I have some free samples of new products that came in the mail, and I really like both of them, and I have extra of each to give away.

ChapStick has a True Shimmer lip balm in several flavors.  I’ve tried a couple of the flavors, and they remind me in flavor a lot of the Bonne Belle Lip things, remember those?  Nice flavor and smell, and it goes on incredibly smooth. Not sure if the formula is changed with this since they put shimmer in it, but it glides on and gives just a hint of shimmer to your lips, which is reallly perfect for summer. There’s no color at all, which I like a lot more than lip balms with color.  Not drying at all, works great and looks great.  I do have one extra of these in Peppermint Rush.  If you’d like to be entered to win it, just drop your name in comments.

Other product is Q-tips Vanity Packs.  Gone are those blue and white cartons, and now then have brightly colored, pretty flowered containers so you can leave your Q-tips in the box for your counter.  The Q-tips are the same, no changes there, they are still as versatile for mopping up your face as ever (does anyone in the world not use Q-tips or some generic version of them?) but the boxes are so darn cute.  I have one extra of these as well.  If you’d like to be entered in the drawing for one of them., again, just drop your name in comments.

New perfume discovery that’s old?  For me, Kenzo Flower.  I’d never smelled this, so I tried some recently, and just wow.  It’s so easy to wear.  I found online a Kenzo Flower Summer, and I’m just perplexed. Kenzo Flower is summery, how do they get it more summery?  Yeah, I’m slow, but I eventually do try everything.

Now I need advice.  I’m almost paralyzed in picking paint for my kitchen. I was thinking of going with terra cotta, but decided no because I want to do a bronze/red/gold glass tile backsplash, and that would just be overkill on color.  Then I was thinking of a dark celery green, which works and would work with the backsplash, but I have a pale green in there now, and I’m just greened out.  Ideas? I’ve toyed with orange and decided no, I’m just sure I’ll get tired of it if it’s all over my walls.  I’m thinking of a paint color called Cumin. It’s a medium reddish brown, not really dark, but definitely not light.  I want my kitchen to be warm and inviting. Any other thoughts on color? And if you have a specific brand/color or links to kitchen photos that are warm, would love to have that.  This painting this is so hard, the color picking.  I mean, yikes!

Patty

The nice thing about being a sample fiend is, if I root around long enough, chances are I´ll find either the perfume I´m looking for or I will be surprised and excited about something I´d overlooked or dismissed.  This time I dug up a decant of Chanel Eau de Cologne, which got completely ignored in my mad rush to try the other Exclusifs (my favorites:  31RC by far, followed, oddly enough, by Beige.  Although Bel Respiro is really growing on me.   Bois des Iles I don´t actually count because I consider it a separate release… there, enough waffling?)

The Chanel EdC got all sorts of raves on my recent cologne post on Guerlain 68, and so I was eager to try it.  I can´t find a decent list of notes anywhere, but it´s very much in the tradition of a classic cologne a la 4711, so let´s wing it and call it bergamot, citrus, neroli, petitgrain and according to my nose, definitely some musk, although let me remind you that I am the Musk Magnifier.   The initial dominant note to my nose is neroli, and that baby-aspirin-ish smell of petitgrain.

Um.  Well.  I tell you, I am seriously stymied by this Chanel.  Maybe it´s my decant, but gosh, it´s tepid.  On second thought, it´s so straightforward it´s probably exactly what the doctor ordered for someone who smells, say, the 68 or Dior Eau Noire and thinks, eh, that there is a whole lot going on in a cologne.  The Chanel certainly smells like a high quality fragrance, and … um, excuse me, where the heck did it go?

I am the Queen of Every Fragrance Lasts Until I Am On My Knees, Begging It To Leave, and yet this Chanel EdC goes missing so quick its picture should be on the side of a milk carton.   Yes, I get it, it´s a cologne, but – come on, five minutes?  Five minutes, tops.  If I hold my nose to my skin and huff I get a lovely citrus-musky smell, but I look like some sort of perv/doofus in public enough already without walking around with my nose glued to my hand.    Gone In 60 Seconds is not going to be my favorite fragrance, not even in sticky DC midsummer.

I guess today´s going to be one of those days when I won´t be winning any online popularity contests, although I´m going to work my March Magic and invite y´all to comment below on any much-loved or recently ballyhooed fragrance you find overrated or otherwise just don´t “get.”

March

I’ve become a big fan of the Amouage fragrances, though I’ll never be happy with their price tag. Though given the way other perfumes are coming up, they are looking more reasonable than they used to.

