hortus conclusus

This is girly, sugary, and not unpleasant, but nothing I would buy for myself or anyone else. The sugary fruitiness does pull away fairly quickly, leaving a decent patchouli base lingering on its lonesome. But there's the rub; who needs another fruity, sugary, patchouli scent? Nobody. But because it's Dior, it is bought by hordes of young things, or people who want to smell like sugar-coated young things, although for the life of me I can't imagine why. One of the delights of growing older is being able to grow into more interesting perfumes than concoctions such as these. Too expensive to be worth it. I'd prefer D & G La Lune any day.

Well, maybe it's me, and maybe it's jasmine, but all the supposedly successful white flower bomb, jasmine perfumes don't seem to do it for me. I have been wearing Cashmere Mist today, and in spite of the woody notes, the scent is simply to one-dimensional, too sickly sweet, to make me want to invest in a bottle, especially when I feel Avon can do as good of a job with a perfume this uninspiring for an eighth of the price. The musky bit of it is ok, and the hint of woods is intriguing, but in the end it just comes off as a generic perfume with nothing in particular to recommend it. Nothing interesting happens in its lifespan; you put it on, and wear it until it wears off. I can see how this could be a comfort scent for some, perhaps the same crowd of people who are overly influenced by ad copy and think 'cashmere= comfy & luxurious, so this perfume must be both those things too." But I am pretty sure, as I sit here and sniff myself, that 'comforta...

I thought that Tim Burton's Alice was a horrible, pointless waste of great talent and an even greater story. What an unfortunate, yet totally unsurprising, disappointment! it's so sad, though. My two favorite actors--Alan Rickman and Stephen Fry--given bit parts with absolutely nowhere to go with them. I have never seen a more bland Cheshire cat, and the caterpillar lacked all the requisite weirdness. I blame it on the screenplay, but I am still not happy about it. And don't even get me started on Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter. Puke. You can see I'm still mad about it two days later

I have just been checking out this young musician's blog , and am totally impressed with the quality of his compositions. If I lived in Michigan, I would totally seek him out and beg him to start a band with me! He made his own electric cello and has recorded some really original stuff. I love the way a cello sounds. I feel that it is one of western instruments that comes closest to the human voice, and Dave Haughey really exploits this quality.

Don’t let the cheapness, the incredibly yellow juice, or the straightforwardness of the name put you off buying this perfume. I f you want a soliflore—and sometimes nothing else will do, Tea Rose is right on the mark. It smells exactly like a tea rose, and there’s not much more to say, beyond that it is lovely, big, and bloomy, and fabulous. My husband loves this perfume on me, because it reminds him, as he says, of pure happiness, of the feelings he felt when we first began dating (for the first time around). When pressed for more details, he says it reminds him of me naked under my red silk embroidered Chinese robe, pouring tea for him the morning after, and a particularly good shower with me in my old rickety garret apartment in Missoula….enough said. No wonder he gets so excited when I wear it. But I won’t wear it all the time, nor am I eager to make it a ‘signature’ scent, as much as I know he would love that, because I find it to be, well, one...

At first sniff this smells God-awful. Like some super heady synthetic sludge. Synthetic and overpowering, not nice at all. It has a sweet play-doh-y feeling and a slight woodiness--but the woodiness seems very synthetic and not very deep to me. I can say that it does smell very foreign, and very alien, and that's not just the ad copy influencing me. The question is, is it a good kind of foreignness, or is it just wrong? As those awful and scary topnotes dry down, the jasmine, the best aspect of this fragrance, comes to the front. The Jasmine and vanilla combine to create a sweet accord which to my nose lacks depth. I keep wanting the woods to come out more to play. The first two hours after the loss of that awful synthetic ugh are this lovely jasmine powder scent, which is very appealing. I begin to like it more the longer I wear it. It is like the smell of jasmine soap in the shower when it picks up the unwashed human body smell and becomes sort of tangy and vanilla-y. Ali...

Ok, first of all, this has to be one of the worst bottles I have ever seen. SO CHEESEY. So. Late. 90’s. In the worst way. That sort of retro-girly-cosmo cartoon aesthetic that looks oh so dated now. But I sniffed, and liked. I don’t love it, but I feel the reviews I found when I was browsing the internets for other people’s opinions about this scent and in the perfume bibles were a little harsh. Ok, it smells a bit like D & G Light Blue. So what—is that a crime?If emulation is so bad, most perfumers should be locked up by now. Luca Turin was especially hard on it—one star? Come on, it’s not that bad. It’s nothing special, but it is certainly wearable. It is a straightforward fruity floral scent, good for a girly spring mood. It’s like carrying around a fruitbowl filled with apples, oranges, and lemons, which some fairy magicked so that the boughs of fruit blossoms were still on it. The sillage is not great, but, again, not terrible either. It’s something I imagine donning for...

This has to be one of the very best MST3K of all! Or maybe I just like it because I'm a freak for folktales, and the comedy team lampoons their conventions so well in this show. Especially delightful are the wicked stepsister--who really does look like Tom Petty--the priggish main character, who is transformed into a bear for his misbehavior, and, of course, the somewhat creepy character Jack Frost, whose giant wand freezes anything it touches (foreshadowing, anyone?). Anyway, check it out. I'll never forget how hard I laughed (i think I might actually have peed my pants) the first time Isaw this episode. My good undergrad friend and I were at her family's wheat farm in the middle of nowhere in North Central Montana, and they happened to have recorded this on a videotape. We laughed and laughed. A very good memory. Here's a link to the episode on Youtub e . Enjoy!

First of all, the bottle is gorgeous, and it's hard to describe the attachment I have formed to it. Something about the way the little glass ridges feel in my hand--it makes the bottle feel almost oily, but in a good way, like I'm caressing some smooth, well-oiled alien skin. The color is perfect too; it is not pink nor copper nor yellow, but somewhere in between all of them, with a sort of mid-century blocky rose gold cap. Mine stays right on my bedside table, and I find myself admiring its form from time to time. Granted, it's no exotic bottle, but something about this perfume just does it for me. We first fell in love two summers ago, as I wandered the Bloomingdale's on Sixth Ave. in search of a gift to present some Brazilian hosts I had never met, who were putting us up for my brother's wedding to one of their nieces. Well, we didn't fall in love at Bloomingdales ; we had to get to know each other better. But despite my better judgem...

Kids watch too much TV nowadays, and as a teacher of young college students, I can vouch for tht fact that their imaginations suffer for it. When I was a little girl, I read voraciously, and I think it really impacted my life. Here is a list of books that really impacted me when I was a child, and I think it is a good place to start if you are building up a library for a young person. These are all books that will challenge not only a child's imagination, but also her sense of self, her notiosn of morality, and, perhaps most importantly, her personal aesthetic. I will surely post more lists of children's books, but this is a start. I hope to review most of these in time. Children's Treasury of Mythology- illustrated by Margaret Vollund-Smith A.A. Milne, When we were very Young Barbara Cooney , Miss Rumphius Anything by Beatrix Potter Paul Goble, The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses Dr. Seuss, On Beyond Zebra Roald Dahl, The BFG Susan Cooper, The Dark ...

I can't wait for the magnolias to come into bloom. They are such miraculous flowers! I grew up in the mountainous West, and we had no such thing there, so when I moved East, they were a revelation. But they are incredible. When they bloom, I know Spring has officially sprung. Pinkish white and so delicate looking, emerging from what has to be one of the most gorgeous buds in the plant world. They are pretty in the winter too. The kind we have here has gleaming silver branches and trunk that look austerely lovely against the snow and the pewter-colored sky.