Fall Feels

Here’s a fun dovetailing of two of my favourite interests these days, nail art and hand lettering.  I’ve done lettering-type nails before, of course – these Beetlejuice nails from 2016 remain undisputed champions – but not since re-discovering my teenagehood love of calligraphy via Instagram (oh Insta, is there nothing you can’t turn into a new obsession?)  After taking a lettering module during grade 9 art class, I got way into calligraphy and other hand lettering, even going so far as to compose my letters to my American pen pal in ornate, looping script (and in a rather dashing bright turquoise ink, no less, a present from my parents, who also supplied me with a gorgeous refillable pen.)

But just lately I’ve been taken with short lettering videos on Instagram; they’ve really reignited the old lettering bug, even if practice makes me feel a bit like I’m auditioning for the Well-Mannered Serial Killer Olympics (Hannibal Lecter is always a contender.)

Anyhow, here I combined a holo-happy gradient with some loopy lettering for a mani that’s really feeling all the Falls. 🙂

Fall Fun Fridays: The Finale

Goodest of mornings, friends, and welcome to the final prompt of the Fall Fun Fridays series I have been embarking on with my blogging buddies Jay and Julie.  Today we’re discussing the great autumn out-of-doors.

Well, they probably are.  Julie takes some of the most beautiful photographs of nature I’ve ever seen and Jay just loves getting out and exploring the world, so I’m sure they both have lots of cool adventures to share in the great wide somewhere.  Please do check out their blogs to follow along in the fun.

Jay at The Scented Library

Julie at The Redolent Mermaid

As for me?  Well, you know it all pretty well begins and ends with Disney.  I commented earlier during this series that the last two years, I’ve had a hard time mustering up an appropriate level of enthusiasm for the Fall.  As in I’ve had hardly any – very unusual, as I just adore the autumn.  Is there a better season for gloomily beautiful weather, scrumptious food, delightful decorations and just cozying up with someone you love?  I certainly don’t think so.

But the last two years there’s been a weird block in place where it has literally taken leaving my gorgeously be-leaf’d province for Disney World in Orlando, Florida to jump start my Fall fever.  I suppose that’s because like most things Disney embarks upon, they do the autumn – and especially Halloween – very, very well.  And being the Halloween nuts we kind of are, there’s nothing that gets our happiness meters revving like our favourite time of year at the most magicalest place on earth.

And so we’re heading back again in just a couple days’ time to immerse ourselves in the season – one last Halloween hurrah for these two old marrieds celebrating their 14th Halloween wedding anniversary.  And when we return, I’ll no doubt have tons of photos to share of our end-of-autumn adventures, but that doesn’t do any of us any good right now, does it?  And so I’m sharing this little video I made for our YouTube channel, Park or Perish!, of the Fall fun we had at Disney World just this past Labour Day long weekend.  It was our first time attending Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, a spooktacular after-hours event at the Magic Kingdom, but our second time hitting up the World for the autumn season, and I think we really did it up right.  I hope you enjoy it, and thank you again for following along with this little blogging series – it’s been so nice to have you by every Friday. 🙂

Fallish Polish

Hello there, friends, just kicking off the work week with a handful of autumn-appropriate polishes, holos tout and perfect for all of your Fall manicure needs.  Let’s take a closer peek at these leafy-looking lovelies, shall we?

It’s the incredibly rare tree whose leaves turn this devastatingly sexy shade of candy apple red – possibly a sumac, they’re utterly gorgeous at this time of year.  This is Different Dimension‘s Naughty, a beautiful Christmas polish that I think does double duty as a classic Fall hue (possibly even triple duty if you factor in Valentine’s Day!)

Next up, we have one of my favourite polishes, period, no matter the time of year, KB Shimmer‘s perfectly pumpkiny Rust No One.  The holo effect with this one is quite pronounced, and I love that bright purple flash running up the center of the bottle – it makes Rust No One look like about three differently hued polishes all at once.