Ubar had been off the market for a while, recently reissued. I have no idea whether the new incarnation is different or the same as the old. If anyone has smelled both and knows, please speak up in comments!  Notes of Bergamot, lemon, lily of the valley, damascene rose, jasmine, civet, vanilla make up Ubar.  It goes on bright and crisp, a little milky green, and then it’s like the whole darn flower garden just all bends over at the same time and shows its naughty bits and gigles.  I mean, the civet!  Amouage is one of the perfume companies that do skank in the most elegant ways, like Guerlain used to.  Gold Woman was my first exposure to that full-on elegant whore thing they’ve got going, and it just blew me completely away.  Ubar isn’t 5th Avenue and Valentino evening gowns like Gold is.  Ubar could be worn about any day, but just realize when you wear it that you are hitting on people without even winking or opening your mouth.  Getting past that part, it’s got a great floral blend, just enough  sharper notes to keep the jasmine from lolling around in its most rotting format.

I’m a fan.  though Lyric Woman and Homage Attar stole my heart long ago as favorite Amouages, Ubar has a position of deep like.

It’s allegely almost summer here, but you’d never know it with the daily rain/tornadoes/wind/hail we’ve been having for the last, well, ever.  On the one hand, I’m ready for summer; on the other, I still need to get my AC hooked back up (long story, replete with horrible customer service by the contractor who put in my new furnace last year – never use R & L Heating in Denver or ServiceMagice, they both completely suck on making sure the work gets done).  Is the whole country having like a cloudy/rainy thing, or should I tune into my news?  If so, what are you doing fragrancewise to combat it?

Patty

Today was the annual screen porch clean-off day, finally.  It’s a three-hour job involving children, brooms, garden hoses, scrub brushes, bleach, and lots and lots of squealing over icky dead bugs.  This year’s wet spring led to a particularly generous deployment of bleach on my part to combat the heedious mildew, and unfortunately I have just enough pride you will not be getting the Money Shot of me in my standard porch-bleaching getup: hair up, rubber gloves, ratty old swimsuit and my gold-toned kayaking Crocs with the orthotics.  Diva wanted a photo of me to put up on her Facebook page, in an album no doubt entitled Further Proof My Family is Crazy, or possibly The Bitter Pill of My Everyday Existence.  I’ll reek of bleach until Thursday at least.

But all that screen-porch scrubbing and lazy summer dreaming got me thinking about mint in fragrances.  I have several patches of different kinds of mint in the backyard, and any of you who’ve grown it free-range know how obnoxious it can be; I’m pulling it out all the time where it’s riding herd right over some other plants.  I love mint in tea, and in foods, and even picked right off the plant for a meditative chew while I glare at the mile-a-minute vines choking my rose beds, but as a dominant note in fragrances?  Not so much.

I tried, I really tried, to wrap myself around Geranium Pour Monsieur, but on me it’s just one Giant Squeeze of Minty Freshness.  I get none of the subtlety and leafiness and other notes that many of you discerning fans get.  Seriously, it might as well be called Demeter Mint (which probably exists, right?)

One mint I really do like and brought out for the occasion (and to take the edge off the bleach smell) is Jo Malone’s White Jasmine & Mint.  I find the fragrance cheerfully tackola – like it should be spelled Jazzmin n’ Mint.  There’s something fakey about it in a good way.  The jasmine is sweet and effervescent rather than indolic, and it’s the perfect match for the mint, which is cool and sharp in a way that makes me think more of vetiver and less of Crest or Peppermint Patties.  That’s pretty much the whole story, and it’s a nice, simple scent for summer.

I was trying to think of any other fragrances I like that have a strong hint of mint to them, and it seems to me that one of the Comme des Garcons Leaves series I tried and liked had mint – maybe I was thinking of the actual Leaves: Mint, which seems to have been discontinued (? along with Shiso?), although you can find Tea (which I love, maybe that’s the one with the mint in it?), along with the other two, Calamus and … something.  Sneezy?  Dopey?   Oh, never mind.   Lily.   Let Me Google That For You.  Hah, I love that.

Or … wait.  Maybe I’m thinking about a CB I Hate Perfume?  Something with tea in it?   Maybe Russian Caravan Tea, but that’s not it, but on the other— hey, look, on the CBIHP website there’s 2ml travel sizes of many of the absolutes, where have I been??!   Also it’s only available in the shop, but he has a Mint Tea, I need to get back to Brooklyn at some point.

