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Portia
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Hey Hey APJ Crew,
I don’t know why but this week has felt freaking hectic. There aren’t even that many things involved but I always seemed to be playing catch up. Hopefully things settle down a little this week (HA! As If)
Scent Diary: 2.10 – 8.10.2017
Monday 2:
Jin just left for work. 3.15am. I’m still up fart arse-ing around at the computer. Going to bed.
PUBLIC HOLIDAY TODAY!! Sydney is closed. Everyone is having BarBQs and doing warm weather stuff.
Spritzed Amouage Dia Extrait to walk the dogs in the morning and was happily engulfed in fragrance till I bathed late at night.
I had organised about 4 things to do. Friends, friends families, lunch, dinner, swimming. It all came to nought when I realised that Jin had taken the car AND my motorbike key. With public transport on Sunday/Public Holiday times I wasn’t going out at all.
Jin and I went for dinner when he got home from work. This picture seemed to capture spring dusk in the city perfectly for me.
Wrote my Trivia Q&A in record time
Tuesday 3:
Scott and I made up a Sale Doc for the Aussie FB page. Once it went live there was a feeding frenzy.
We also got the office work done for this week. Very productive day.
While we were going through the things to cull we rediscovered a bottle of Chloe Narcisse. It was going into the sale pile till we spritzed it. NOPE! Keeping it. So then I wore it to work but I forgot how big it is and overspritzed. Let’s just say I was in the middle of a fragrant cloud and felt like my scent was dry cleaning everyones clothes. HUGE!!!
Wednesday 4:
Today jumped out of bed bright and early, walked and fed the dogs.
Spring is here so I grabbed my Penhaligon’s Ostara and spritzed with abandon. The perfect spring scent.
Then Jin drove me to the station where I jumped a train for the city. Destination Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens with my childhood buddy Eve and her beautiful daughter Lola.
We caught the Choo Choo Express around the gardens, had a delicious picnic on the grass and we wandered over to the new pavilion The Calyx where they have a Pollination exhibition on currently. Then we sat outside in the shade and had a cup of coffee or hot chocolate. It was a beautiful day, perfect.
Wednesday night I jumped on my motorbike and went to see a frag buddy. bought 10ml of Creed Vanisia off him.
Thursday 5:
Lazy morning.
Lunch was two buns. One had ham & salad, the other chicken mayonnaise salad. They were bloody delicious.
Wore my new Creed Vanisia day and night to work. I love it so much and it was also a big compliment getter.
Below is my friend Warren who comes and plays trivia irregularly. He and I went to the same school.
Friday 6:
The day was spent packing and posting my frag sales.
Also Jin is looking to refinance his mortgage. We ran from pillar to post through Parramatta meeting with banks and mortgage brokers. We think we know which way he’s going but they really make it hard. The bank we are currently with and turned up for a booking we had had organised a week ago flat out said we’d have to wait till he’d done something else, could we come back in an hour or two. Jin immediately struck them off the list. This guy was so arrogant about the whole thing too, unbelievable.
As you can see below Paris was looking at me with pleading eyes for a cuddle, so of course he got loads of smooching.
Bubble bath today in LUSH Rose Jam and then wore Aftelier Parfum de Maroc out for dinner with Alice, Kath and Jin to the Original Balkan Restaurant on Crown St. We ate so much I couldn’t even fit ice-cream in but the other guys indulged. Here they are suffering a sugar high.
Saturday 7:
Today was rush, rush, rush.
Jin needed to get something at the shops, a few shops. I thought we’d be out for 40 minutes but then we kept adding stuff. I also managed to end up buying all my absolute essential needs and a couple of extras at the 70% off GAP sale.
Came home, quickly bathed and then TinaG came over for a cuppa and a chat, sniff and laughs. It was great to see her but my mind was half on tonights gig and I couldn’t really concentrate.
My fragrance for tonight was the original Agent Provocateur EdP. Bloody lovely roses and stuff.