In third place, we have the only yellow holo I own, which of course means it always shows up in round-up posts, even though I’m really not that fond of it because while it’s quite beautiful in the sun, it looks like metallic urine in lower lighting conditions, which is rather unfortunate, and wow, that was one heck of a run-on sentence.  Oh, sorry, this is Enchanted Polish‘s House of the Rising Sun. 😉

Next up we have another one of my favourite polishes, Enchanted Polish’s Lost Boy.  This megawatt super stainer (for all that’s good and not dyed lurid, neon yellow, use this polish with two, even three layers of base coat) doesn’t look like very many leaves at this time of year (they’ve really lost this kind of vivid, fresh green) but there’s still a few clinging to their hues of brighter, sunnier days.

Second from last we have KB Shimmer’s Men Are From Mars-ala, a rich, reddish brown holo that looks like so many wonderful things in the Fall – crunchy leaves, scrumptious baked goods, the final inch of a delicious pumpkin spice latte.  It also looks like the entirety of 1990s beauty in a bottle (brown, kids, there was SO. MUCH. BROWN.)

Finally, we have yet another KB Shimmer polish, brownie-hued Oh My Ganache!  Mmm, brownies…also the raggedy edges of crispy, crunchy leaves.

Fall Fun Fridays: The Failing Grade Edition

Good morning, friends, and welcome to another beautiful autumn Friday!  As of late, the weather around my neck of the global woods has been quite uneven – one moment it’s so cold, we’re all breaking out our toques and parkas, and the next it’s so dank and humid, we’re firing up the air conditioners for one last summery go-round.  But there’s only one way this all ends, and that’s with snow.  I suppose that’ll be here soon enough.

So being the end of the work week and all, it’s time for another edition of Fall Fun Fridays, the casual little blogging challenge I’ve been, let’s face it, whiffing hardcore with my friends Jay of The Scented Library and Julie of The Redolent Mermaid, who are decidedly not whiffing it.  Excuses, excuses, but my Fall has been rather disrupted by ongoing renovations to our apartment.  They’re not going super well, I keep injuring myself (I’m looking down at a throbbing cut on my thumb right now for which I probably should have sought stitches) and I haven’t been able to put out any of my usual decorations, including my beloved Halloween town.  Here, let’s take a peek at it from two seasons ago; that’ll make me feel peppier.

Anyhow, all that to say I haven’t exactly been feeling the Fall this year, as the kids might say.  Looks like it’ll take another emergency infusion of Disney’s absolutely bonkers approach to the season to set things right – fortunate, since we’ll be back in about two weeks’ time. 🙂

This week’s prompt contemplated hands-on activities – your favourite Fall recipe, craft or some other DIY-able.  I’m actually right in the midst of putting together some fortifying chicken stew for dinner tonight with my parents – that seems like a very autumn dish.  But it won’t be ready for – *checks time* – oh, another five or so hours!  So until the timer goes off, I’d kindly direct you on over to my friends’ blogs, where they’re sure to have pulled out all the seasonal stops.  Happy weekend, friends; hope you get a few moments to get out there and enjoy all it has to offer.

Fall Fun Fridays: Autumn Dreamer

Today’s prompt in the blogging series I’m doing with my friends Jay of The Scented Library and Julie of The Redolent Mermaid is to discuss how we’d  put together our perfect Fall event or vacation.  For our dreamer purposes, the real fun in this hypothetical planning process comes from the fact that we are unencumbered by any real world concerns – money (or a lack thereof), professional and personal schedules, ANY of the usual obligations.  So please do check out both Jay and Julie’s blogs to see what sort of autumn shenanigans they’d get up to completely off the chain!