Late night sniffing and – yep, the White Jasmine & Mint is still going strong.   How do you feel about mint?   Does a little become Too Much fairly quickly?   Do you find it refreshing, or annoying?   How’s that Guerlain AA Mentafollia?  And is Lemon Fresca the greatest perfume name ever?   You know it is, I could drink one of those right now.  Any of you ever try that particular AA?  I think Herba Fresca has mint too…

March

Every once in a while, the cynical perfumista must put her cynicism on a shelf and acknowledge the good in the world. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it is worth mentioning.

Carol’s Daughter is a company founded by a fellow Brooklynite, Lisa Price. After spending time as a pre-law student at City College, a United Nations messenger, and a writer’s assistant on the taped-in-Brooklyn Cosby Show, Lisa became a successful purveyor of handmade bath, body and hair products she concocted in her kitchen and initially sold at flea markets and craft fairs. As word of mouth spread about the fabulousness of her formulations, she managed to find herself a cadre of influential backers, Jay Z, Mary J. Blige, Will and Jada Pinkett Smith among them, to help her open her first retail store in Brooklyn, in 1999.  I was long since removed from Brooklyn at that point, and I don’t quite remember how I became aware of her products, but somehow, the words “Almond Cookie perfume oil” came into my sights, and the rest is history.

Since 1999, Lisa’s one store on DeKalb Avenue in downtown Brooklyn has evolved into a chain of 8 retail locations (one in the DC area at Fashion Centre Pentagon City), including the original DeKalb Avenue “heritage” store and a flagship store on Harlem’s Grand Concourse. She is also in many Sephora locations, as well as a number of Macy’s and Dillard’s department stores. Her success can be credited to the strength of her investors as well as the ubiquitous “Oprah Effect”. Apparently, pitching Oprah will send you on a rocket ride to the financial stratosphere if she likes your product. I don’t pay any attention to Oprah’s likes and dislikes, especially now since the whole world is hip to her powerful influence. I am quite capable of thinking and deciding for myself. To the contrary, I certainly do not begrudge anyone the success her endorsement can bring. After Lisa’s products were featured on Oprah, her sales exploded from $2 million to $20 million. And her products, originally targeted to the African American community, went mainstream.  

Sadly, Almond Cookie perfume oil is no longer made, but it was replaced by an equally delicious eau de toilette, which I love. I wrote of my love for marzipan in my last post, and if you’re attracted to that sweet, almondy goodness, Almond Cookie is spectacular. It is warmer and sweeter than Acorelle Amande de Blé, and just so snuggly and comforting. Almond Cookie bath and body products are just as delicious, especially the Shea Soufflé body cream, which is a can’t-do-without for me in winter.

Last November, Carol’s Daughter unveiled a signature fine fragrance, Pearls. I gave it a perfunctory sniff at Sephora once or twice, but didn’t really think much of it. When I recently re-sniffed and sprayed it on my skin at the Pentagon City store, I fell in love. This is quite monumental and significant for me since Pearls is considered (gasp!) a “fresh aldehyde” scent. The notes are lemon verbena, apricot, peach, jasmine, rose, violet leaves, vanilla and caramel. Before all you vintage jezebels (you know who you are) get up in arms about the inclusion of the dreaded “v” note, I implore you to open your hearts as I did and embrace the beauty of this concoction. It is actually quite reminiscent of Mitsouko eau de toilette. You heard me. And at $45.00 for 75 ml, it is another wallet-friendly gem.

In the spirit of open mindedness and generosity, I’d like to offer up three samples of Carol’s Daughter Pearls to three random commentators. Please express your interest, and I will allow my cat, Lily, to pick the winners. She doesn’t have opposable thumbs, but she can Simonize a chicken carcass to a high gloss shine.

 Another reason I decided to shelve my cynical self for the time being, is because I officially became a Canadian citizen this week. You may remember my post from January (Chaos – 1/13/09),  recounting my harrowing ordeal last October at the Thousand Islands border crossing in New York/Ontario, and my subsequent one year travel ban from Canada. Well, all is now right with the world and I am truly a citizen of North America. I was advised by my immigration attorney that this would take quite a bit of time to unfold, and neither one of us was expecting this resolution as quickly as it transpired. So, I am now the proud owner of yet another piece of photo identification that makes me look like a serial killer. What I wouldn’t give for a mug shot of Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan right now. In the words of fellow Canadian Mike Myers: NOT!!

 I am no longer persona non grata, or an enemy radical. Je suis Canadienne.

Image: carolsdaughter.com