Fall Fun Series II: I Love You, I Hate You

Today’s Fall Fun Series prompt is one designed to expose our essential contrariness by sharing our autumn scent loves and hates.  I’ve already stated that I blew myself out on apple scents last year – too sweet, too cloying.  Then I went and bought about eight apple-based scents, and much to my surprise and delight, they’re all fantastic.  So there’s that contrary business again!  Or is it simply undecided?

Starting with the bad news, one thing I am quite decided on is that pumpkin scents, no matter the vendor or the blend, give me terrible headaches.  There’s just a sour kind of note there that prompts some nauseatingly fierce headaches.  And that’s a new thing this season – I suppose that makes pumpkin the new apple. 😉  Sorry, pumpkin, I’m sure I’ll be back on your tip next year.

But this year I’m back to Apple Acres, or at least *these* particular apples, Rosegirls’ Mini Melters in Apple Clove Butter, Lambeau Leap and Apple Strudel Rice Krispie Treats.  These showed up on my doorstep yesterday just as I was lamenting a lack of pleasing Fall scents; had actually kind of forgotten that I had purchased them?  But talk about great timing, and talk about great scents; I love them all.

Apple Clove Butter is probably my favourite.  I’m not sure if it’s close to Beezy’s popular Apple Butter scent, but Rosegirls’ is a keeper – crisp, juicy apples shot through with warm mulling spices.  I think it would be fairly spectacular blended with a rich, buttery bakery (such as Pie Crust or Nilla Wafers) although it’s great all on its own.

Lambeau Leap is, I believe, named after a football team.  Green Bay, maybe (almost said Green Day there, whoops.)  I really don’t know sports (GO SPORTS!!!)  This is an odd fave for me, as it contains Sweater Weather, a popular woods-and-juniper blend from Bath & Body Works.  It’s quite cologne-y, and I’ve never been much for woodsy, masculine scents.  But in Lambeau Leap, blended with crisp apple cider and creamy Vanilla Bean Noel, it’s really nice; reminds me quite a bit of another Rosegirls blend that subs out the juicy apple cider for astringent pine.  Very nice.

And finally, Apple Strudel Rice Krispie Treats, a not-too-sweet, not-too-bakery blend of flaky apple strudel and crispy Rice Krispies.  This is the most linear of all the apple scents, and it’s lovely all on its own – I wouldn’t blend its delicious simplicity with another thing.  Great choices, all.

Fall Fun Series II: My Apple is By Far the Most Crumblest

This post will be a bit on the shorter side on account of the fact that during last year’s Fall Fun Series, I completely blew myself out on apple scents.  Caramel apple, toffee apple, green apple, crab apple – if it was flavoured or scented comme une pomme, I (over)enjoyed it.  As such, I have very few apple-scented products to share with you, even during this heady autumnal time.  More on them in a second.  But I DO have some very cute apple nail art to show you this morning, a simple, lightly sponged manicure inspired by an array of autumn’s awesome agriculture.

But as for bushels of bath and beauty and baskets brimming with wax?  Hmm, not so much.  That’s probably for the best – put a year or so between harvests. 🙂  But I still enjoy a lovely apple scent from time to time – one of my favourite candles, Bath & Body Works’ Pink Apple Punch, is very pomme-dominant.  But like everything, best enjoyed in moderation.  So, what crispy sweet goodies will be scenting my life this Fall?

Rosegirls’ Mini Melters in Macintosh Swizzle Sticks (these three remaining chunks are over two years old; it’s a testament to the strength of apple scents that this wax is still quite potent.  I like blending this scent with Mango Sorbet and Marshmallow Smoothie for a lively, sweet and creamy fragrance.)

Luscious handmade soaps in Fruit Fool (blue/green) and Poisoned Apple (green/red) from Dreaming Tree Soapworks.  Fruit Fool smells like a freshly baked apple-blueberry pie, and Poisoned Apple smells like sharp, caramel-coated crab apples.  I’ll have a bit more to say on the subject of these soaps a little later on (spoiler alert: they’re awesome!) but in short, like the ellipses said, they’re awesome.  That’s why I now own enough soap to take me and mine well into the year 2019.

The Lost Boys wax clamshell from Super Tarts.  It’s The Lost Boys, and we all know how I feel about The Lost Boys.  I actually talk about it so much, my friend Jaybird had NO choice but to call off my dogs (Nanook and Thorn, of course) with this sweet waxy gift.  Basically, this wax could be scented like cat poo and Victorian London sewer sludge and I’d still want it.  But thankfully it smells MUCH better – like sweet pomegranate, spiced apple cider and toasted marshmallow (on a tangential note, if I were making a Lost Boys-inspired wax, I’d blend salty sea air and spilled bong water notes.  Guaranteed that’s what David & Crew smell like.  Grandpa, too.)

Fragrance oil rollerball from Solstice Scents in Corvin’s Apple Fest.  Juicy sweet and lightly spiced, this fragrance will make a lovely bridging scent between the crisp and cozy days of autumn and the frosty holiday months.

The Bathing Garden’s wax bundt in Nights at the Circus.  A friend-approved favourite, Nights at the Circus is a sweet and spicy pumpkin-apple scent that reminds me of the smell of the craft barn at your local farmer’s market – it even has that slightly woody note to it, like barn planks still damp from the morning’s mist.