As for me, come on, you know it all begins and ends with Disney’s Haunted Mansion!  A wedding – hmm, a Halloween vow renewal for two Disney nerds coming up on their 14th? –  the actual ceremony of which takes place in the lobby, in front of the fireplace, beneath the changing portrait of Master Gracey.  Afterwards, guests (and did I mention I have a team of makeup artists and costumers on hand to garb our guests in the finest of the Mansion’s moldering fashions?) will pass through the Stretching Room before boarding Doom Buggies draped in swags of jet black roses.  Upon reaching the diningroom reception, guests will disembark (please don’t ask me how they’re going to climb down, particularly encumbered by dusty, gothic fashions; this is my crazy, impractical dream!) and enjoy a sumptuous feast of, well, this (this being a strip loin steak topped with balsamic shallot butter on a bed of four cheese pancetta and arugula pasta from Mama Melrose’s in Disney’s Hollywood Studios.)

And for my husband and our other vegetarian guests, there will be a plant-based option that tastes EXACTLY like a steak.  Actually, come to think of it, if that were an option, the entire meal would be veggie.  I ultimately kind of hope that if such a thing actually existed, the entire world would be veggie, but I digress.  No one will drop even a crumb of food down their fronts, and everyone will remain on the responsible, pleasant side of intoxication.  Because there be margaritas a-plenty!

After dessert (my mom’s homemade apple pie, 13 tiers of it and miraculously calorie-free) my new-old husband will waltz me around the dance floor, weaving in and out among the ghosts, to the strains of twenty one pilots, who are there because we’re personal friends and I can just call them up like that.  Josh will NOT be wearing a shirt with sleeves.

This actually reminds me of the ever-so-hopeful exploratory phone call Mr. Finger Candy placed to Disney event services when we were planning our wedding nearly 14 years ago.  He had asked me at one point shortly after we got engaged what my dream wedding looked like, and I gave him pretty well all of the details I laid out above (minus the twenty one pilots stuff, although then – and now – I’d also accept Green Day.  Mike Dirnt’s got nice arms for a bassist.)  So one day he rang them up and asked real casual-like how much it would cost to actually rent out the Mansion, or a portion thereof, for a private event.

Later on that evening we both nearly laughed ourselves into asthma attacks as he recounted the very pleasant and also very delusional Disney rep who quoted him a figure just north of 50K, including a whole host of guarantees we had to make regarding room, food and alcohol sales.  And that was for a two or three-hour event, at best, held in the dead of night after park close, and without any access to the actual ride itself.  I suppose if you had REAL money, you could close the entire ride down just for yourself (hell, close the entire park down just for yourself) but for us regular plebs “just” looking to shut down a small portion of a beloved ride in the most popular theme park in the world (!!) we were looking at a solid $75,000 investment.

So it might have taken 13 years to get there, but I’m feeling really quite positive about our decision last year, on our Halloween anniversary, to ride the Haunted Mansion 13 times in one day.  It’s the most fun we’ve ever had on our anniversary, a total bucket list item, and it didn’t cost us 75 grand!

Finally, just to keep it wax-relevant, here’s a bit of the Melting Duck’s Foolish Mortal, a Haunted Mansion-inspired blend I picked up some weeks back.  It smells like peppermint-vanilla gum, herbal and a little bit tingly, and the shapes and colours are perfection!  Love everything about this ghostly lovely.

Flashy ‘n’ Foggy

Today started off Indian Summer foggy and ended Victorian London bleak.  That’s what happens when the temperature plummets 30 degrees in the span of a few hours and you live on the edge of a river.  Or at least I swear there’s usually a river back there somewhere. 😉

After staring into the mist (just not, you know, THE Mist) for hours on end, I thought I’d perk myself up with an ultra flashy manicure, but even this lacquer, Glam Polish’s The Best Futterwacken in All of Witzend (just rolls off the tongue, don’t it?) proved to be no match for all the glum.  Shame, because this polish is essentially a Rockette costume ground up and stuffed into a bottle.  That sounded more attractive in my head.

Here’s hoping those grey skies are gonna clear up in time for the weekend; it would be nice to actually get out and enjoy the leaves while they’re at their autumn peak.  Definitely not foggy on that.

