Happy International Fragrance Day!

2019-03-212019-03-21 fivezero6 Comments

It’s been a long time since I last posted, but I didn’t want to pass on International Fragrance Day, because fragrance is what I have been utterly infatuated with over the last year!

Our family only just returned from a mini-vacation in Montréal (well, a holiday with a two year-old and a four year-old is not really a holiday, is it?!) and of course I did pick up a new perfume. Gotta love the $19.99 perfume shelves at Shoppers Drug Marts—Pharmaprix in Québec—and Rexalls!

Today, I’m going to do a very quick ‘n’ dirty roundup of my 10 new favorite perfumes, and 10 favorite new blind buys that I’m most excited to try out.

My 10 New Favorite Fragrances

1
Ariana Grande — Cloud
whipped cream, praline, coconut, lavender, pear, musk

2
Avon — Velvet
rose, fig, patchouli

3
Burberry — Weekend for Women
peach, purple flowers, mandarin, musk

4
Kenneth Cole — Kenneth Cole for Her
lily-of-the-valley, ambrette, carrot seed, peony, musk

5
LUSH — Rose Jam Body Spray
rose, lemon, geraniumRead More »

Perfume Notes (October 2018)

2018-10-052018-10-06 fivezero10 Comments

Instead of doing a perfume roundup this month for the scents I’ve tested, I thought I’d do a little organization, instead. While I have been rather disappointed by a great number of the new releases I’ve tried, there are still plenty of scents I missed out on over the years, and for which I am now pining. Here’s my current wishlist, divvied up into several different categories.

Top 10: Definite Wishlist

Annick Goutal — Rose Absolue

1984 | May rose, Turkish rose, Bulgarian rose, Damascus rose, Egyptian rose, Moroccan rose

I’m a rose lover, and this is one of the ultimates. Rose, rose, and even more rose.

Annick Goutal — Rose Pompon EDP

2018
Bulgarian rose, Taïf rose, peony, blackcurrant, raspberry, pink pepper, cedar, patchouli, white musk

Fruity rose with a some sophistication about it…and actually I just bought it. Hudson’s Bay is having a 10% off any $75+ beauty order this weekend, so I took advantage and it will be part of my upcoming birthday gift! (It’s quite different from the EDT, by the way. Test both. I didn’t like the EDT, as I found it a bit sharp and overly sweet.)

Annick Goutal — Vanille Exquise

2004 | Isabelle Doyen, Camille Goutal
vanilla sur-absolute from the Marquisas Islands, angelica, almond, benzoin, gaiac wood, white musk

A divinely dry, complicated vanilla.

Berdoues — Vânira Moorea

2016 | Alexandra Monet
Tahitian vanilla, orange, petitgrain

This is a unique vanilla in that it’s not all sweet and warm and fluffy. It’s a crisp, green vanilla. Weird vanilla, and I’m fascinated by it.

Britney Spears — Fantasy Intimate

2015
lychee, violet leaf, lemon, ozone, lily-of-the-valley, jasmine, brown sugar, genet, vanilla, heliotrope, benzoin, white musk

So easy to love, and in a pretty bottle, as well. The longevity on me is superior to that of most other Britney scents I’ve tried. I still love Private Show the best, but that doesn’t last well on my skin.

Perfume Diary: May 2018

2018-05-012018-05-31 fivezero3 Comments

The idea of a perfume tray is one that I’ve partially subscribed to over the years, but recently, I haven’t really kept one. The fact remains that light (and heat) will ruin perfume, so I almost always prefer keeping perfumes in their original boxes. It makes it easier to organize them and move them, as well.

The main drawbacks of this, of course, are that I don’t get to enjoy the bottle designs and that it makes it annoying to actually use my perfume! Having to remove a perfume from its box and then replace it every time I want a spritz gets tiresome.

Elizabeth Taylor at her dressing table (1948).
*Image: elle.com*

If you have a minimalist’s perfume wardrobe, then it’s a simple thing to display perfumes on your vanity, even by a window—you’ll likely go through the perfume fast enough that light and heat degradation aren’t a problem. My perfume collection is a larger one, so this doesn’t work well for me. I honestly do not recall the last time I finished a bottle of perfume! (Well, it was probably when I dropped a bottle of Clinique Happy about sixteen or seventeen years ago… Does it count if I gave bottles away?)

white perfume tray — *Image: inrichting-huis.com*

But I did use to keep a perfume tray out for the sake of convenience, and it displayed some of my most-worn scents. Sadly, after several years of sitting in indirect sunlight, the top notes have turned in my bottles of Burberry Brit EDT, Tracy by Ellen Tracy, Clinique Happy, and Calvin Klein Truth—at least the scents are fine once I get past the first couple of minutes of soured top notes. Britney Spears Fantasy fared well, but I think it’s because the bottle is semi-opaque. (You can tell I wasn’t keen on using more expensive or discontinued scents as guinea pigs!) Overall, my first attempt at a perfume tray didn’t work as well as I would have liked.Read More »

Happy National Fragrance Day! (2018)

2018-03-212018-03-21 fivezero4 Comments

Today is National Fragrance Day! I don’t know which nation this is from (probably not Canada), but I’ll celebrate it, anyway!

In honor of the day, I will round up all my Canadian drugstore perfume deals. For those who do not know, many locations of Shoppers Drug Mart and Rexall drugstores have clearance perfume shelves, where they rotate perfumes priced at CA$19.99. Occasionally, Shoppers even has weekend deals for $17.77!

These perfumes are often the cheaper drugstore lines (drugstore staples and celeb scents), but occasionally one will also find discontinued smaller sizes of designer fragrances that usually go for a lot more! It’s well worth it to swing by the clearance shelf once a week.

