gives you an idea: Thank you very much! I was actually thinking it was smaller than that. I was thinking I could get my friends a little imp to go with some homemade chocolate as a Christmas present. I was thinking if the imps weren't crazy tiny I could tie them to the bags. This is going to work out nicely. Also, if you've ever had/seen a perfume sample vial from a department store, they're usually the exact same thing. It's more or less an industry standard thing.

Wacky. At first, it was pretty much just like everyone else has said. Very lovely. Then I went for a 5-mile walk. I don't know if it was just the way it morphed on me or if it was affected by the walk, but by the time I got home an hour and a half later, it turned into the herbal/evergreen scent. Maybe a cross between rosemary and sage. I couldn't put my finger on it. Nice, though. I'll have to give this one another try when I'm not going to be hiking all over the place to see if it changes when confronted with activity no more physical than getting another glass of iced tea.

I'm headed out in just a little while (the show starts, like, now, but there's an opening band, and it only takes ten minutes to get there, so it's now time to go change and head on out since the parking can be a bit challenging) to *finally* see Wanda Jackson at a bar/club downtown-ish. I've been trying to catch one of her shows for *years*, and the planets have finally aligned. I've found that Sunbird seems to be my scent to wear to shows at this particular club. I opened the bottle to sniff it for some reason a few days ago and got hit with the need to go to a show there (conveniently, I already had my ticket to tonight's show, so I was set as far as finding a band to see there). So, Sunbird it is.

Yup. In case anyone was wondering, I got those Lab-specific numbers from the Lab's own FAQ: What is the difference between a perfume and a perfume oil? The following is a rough guide to the differences between the strength categories of scents -- Eau fraiche: 3% or less perfume oil. Eau de cologne: 2 - 5% perfume oil. Eau de toilette: 4 - 10% perfume oil. Eau de parfum: 8 - 15% perfume oil. Perfume: 15 - 25% perfume oil. Perfume oil: 15 - 80% perfume oil.

Thank you, Ayelienne! Yeah, I've been checking the CnS thread and it seems as though the lab had a crush orders between the Yule update and Nov. 13th. Given that, it makes since that my Nov. 15th order hasn't been harvested yet. I just wanted to make sure CCNow hadn't eaten it and if this kind of delay was normal. Thank you to everyone for helping put my mind at ease! I hope you guys had a great holiday! Yep, when it's not crazy busy ordering season, you're usually going to see a two- to three-week delay between order placement and CnS for smaller orders, depending on how soon after an update you ordered. Right now, since it's shopping season, it's right around three weeks (my sixteen-bottle Yule order that included a backordered oil took 22 days from order to CnS, which is downright speedtacular considering the fact that I had a backordered oil in there, although I've seen longer times for larger orders, which is also pretty standard). It's also a good idea to keep an eye on the backorder page (yes, the thread looks like it's two years old, but the info is current) to see if anything you've ordered is listed there. Nothing's on there right now, but that can tragically change at any moment. As for your particular date situation, I'm expecting to see CnSes going out for orders involving 13 (which by definition were placed on the 13th) late next week, so if your order is average-sized, I'm thinking it will go out at the beginning of the week after that, barring backorders (and then Anniversaries the week after *that*. Whoo!). I've had orders take much longer, but then I check the backorder thread and the CnS thread to see how my wait time is compared to other orders around the same time involving the same oils, and everything makes sense. I have never had an order from the Lab simply vanish. It might *feel* like that's what is going on, but then after a while, you start figuring out the order-to-CnS rhythm and how to "read" the CnS thread (to piece together what oils are going out when), and it no longer seems like something is going wrong. It's kind of like a mystery where you have to figure out what the clues are and how they fit together to get your oils to you. After a while, solving the mystery is actually kind of fun!

Not a big fan of family events, especially when it's my dad's family, but I let him talk me into going to his brother's house today. Dad, his two brothers, their wives, three cousins (one chick my age, two young enough to be my sons. My uncle got a late start on his family), our grandmother, and five children-of-cousins. Oh, and two dogs: A Jack Russell and a chihuahua. I really don't have anything in common with any of them any more (I was the only person there not wearing jeans, for example). And neither side of my family drinks, so I couldn't even make it through the afternoon pleasantly buzzed. I didn't want to potentially ruin a favorite LE, but I didn't want to go with a non-favorite LE, so I ended up going with a favorite GC: Masquerade.

I get lichen, and lots of it. There's a bit of lime (more in the bottle than on me) and a teeny tiny bit of incense way in the back. Fruit salad or bubblegum? Not on me. This is a very interesting scent -- on the edge of "I don't think I like this at all" and "I think I really like this." It's weird that the two options are so very close here, but there we are. I'm not sure I will keep the rest of the bottle (I have half a bottle left after decanting), but I will be keeping the decant just in case aging does amazing things to it. Or if I need to remember why I didn't keep the bottle.

Damn it. Red musk, champaca, ylang ylang, patchouli, and nutmeg say that this should be groovy hippie glory. Instead, on me, it's all burnt caramel, all the time (as a side note, this particular caramel is completely unlike the one in Red Lantern, at least to my nose, although that might be due to the fact that my bottle of RL is about a year and a half old). I would like the caramel if it wasn't burnt, but no such luck. It might as well be single-note burnt caramel from beginning to end. Oh, well, it's actually kind of a relief to cross stuff off the upgrade-to-bottle list, especially since the very first decant I tested (the First Soft Snow) made an instant leap from the probably-utterly-unwearable list to the bottle list, and I'm on very limited funds. Now Winter Nights Enlarge was actually on my list of will-probably-upgrade-to-a-bottle oils, but it's most definitely off that list. In fact, I'm tossing the list and giving up on trying to predict what I'll like and what I'll hate because I've been very, *very* wrong about both lately. I *will* keep this decant for aging purposes, though, just in case the burnt caramel fades and the patchouli comes out over the course of the next year (I tend to wear stuff seasonally, so Yules typically only hit the rotation box between Halloween and Lupercalia seasons, which means that this will sit in the Yule storage box until the next time I'm working my way through Yule decants of years past).

Season of the Inundation! It belongs in the "not very snowy" section, but snow is still there. SotI is the scent that made me decide I can handle snowy scents after all. At the time, I had written snow off as being too closely tied in my mind to certain evergreen notes since I have some weird problems with smells triggering The Quease and STABBITY PAIN headaches. I was still being cautious with Snow Glass Apple due to pain fears, but once SotI proved to be bottled awesome, I've decided to try every snow scent I can get my hands on instead of avoiding them all as I had been before (I still can't handle Moon of Ice or Old Moon, though). And the funny thing is that when I tried SotI, it was by accident. I had meant to grab Plastic Pink Flamingo that day. One of the best mistakes I have ever made.

My apartment wore Samhain during the day (strange but true: I use Samhain year-round as a mood-enhancer when I need to buckle down and clean my apartment. It really helps for me to have an awesome spray that I only use when I clean like this!) and Sugar Skull in the evening. I'm thinking today and tomorrow will find Mictecacihuatl hanging out in my oil burner. And then on me, I went with Trick #2, which is still going fairly strong considering I took a nice, long shower to wash it off. I *wanted* to wear All Souls today since I don't have All Saints, but Trick #2 is still too powerful for that. On the up side, it should be gone tomorrow, although I may end up going with Dia de los Muertos then. Too many appropriate options for tomorrow!

Wow, this does *not* smell anything on me like it does in the bottle. In the bottle, I get near-Quease-inducing cheesecake. No spices. On my skin? OH HAI I AM A GIANT ATOMIC FIREBALL. No pumpkin, no cheesecake, no crust. Nothing but spice, and mainly cinnamon. Which is actually kind of awesome, although it burns a bit. Not my skin. My *nose*. I'm not sure if it's a just-right-now thing or if I do this all the time and am just noticing it now due to what I've been picking lately, but I'm amping spices like crazy. Raven Moon was pretty much all nutmeg and red chili, Lambs-Wool went all ginger, Tanin'iver had cassia up to 11, and now this. Which is fine and appropriate (most of my friends call me Nutmeg and have joked about how I was the original Spice Girl), but this seems a bit extreme. I thought it would settle down after a little while (like fifteen minutes), but it's been an hour, and it's still going strong.

Huh. Now that you mention it, this smells like L'Autunno to me, too. Unfortunately, L'Autunno was very black peppery to me. I hate black pepper. I have a bottle of last year's Samhain atmosphere spray, and this doesn't smell anything like that. So very glad I went the decant route with this one. My immediate impulse was to get a full bottle. That would not have ended well.

Hmm. I finally broke out Saloon #10 to do a Smell-o-Vision thing with _Deadwood_ (my father's favorite show. Dad *loves* the profanity. Seriously. I asked him if he liked the show because of or despite the cursing, and he sheepishly said it was because of it. In related news, one of his favorite movies is _The Devil's Rejects_). I actually got this in when it was originally released for this express purpose but never quite got around to doing it until now. Spritzy spritzy spritzy, hmm, I'm not sure I like this. I have problems with leather, and it turns out it's almost all leather to my nose, especially since I all but hosed my living room down with it. Oh, well, too late, let's start the show. After fewer than fifteen minutes, my newfound love for the show has attached itself to the spray. It took me a while to figure out where the tobacco and whiskey are in here, but they're there, too, under the LEATHER. This is the leather of my dad's work gloves and boots (Dad was a timber cutter) or a saddle for a rancher. Quality but heavy-duty stuff, not high-end leather for purses or driving gloves. And three hours later, it still smells like it did at the outset, but I'm not horribly surprised at that (although this might be due to the fact that I am on day five of a cold and have regained only a limited sense of smell). It's a hard scent to love (or even to merely like for someone who dislikes leather as much as I'm realizing I do), but as long as I'm watching this show, it's *awesome*. I won't be able to deal with it otherwise, though, and I won't miss it when I'm done with the show or the bottle (actually just a one-ounce decant, since I was getting it along with decants of the whole Yule Inquisition and didn't think I needed a whole bottle of *anything* at that time) is gone. (As a side note, now that I'm watching the show and smelling this spray, I realize that my dad has always been really into the Old West. His whole family, too, actually. The sets on this show are like a trip through my childhood vacations, which is actually kind of odd since we actually went on very few vacations when I was a kid. Maybe I'm confusing childhood memories with recollections of running a saloon in the Old West in a former life.)

Huh. I'm wearing Devil's Night on my skin today (I usually go with a Clocket), and I get nothing but spice. In the decant I get a bit of the Juicy Fruit scent, but the second it hits my skin -- even a droplet of oil on my finger from the cap -- it's spice city. No smoke, no booze, no musk, no sugar. Suusje nailed it: Atomic Fireballs (those are never sweet to me, either). It smells so completely unlike what the notes indicate it should smell like that I started to think I got a mislabeled oil, but I finally got around to checking the reviews here, and I see I'm not alone. So sad, too, because I was really looking forward to sugary, boozy musk with a touch of smoke. I guess it's a good thing I've kept those Smut decants after all even if that one is lacking the smoke. On the up side, at least DN's spice doesn't burn my skin like a lot of these spicy oils can.

Hi Synthetika! Have you tried this thread? There is lots of good information about turning oils into alcohol sprays. If it's just the potency of the scent that is giving you problems, you might also want to consider diluting with jojoba oil. That might even be easier for you to get your hands on, and in your particular case, alcohol might even add to your problem. I had a coworker who was fine if I wore oils, but when I used one of my sprayers (about half oil and half perfumers' alcohol), bad things happened for her.

Since I wasn't sure whether I could handle a scent on me all day, this one went into my Clocket so I could take it off in case things went horribly, horribly wrong. My last hangover was far too recent for me to be able to deal with smelling alcohol of any type all day. So, Clocket testing. I get cherry SweeTarts out of this one. No booze, just candycandycandy, which is a good thing. I actually like it this way so much that I'm not sure I'm going to bother trying it directly on my skin. But I don't see myself wearing this frequently enough to upgrade from a decant to a bottle. I'm not even sure I'll wear it frequently enough to get through the decant since there are other more awesome oils in my collection, but I'm keeping it onhand anyway for the times I get hit with the desire to smell like cherry SweeTarts because it *does* happen once in a while. This is one of those scents that make me glad decant circles exist: I have enough to get me through those times I want this particular scent, but I don't have a whole bottle to try to unload. A whole bottle is *far* too much of this particular oil for me. (This scent does make me want a black cherry soda. Conveniently, I have sugar-free black cherry Torani syrup and club soda on hand. Inconveniently, I also have a content, cuddly kitty on my lap using the crook of my elbow for a pillow.)

I really hate contaminating the oil in an imp or bottle, even if I *know* I'm the only one who will ever use it, so I'm all about the straw-type coffee stirrers. I got a *huge* box of them at Cash & Carry -- I think it's something like a thousand of them, so I'm set for at least a couple of years even if I use one a day, and if I cut them in half, they will last even longer -- for a few bucks. They pull up just the right amount for a nice, healthy slather or Clocket dose. I've been wearing my oils in a Clocket lately due to work restrictions (but today was my last day, for better or worse, so time to break out the mini sprayers again!), and I've gotten so used to using those stirrers to douse the cotton pad that I sometimes find myself using the stirrers even when I'm not wearing the Clocket. I actually have a few unused wand caps I bought over a year ago that I will probably never bother with due to my fears/issues surrounding contamination. Exception: Sleep scents. I have TKO in a rollerball ('cause, hi, KLUTZ), diluted quite a bit (probably one part TKO to two parts jojoba oil, so it usually works out to about 3ml-ish of TKO in a 10ml rollerball, and then I just fill the rest of the thing up with jojoba oil), and it's *still* pretty powerful stuff. I give my wrists a heavy slather of it just about every night, but I'm the *only* person who uses it, and it's only for sleep purposes, so I don't worry about contamination. I also have a decant of Lilith Victoria that I was using as a sleep scent a couple of times a month, although it's almost empty. I have most of a bottle left, but I'm reluctant to pull another decant out because it's MADE OF AWESOME, so I want it to last as long as possible. I also tend to pull decants of whatever I have a bottle of so I can use oil from a decant instead of a bottle due to air exposure issues, and then I apply from those decants with coffee stirrers. Um, no, I'm not a freaky BPAL user with extensive rituals! Really! I haven't made up a dance yet! ETA: I forgot to say that I'm probably encouraged to find alternate ways of applying oil other than tip-bottle-slather-wrists because I pretty much can't wear perfume on my wrists. Aside from TKO, anything applied to my wrists smells *wrong*. For example, on my wrists, Dorian smells like flowers and generic soap. I don't know how *flowers* show up there, but they do. Fortunately, my cleavage doesn't have a similar problem.

Interesting. I snagged a decant of this just out of curiosity and because I wanted to get a decant of each of the Egyptian oils for my library, and it turns out that I *love* it. I was expecting to have Issues with the myrrh, but that's not happening at all. The past few times I've worn this, it's been in a scent locket, and I've gotten this wonderful snow-and-candied-soil (not dirt! Which is a good thing because I'm not too wild about dirt, but I *love* the smell of soil. I don't know where the candied part comes from, but that's how my nose is interpreting it) combination. Today, I decided to try it directly on my skin, and I've got an intriguing black tea thing going on. I also get a tiny bit of the Old Spice thing, but in wafts, in between the candied soil, snow, and tea. I also get a bit of burn, although I'm not sure whether that's because I've got a touch of heat rash going on in the cleavage that is being aggravated by the oil. I'm very glad I gave this one a shot. Love it. I've even upgraded to a bottle, and I'm really trying to hold back on bottles nowadays because I just don't wear as much oil as I have, but I have a feeling it will be just as amazing in an oil burner. The drawback is that this screams "LATE SPRING! EARLY SUMMER!", so chances are the next time I dig it out, we will be finding out how nicely it ages.