Glazed caramel apple wax tarts from The Bathing Garden in Vintage Circus (red) and Victorian Midway (purple.)  Both scents feature a base of Winter Candy Apple, a popular holiday scent from Bath & Body Works – I particularly like the cinnamon note of Vintage Circus.  It smells like Red Hots!

Back to School

Chalkboard nails. 😉  And a couple of apples for all my teacher friends.  Do kids still give apples to their teachers?  I’d think Starbucks gift cards go further these days – make caramel apple cider out of apples and all that good stuff.

My Little Pony Butts!

I was a huge My Little Pony fan when I was a kid.  I can still remember the Christmas my parents bought me the Pony Palace, an ENORMOUS equine playhouse that folded out into three separate wings, including an indoor pool and an atrium.  That was the year my best friend got Castle Grayskull from his parents, and we spent our holidays gleefully imprisoning the baby ponies in the Castle’s trapdoor prison (when Skeletor wasn’t taking a dip in the pool, that was.)

So I was of course predictably horrified when, while researching these nails (I couldn’t for the life of me remember half of the OG ponies’ names) I ran across the new generation of My Little Pony figurines, half-horse, half-human abominations that stand on two feet, hands – HANDS!!! – perched on saucily cocked hips, giant, multi-coloured manes piled high.  Looking at them, I felt positively ragey, and brokenhearted for all that kids are barely allowed to be today – just kids.  Kids with plastic horse toys with huge butts and stubby legs and sweet, baleful eyes, not these sexy, anthropomorphized nightmares desperately trying to eye-bang me through the protective plastic on their boxes.

Tangent!  But a valid one.  Been to a toy store lately?  Your favourites – if they’re still in production – are not as you remember them!  So I thought I’d honour what used to be, the markings on the chubby haunches of the original ponies, from left to right, Bow-Tie, Applejack, Minty and Snuzzle.

Fall Fun Series: An Apple a Day

Pretty sure that old saying applies to the fruit, not delicious-smelling, but completely non-edible, scented wax. But I have an absolute bounty of the latter, and seeing as apples are the theme of today’s installment of the Fall Fun Series (actually yesterday’s), I thought I’d melt through a few of my apple scents.  I’m now completely apple’d out; I can’t take any more!  Because while I really love apple baked goods – my mom’s fluffy, flaky, buttery pie is life – it turns out I’m not so fond of artificial apple scents.  They all tend to be very, very strong and need to be handled in small doses, particularly if you’re prone to environmentally-induced headaches, like moi.

Therein lies one of the not-a-problem problems for people with a love of home fragrance, particularly those that lie within the “you could eat this” category – do you actually think that, say, toffee apple ice cream will smell great, or do you just want to eat it?  The answer often lies somewhere in the middle, but occasionally there’s a bit of a disconnect, and that’s what I seem to be experiencing with my apple scents this Fall.

But if I practice moderation with my apples and mix them with other, softer scents to round off the harsh, sometimes even acidic edges, we’re sound as a pound!  So what sort of yummy apple scents have been perfuming my home this week?

These scrumptious chunks are from Rosegirls, in Crazy Pants Fluff Puffs, left, and Toffee Apple Ice Cream, right.  Crazy Pants Fluff Puffs (that name, right?) is a blend of green apple, strawberry jam and Rosegirls’ Fluff Puffs scent blend, which itself is a blend of their Monster Cookie and Marshmallow Smoothie scents (sometimes I feel like a crazy fragrance Venn diagram would be quite useful in these situations!)  CPFP is wicked strong, a thick, warm bakery freshened up with bright green apples and strawberries.

Toffee Apple Ice Cream, with its less enigmatic – but infinitely more descriptive – name, is just that – caramel apples bobbing in a sea of melted vanilla ice cream.  I found this particular apple scent to be a little too cloying for my taste, particularly when paired with the vanilla ice cream note, which I either tolerate or loathe depending on the vendor. Rosegirls’ is better than most, but I find it just far too one-note when paired with the sweet toffee apples.  But my loss is someone else’s fruitful gain; I’ll find ‘er a good home.

I melted a lot of other apple scents this week – Rosegirls’ Apple Eclipse (very nice; a mild, “adult” apple, sweetly spiked with vanilla and bourbon), Apple Colada (banana?) and Apple Puff Pumpkin Pie (Apple Jack and Peel is hard at work in this one) and Simple Gals’ Enchanted Apple (a perfumey sort of apple scent that I think may be a dupe of Lush’s So White) – but their pictures all turned out quite terribly.  I think that’s because, with the exception of the Apple Eclipse, I didn’t really care for any of these scents too much.  My camera just KNEW!  But again, apple biased.

Unless, of course, I have the ultimate say in just how that apple note is deployed, which is why I like Rosegirls’ Mini Melters so much – just a touch of RG’s Macintosh Swizzle Sticks, a lightly candied apple scent, nestled among other creamy, fruity scents brings out the best in the often powerfully-scented pomme.

For these two favourite blending experiments, I mixed Macintosh Swizzle Sticks with, left, Mango Sorbet and Marshmallow Smoothie, to create a delectable version of Disney’s LeFou’s Brew, an apple-and-mango juice slushie topped with marshmallow fluff (so it looks like a big, sudsy flagon of ale, see) and, right, Pie Crust and Dunk My Donut, a cinnamon-dusted cake donut scent, for a delightful, gas station apple pie kind of scent.  I love these two blends very much, but that’s no surprise, because I made them!

Now off to stick my face directly over a steaming pot of coffee – that should right the ol’ sniffer in no time!