Having a Ducking Meltdown

To make the joke that’s been made time and time again, no, Autocorrect, no one has ever in the history of smart phone keyboards ever intended to say, “ducking.”  No one. 😉

Hey, so remember how, in an effort to save a bit of money and go to Disney many, many times in one year, I stopped mindlessly buying stuff like tons of clothes and housewares and nail polish and scented wax?  And how I swore I’d use up that which I already had before making any new purchases?  Well, that all actually happened!

It took no small amount of financial prioritization and, yes, some sacrifice, but indeed, this year my husband and I saved a bit of money, we went to Disney many, many times and we both stopped mindlessly buying stuff.  We also used that which we already had (Mr. Finger Candy diving into older, unplayed games, me melting through a larger-than-I-thought wax collection) before making any new purchases.  Interestingly enough, we’ve both been playing the long game when it comes to the items most atop our wish list, with my husband on years-long pins and needles for the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 (end of the month, and lord help my sanity if they push the date back) and me confining my wax purchases to two absolute must-haves in the past couple of months, a custom order with Sniff My Tarts, and this fabulous order from the Melting Duck!

So is it everything I hoped it would be?  Yes, it is – all that and the proverbial bag of (tortilla) chips (with queso blanco and maybe a margarita on the side from the Mexico pavilion, with a ride on the Gran Fiesta Tour after, AND a character meet-and-greet with Donald, because I’m pretty sure the Melting Duck girls are ducking Disney fans!)

Consisting primarily of Fall and Halloween-type scents, this colourful, sweetly scented collection of wax (new, fresh wax – it feels like such a novelty!) includes – *takes deep, steadying breath* – Haunted Mansion wax.  Wax!  Of the Haunted Mansion!  You guys know how I feel about the Haunted Mansion! (*huffs into a nearby paper bag*)

Okay, I’m back now, slightly more in control of my faculties and ready to show off the wax I suspect the Melting Duck gals may have made purely to humour me, because I asked for it literally every single time they solicited scent ideas for their upcoming releases.  If that was indeed the case, thank you, Kristin and Lauren, I love Foolish Mortal and next time (!) I’ll be happy to buy sacks of the stuff!

Foolish Mortal, named after the gently needling nickname the Ghost Host imparts on visitors to the Haunted Mansion, is a blend of Candy Cane Cupcakes and Toasted Marshmallow.  I thankfully don’t get too much of the toasted off the marshmallow, which is good, because I’m not overly fond of that ersatz “baked” note in my home or personal fragrances.  The Haunted Mansion actually doesn’t have much of a scent itself (hmm, perhaps that pleasant background scent of high efficiency air conditioning and meticulously maintained dust) but I imagine if ghosts had a scent (notice how I’m not disputing the existence of ghosts, merely their smell) this would be it – a quick, tingly blast of icy sweet peppermint.  And the colours are perfection, the very hues of the Grim Grinning Ghosts in the ride’s big graveyard showpiece scene.

Next up we have a blend of Duckin Donuts (described as “a house blend of fresh coffee and fresh baked goodies”) and Pumpkin.  So basically Fall’s ubiquitous Pumpkin Spice Latte!  Once again, the colours are perfect; I particularly love the little candy corn-striped ducks.

Next up we have the sleeper hit of my last order, Ghost Stories by the Fire, a “Sandra shouldn’t like this” blend of Marshmallow Fireside, Earl Grey and Vanilla Ice Cream.  But it turns out Sandra likes Ghost Stories very much (so much, in fact, I actually only melted through my final piece the day this order arrived on my doorstep, finally secure in the knowledge that there were backups!)  Typically I’m not much for Marshmallow Fireside blended with other scents; I prefer it straight up, in candle format preferably.  But there’s something really nice about the Melting Duck’s Marshmallow Fireside; it’s sweet and mellow, bearing none of the objectionable acridness common to fire-imitating scents.  And once again, the colours and the shapes?  So creative!  Half the fun of this order was examining the cute little shapes, from sprinkled donuts, winged bats and sparkly macarons, to plump pumpkins, ornate sugar skulls and many, many little duckies.

Next we have the sleeper hit of this order, Death of the Party, a rich, delectable bakery blend of Grave Mistakes (Zucchini Bread and Sugar Milk) and Marshmallow Fireside.  At first glance, none of those scents look as though they’d play nicely together (cloying, acrid, corn chip) but as a whole, it smells like…smokey sexy man muffin!  I just adore it (another Marshmallow Fireside blend, wouldn’t you know it?) and I’m smitten with the little pink rose shapes in this blend and that one gigantic chocolate chip cookie.  My husband loves this one, and that’s really saying something, because he is traditionally un-fond, shall we say, of Marshmallow Fireside, claiming “it smells like some douchebag hitting on a disinterested co-worker at a holiday party.”  Well, okay then!  There you go, folks, descriptive fireworks courtesy of Mr. Finger Candy. 😉

Finally, we have the non-seasonal outlier of this order, a bag of my beloved Pink Sands, neat.  This Yankee dupe is a very nice one, bright and fresh and clean, and I’m looking forward to melting through the wide assortment of plucky little pink duckies (so many ducks in this bag!)

Oh!  Actually finally-finally, I ordered a trio of cups in Ghost Stories by the Fire so I can send them on to friends, as well as three cups of Spider Cider, a blend of Cinnamon Sugar Donuts and Apple Cider.  I’m glad I only purchased the three cups of Spider Cider, because out of the entire order, it’s the only scent I’m not wildly thrilled about.  It’s nice, and I’m going to wait to see what it does given a bit of time to settle, but I’m not in love with it like I am, say, Foolish Mortal or Death of the Party.  Still, those wee little embedded spiders are quite creepy-cute.

And I’d be remiss in failing to show off this dinged dude, one of the Melting Duck’s Studs in a Tub, which I received as a little freebie with my order.  I had a great laugh when I pulled this guy out of the box, because the Studs, well…they normally have attached heads!

The Melting Duck actually created some intentionally beheaded Studs for the Halloween season, with splashes of red dotting the bubbles, but this little wax man is not one of those pieces, just the unfortunate victim of the ever-handsy postal service!  All the same, he smells wonderful (like Lemon Cupcakes and Satsuma.)

I’m so thrilled with this order!  It really feels like a special treat, which I suppose is exactly what it is.  I’ve talked with a number of people this year who, like me, but for their own individual reasons, chose to cut back on their discretionary spending, and one of the reasons that I’ve heard over and over again is because endless purchases arriving on your doorstep grows to become quite boring, that these little (and not so little) treats cease feeling special.  I quite like the return to that little acquisition rush, although I’ll continue to respect the healthy distance we’ve put between one another. 🙂

So there we have it, the scented, waxy rewards I finally reaped after a solid year of cutting back, using up and re-prioritizing.  Very glad I waited to blow it out with the Melting Duck, because this order was a ducking treat to receive, and very soon to melt.  If you’re interested in checking out the Melting Duck’s super cool and great-smelling wares for yourself, join up with their Facebook group, where they post notifications about their upcoming releases (conducted on a mixed bag basis of pre-orders, ready-to-ship sales and the occasional custom.)  Happy ducking shopping!

Fall Fun Fridays: Favourite Autumn Polishes

This Friday’s theme in the little blogging collaboration I’ve been doing with my friends Jay of The Scented Library and Julie of The Redolent Mermaid is one near and dear to my lacquer-loving heart – those beauty items, accessories or fashionable finds that only see the light of day come Fall.  Living in a place that sees its predominately cool-to-frigid weather interrupted only by bursts of sweaty summer humidity, I have an absolute ton of cold weather-only clothing – my closet is a veritable tribute to black sweaters and many, many fingerless mittens.  So nothing too special there.

I do, however, have quite a few autumn-only nail polishes.  I suppose it’s a little weird to segregate your beauty items into seasonal appropriateness, but here we are (hey, those “Find Your Colours!” makeup-matching programs that were so popular in the ’80s – I was just talking about this with a friend the other day! – made an entire industry out of it.)  Here’s my pick for my favourite mostly Fall polishes. 😉

Leaf of Faith – KB Shimmer

Straight up cranberry jelly, right, extra lumpy? 😉  I used this polish years ago to create one of my all time favourite manicures – cranberry sauce from the can, still in a solid log and bearing its all-important rings.  This is a staple on Canadian Thanksgiving tables, FYI.  The television show Corner Gas had an entire episode about Brett Butt’s quest for a solid log of ringed cranberry jelly; his holiday meal could NOT begin without it!

Road to Awe – ILNP (I Love Nail Polish)

Dusky Halloween purples tinged with the barest hint of autumn’s crunchy golden leaves.

Brains & Boo-ty – Painted Polish

Halloween in a bottle!  Beware, though, this polish is an absolute beast to remove; just snaggy glitter for days.

Lava – Sally Hansen Lustre Shine

This gorgeous, tequila sunrise-hued polish is one of the oldest in my collection.  It is so, so flattering; I think it looks just like a maple leaf on the cusp of its big yellow-to-red colour change.

What are your favourite Fall-onlys, friends?  Anything I really ought to be adding to my collection?  Please do hit me up, and a wonderful weekend to you all. 🙂

Fall Fun Fridays: Dropping the Blogging Ball

Good morning, friends!  If you’ve followed along with my last couple of posts, you know I started off the week with a power outage, and am now ending it with a cold.  In between I sneezed a lot, and re-bought the entire contents of my refrigerator.  Every part of my body aches today, but my heart aches the most for Ottawa’s small business owners and restaurateurs – anyone who deals in perishable goods, really – who lost tens of thousands of dollars in spoiled stock over the weekend.  Food waste makes me feel punchy; that we were all, to various degrees, subjected to this little (or not so little) indecency is just compounding my poor, sickly mood.  It’s been a weird week.

Today’s Fall Fun Friday prompt – that’s the little blogging collective I’m part of – was to discuss the books, movies and television programs you’re anticipating this Fall.  I’m pretty well ride-or-die for only one show, and that’s The Good Place, which premiered last night (no spoilers, please, it’s sitting on Apple TV waiting for one sneeze-free hour!)  Aside from that, I’m looking forward to Brooklyn 9-9’s move to NBC (their Halloween episodes are wonderful, and build off the previous seasons’ episodes, if you’re into that kind of tightly knit continuity, which I am.)  I’ve got one more episode of Castle Rock to tackle, if I can just get over the “WHAT IN SWEET, FROSTING-COVERED HELL IS GOING ON HERE?” of it all (what’s going on is I could stare at Bill Skarsgard’s cut glass cheekbones and giant, wounded eyes all. day. long, and yes, I’m totally that pervy old lady; my favourite headline about the guy is from a Mashable article titled “It’s not Bill Skarsgard’s fault that he looks like hot Satan,” heh.)

On the cinema side of things, I’m quite pumped for Wreck-It Ralph 2; Vanellope Von Schweetz is a mouthy little heroine of mine.  Hmm, that’s about it for movies, or at least new movies.  If we’re talking the things I watch every Fall and Halloween, we could be here for a while (The Nightmare Before Christmas, of course, Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows, a weird new obsession with Hocus Pocus because I can’t get away from it at Disney.)

As for books, get back to me when I’ve finished Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin, a dense (in terms of writing and subject matter) examination of the collapse and subsequent bailout of the American banking industry in 2008.  I won’t be enjoying anything until I have that craven lot of greedy ghouls out of my head.  It’s been an incredibly frustrating and eye-opening read.

My blogging friends Jay of The Scented Library and Julie of The Redolent Mermaid are sure to have some great recommendations of their own, so I’d implore – implore! – you to pop on over and check out their autumn picks.

And now I’m going back to bed with a box of tissues.

Fall Fun Fridays: Something’s Smelling Good

My favourite scene in Ghostbusters is an early one in the library in which Dan Aykroyd’s Dr. Raymond Stantz furiously shushes his partners-in-busting, and then cries out, “Listen!” before excitedly asking, “Do you smell that?!”  It’s a weird (and very funny) sensory disconnect, and one I always think of when I’m trying to describe in words how something smells.  It’s a writing skill – make no mistake, it is a skill – I do not possess.

But my blogging friends Jay of The Scented Library and Julie of The Redolent Mermaid do possess that skill (come to me when you need 2,500 words on a cat’s toe tufts) which is why we’ve partnered up to bring you a few fun Fall posts, starting with our favourite Fall scents.  Both Jay and Julie have impeccable taste in home and personal fragrance, and a real flair for describing scents in rich, evocative terms without ever once invoking the word “cupcakey.”  So I would direct you over to their wonderful blogs to see what sort of festive Fall scents are sweetly perfuming their lives as we kick off what I hope will be a lovely autumn.

Jay at The Scented Library

Julie at The Redolent Mermaid

As for me, I’m down to the utter dregs of my once-grand wax collection (balsam, hot chocolate and kiwi are totally compatible scent notes, right?!) with virtually nothing remaining but for this small handful of scents I held back in the event of just such an autumnal blogging eventuality.  This tiny bounty actually represents a solid third of my remaining wax collection – I have been nothing this year but utterly dedicated to reining in my discretionary spending, and this is where my efforts have really come home to roost.  It’s kind of one of those good-for-life, bad-for-blogging sort of situations!

Ah, but all is not completely lost; I still have a few Fall favourites, and here they are:

Moving from left to right, we have a rather shabby looking Demented Duck from The Melting Duck in Heads Will Roll, a pumpkin cupcake and candy corn blend.  You would not know that this dingy little duck started out life in lush, vibrant shades of jungle green, tomato red and marigold yellow, would you?  Well, he did!  But thankfully, colourfastness (or a lack thereof) does not typically impact a wax melt’s scent, and this one still smells great – very much like carnival snacks, all unidentifiably yummy glazes and crunchy, sugary sweets.

Beside my sole remaining Demented Duck we have a Rosegirls Scoopable in Paul Bunyan’s French Toast.  At three years old, this half-finished jar of wax is the oldest in my collection and smells not one bit different than it did the very first day I cracked it open – like brown-sugar dusted sweets and wood shavings.  I swear it’s a nicer scent than I’m implying; it just doesn’t see a lot of action because no matter the scent, the Scoopable formulations give my husband terrible headaches and a frantic case of the sneezes.

To the right of the Scoopable we have my one remaining chunk of a custom Sniff My Tarts blend I like to call Miss Apple Fritter after Cars 3’s derby-racing school bus, Miss Fritter.  Also because I think this blend of Apple Cider Latte, Ice Cream Scoop Bread and Vanilla Waffle Cone – perhaps the best blend I have ever created – smells just like a warm, cakey apple fritter.  Sometimes the naming thing is really just that simple, folks. 😉

Finally, dotted along the bottom we have the final five pieces of The Melting Duck’s All Hallow’s Eve, another sugar smackery blend of candy corn, pumpkin cupcakes, buttercream crunch cake and caramel corn.  These shapes are so stinkin’ cute, and I just adore The Melting Duck’s heavy-handed approach to mica – it always creates the most amazingly beautiful, shimmery pools of wax.  I’ll freely admit that that’s a weird thing to derive enjoyment from, but whatever floats your boat on the first Friday of the Fall, right?!  To an excellent autumn, and more fun blogging adventures. 🙂