BIG gig tonight. Fundraiser with 240 people. It was a huge event, so much fun and a great crowd. Here are some of the group at half time. I think we raised LOADS of money.
For bed I spritzed some Annick Goutal Grand Amour. Floating away on creamy clouds of floral vanilla. MMMMMMM
Sunday 8:
I stayed up late and rewatched Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. What a fun movie. Colin Farrell is so good as the evil guy and Eddie Redmayne plays the doesn’t-quite-fit-in geek to perfection. Really enjoyed it the second time around.
It’s cloudy, dry, warm and lovely today. Perfect weather for everything. Wandering the dogs this morning it was nice to see so many other people with the same idea. We bumped into loads of happy Sunday strollers with their dogs and some with kids. Everyone chatty and smiling.
My morning scent was the one and only vintage Miss Dior parfum. Fits every situation perfectly.
Pedi day with Rose. So nice to catch up with her and spend some quality time.
After pedis Phil joined us for lunch but we were so busy chatting and laughing that I forgot to take a happy snap.
What happened in your week? Please share a story, encounter, fragrance or fun time you had.
Portia xx
Australian Perfume Junkies 
Portia, so glad you had a change of mind and kept the Chloe Narcisse! I too had the same intention just recently to sell mine off, and then sprayed once and thought, ‘no I have not got any other fragrance that smells like this’. I have always likened it to Estee Lauder’s Spellbound – also a fabric softener kind of scent with some minty (I call it high class mint) toothpasty vibe to it. What do you think?
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HA! High class mint! Excellent Hage,
YAY! Narcisse twins. Glad someone else likes it. What a whacky fragrance. It has permeated the fibres of my jacket and will probably stay there for a year.
Portia xx
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Agent Provocateur is lovely, wish I hadn’t sold mine. 😦 I have quite a few swap/sale regrets, so glad ou kept your Chloe.
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Hey TaraC,
The good thing about Agent Provocateur is that it still smells fabulous even now. Cheap as chips i the discounters.
YAY! I’m glad I kept the Narcisse too.
Portia xx
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Hi Portia, so enjoyed reading about your week. When I was 13 my father returned from a trip to Paris & gave me a bottle of Miss Dior. Thought I’d look for a little bottle on ebay this morning & found an esprit version. What’s that? Also found a small edp. What do you recommend?
Fragrant smiles xoxo
ps. Chloe Narcisse and Ostara have been full season spring scents in past years. Beautiful.
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Hey Jackie,
If you can get your hands on one of the old EdC of Miss Dior it still goes really cheap and smells wonderful. I don’t have an esprit here and the really old stuff that I have only came in EdT, EdC and parfum.
Wow! we snap for spring.
Portia xx
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We’re flirting with autumn up here (but it’s warm and rainy). So I’m a bit jealous of Ostara and springtime, my favorite season. I’m thinking I need to pop over to Arielle Shoshona and hose myself down the the newly released Ineke Idyllwild.
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OMG! Please give Arielle the biggest smoochy hug from me. i love her to bits.
Portia xx
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A couple of weeks back a friend and I sniffed Jo Malone Oak series after being told one was a lot like Sycomore. Nope. The usual faint prettiness.
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BUMMER AnnieA.
Portia xx
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Hello! It must be Narcisse time for us all. I sprayed it the other night and decided to keep it too! That shrill note keeps me hooked.
I did a little clean out and I have about 15 scents to rehome. I’m donating them to some co-workers. Feels weird to say good bye. But what is worse is that I reorganised all my other scents and cannot find anything now. I seem to work best with my mess. It makes sense to me, even if it looks scruffy. I guess I am now forced to return to scents I’d forgotten I have.
What catches me every time about your weeks is that you still have friends from your childhood. That speaks volumes about who you are, Portia. I love your friend-rich life; it is your defining feature.
Kate xx
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Hey Kate,
NEVER clean up and reorganise. It becomes a gorgeously neat bloody schemozzle.
Friends make everything better. I have been so lucky to have excellent people around me through my whole life. Every little bit of effort we make to keep in touch is paid back 1000 times.
What a wonderful defining feature. I’ll take that Kate as the highest compliment.
Portia xx
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The spring flowers look so happy in your photos, they lift my spirits today. Loved reading your adventures and your scent choices this week. You prompted me to wear Ostara. I bought a bottle a few years ago and have neglected it since then. Thanks to the perfumed angels it has aged well, I like it more than I remember. The beeswax note among the flowers really pleases my nose today. I’ve pulled out my sample of Grand Amour to wear tonight, such a beautiful floral. The resinous note blooms big for me and shines through the vanilla. Have a great week!
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Hi there Tiffanie,
Ostara and Grand Amour, beautiful fragrances aren’t they. So rich.
Portia xx
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I got a used television for free this week when a relative opted for one with a larger screen. So happy to save money for this, since I watch very few series. My old one was really old and was starting to be difficult to use with the upgraded box from the cable company.
I received MFK Amyris femme from my father as a present for my birthday, so I have been enjoying over-spraying for a few days. It was a totally unexpected present since I had asked him to buy it and be my perfume mule, bringing it back from Vienna. Amyris is a pretty, light and elegant scent and most people will be able to tolerate it. It seemed more intense when tried in summer, so I think I will put it away next month and think of it mainly as a spring and summer daytime scent.
Today I have been testing perfume from M. Micallef, Secrets of Love (Delice, Passion, Glamour), samples obtained from Le Parfum in Vienna. It is the first time I try anything by M. Micallef, I think. Sadly, these were too sweet for my liking and the sillage was not impressive. However, I usually find florientals easier than spicy orientals, so not a big surprise there, and a good thing for my wallet.
Other than that, I bought myself a lovely Italian silk scarf this week and hope I will finally learn how to tie it!
Food highlight: Caribbean food at restaurant I had long wanted to visit. Such unusual (to me) combinations of spices and so I really enjoyed the meat, as a change from all the vegetarian I usually eat.
Envy you the warmer climate and lovely flowers and springtime. Even with sun and a clear sky yesterday (NO RAIN!!) this is not my favourite season, I am already dreading winter.
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Woo Hoo Ingeborg,
A new TV means better reception and picture right? How lovely for you.
When I met Jin there was no TV in my house. Within months he had installed an enormous thing and I started getting back into the world of TV. Now we have had a special wall unit made for his ridiculous curved behemoth.
What colour is your scarf? Love sold.
Caribbean food? I think I have never had it. How interesting, you inspire me to find some.
Warm is lovely, the towels dry on the line in hours, very happy.
Portia xx
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Another busy week for you Portia. Good luck with the re-financing. It can be a pain, I know.
I answered a question from somebody this week that what gives me a buzz me is finding something exciting at an op shop or market. That must have been an omen, because I found two beauties in the markets this week. Both from the 1950s: Rochas Femme parfum in its black lace box, and Worth Vens Toi parfum in the round Lalique bottle. A couple of nice minis too, including AdP Profumo. I’ve written an article about the Worth on my blog.
Scent diary reflected the fact that Spring is on the way:
Mon – Cult of Scent Jazz Age Jasmine
Tue – Chanel Allure Homme Sport
Wed – L’Artisan Fou d’Absinthe
Thu – YSL Rive Gauche Homme
Fri – Amouage Reflection Man
Sat – Floris Elite
Sun – Worth Vens Toi
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Oh Greg,
I love that Femme parfum and have a bottle too. What a bloody stunner.
Nice line up of scents this week buddy, plenty of interest, Fou d’Absinthe is so yummy. Weird on open but soft and delicate through the heart, love it.
Portia xx
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In line with Kate Apted’s comment above, I have to say Portia I envy your friend filled life and it is truly inspiring me to take more time just hanging out with people I love. No one should ever get a mani-peddie alone, for example. Far too boring! As a result I do them too infrequently, but now I am just going to enlist friends to come with me!
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Hey Amy,
You have inspired me to write a Pedi Post. It will go up on APJ tonight.
Portia xx
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