Here are the ones I’ve picked up over the years:

ISABELLA ROSSELLINI
Manifesto EDT (50 mL)

basil, pepper, bergamot, lily, orange blossom, musk

This is a super old one in my collection! To be honest, I haven’t used it in forever; hope it hasn’t turned. But it is quite a lovely herbal green scent.

OSCAR DE LA RENTA
So de la Renta EDP (30 mL)

kiwi, mango, watermelon, white florals, lotus, peony, musk

This remains one of my very favorite florals. It’s light and bright, youthful yet completely classy, and supremely easy to wear. My bottle is very old, so I don’t know if the certainly reformulated version out today compares. But I do love the original.

Perfume Notes (February 2018)

2018-03-052018-03-05 fivezero7 Comments

Hello everybody! Happy March. I’m back, and I’ve been huffing it up, again!

The full list for February:

1. Britney Spears Hidden Fantasy
2. Burberry My Burberry EDP
3. Chanel Chance Eau Fraîche
4. Chanel Gabrielle
5. Guerlain Samsara
6. Guess Marciano
7. Jean Paul Gaultier Classique EDP
8. Mugler Les Exceptions: Oriental Express
9. Mugler Les Exceptions: Supra Floral
10. Narciso Rodriguez Narciso Poudrée
11. Rihanna Rebelle
12. Van Cleef & Arpels So First
13. Vera Wang Princess Noir

BRITNEY SPEARS
Hidden Fantasy

2008 | Rodrigo Flores-Roux
Top Notes orange, tangerine, grapefruit blossom, verbena
Heart Notes clove, Napolitano cake, lily, jasmine
Base Notes vanilla, jacaranda wood, sandalwood, amber

I already own a few of the Britney Spears Fantasy perfumes, and thought it might be nice to add another when I saw Hidden Fantasy at Rexall for C$19.99. Amazingly, they had a tester out! The first blast is cherry-vanilla root beer, with a bit of fizz. Yummy, right? But the drydown comes quickly, and it becomes a somewhat generic, vanillic powdery floral. The scent doesn’t have much longevity.

I don’t expect that much from an inexpensive celebrity scent, but I found Hidden Fantasy to be more disappointing than the others I have. I won’t be adding it to my set.Read More »

Fragrance sale shelf, Shoppers Drug Mart (December 2017)

Fragrance Sale Shelves & Revlon Street Chic Collection (December 2017, Canada)

2017-12-132017-12-13 fivezero7 Comments

One of the things I love best about drugstores in Canada is the fragrance sale shelf, where amazing deals can often be found—perfect for holiday giftgiving!

I’m not sure whether it was started by Shoppers Drug Mart, where there’s typically a $19.99 sale shelf, but Rexall definitely has this sale shelf now, too. They actually do two tiers of prices, at $19.99 and $29.99, though I generally still find perfumes I’m more interested in at Shoppers. Granted, I have more Shoppers locations in my repertoire.

Over the last week, I’ve hit up several of my usual locations in downtown Toronto and snapped shots of their perfume sale shelves. I think if you check out the shelves throughout the year, you’ll find better deals than they have right now, but it’s not too shabby in this holiday shopping season.

My personal picks from the Shoppers shelves (sorry, I’m not too well versed in the guys’ selection):Read More »

Haulage! beautyBOUTIQUE by Shoppers Drug Mart (February 2017)

2017-02-152017-02-15 fivezero13 Comments

Over the weekend, Shoppers Drug Mart held another Spend Your Points Plus event, and I redeemed 95,000 Optimum Points for $170 worth of haulage from beautyBOUTIQUE, Shoppers’ online luxury beauty store. Since this was a Plus event, I’ll get $30 worth of Optimum Points added to my account, as well.

It’s not as good a deal as some of the older Spend Your Points events (where you’d get to redeem 95,000 points for over $200 worth of stuff), but it looks like Shoppers has been phasing those out. It’s disappointing, but the Optimum Rewards are still pretty awesome.

beautyBOUTIQUE recently added Chanel (in its own boutique section, not mixed up with the riff raff in regular product categories!) and Urban Decay to its online store, which is great since those brands are not available in most Shoppers’ beautyBOUTIQUE locations. It was always a massive pain to redeem points in-store if I wanted products from several brands. beautyBOUTIQUE online has a lot of the brands together in one place, so I’m much happier redeeming points online, now. Plus, you can use ebates.ca for additional cashback!

Anyway, I would like to give beautyBOUTIQUE another huge rave! I’ve experienced a lot of crappy cosmetics delivery in Canada—cough! Hudson’s Bay—cough! Yves Rocher—but beautyBOUTIQUE has been fantastic. Everything arrived in a pretty little cardboard box, with bubble wrap and tissue paper so that delicate products are nicely protected. Free samples came in an organza bag tied with a ribbon.

Contrast that with nail polishes chucked into a massive cardboard box with no padding whatsoever, or a single crumpled up piece of brown paper at best, like I get from Hudson’s Bay and Yves Rocher. Yes, I’ve had luxury polishes shipped from HBC like that:

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#PackagingFail by @hudsonsbay #wasteful and poorly packed. Loose #nailpolish in a huge box?! #smh

A post shared by Chris (@fivezero.ca) on Sep 15, 2016 at 10:27pm PDT

Also, I placed my order on Saturday, and my order arrived the next business day, Monday. I do live in Toronto, but damn if that isn’t awesome service! They even sent me a shipping notice less than three hours after I placed my order.

Final verdict? beautyBOUTIQUE is pretty great. I’ll be shopping with Shoppers/beautyBOUTIQUE for most of my beauty products at the moment, since I’m currently grabbing my wallet and avoiding Hudson’s Bay, Winners/Marshalls/HomeSense, Amazon, and storefronts using Shopify.

On to the fun stuff! Here’s what I hauled: