Saturday Question: Holiday Lottery

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Portia

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Hello Fellow Fumies,

Every Saturday we have a Question, an idea purloined from Olfactoria’s Travels. Everyone gets to chime in with an answer, chat with other responders and it is a fun event each week. Taking sides never means taking offence and everyone keeps it respectful and light, even though we can sometimes trawl the depths.

The idea is you’ll see it on the weekend or chime in through the week. Hopefully you will come back and see if anyone has responded to your comment and you can reply to them.

Over 100 responses I will draw a $10 Surrender To Chance Gift Card.
Over 200 responses I will draw a $20 Surrender To Chance Gift Card.
Comment purposefully on yours or anothers comment & you’ll have a chance, random.org will draw on Friday.

Last Weeks Winner: Old Herbaceous $10 Surrender To Chance Gift Card

eMail me at (portia underscore turbo at yahoo dot com dot au) with the eMail you’d like me to send your Gift Card to.

Saturday Question: Holiday Lottery

This weeks idea is a little different to our regular fragrance question. Imagine there was a Holiday Lottery. You would buy a ticket and WIN, obviously, and the prize would be a 4 week, all expenses paid holiday for 4 people anywhere on earth. There’s a couple of catches though. If you have a partner, or BFF, then they can be one person if you’d like. The other people must be interesting people that most of us would have heard of: Politicians, Sports heroes, Designers, Journalists, Actors, Directors, Perfumers, Activists, Medical people, Authors etc.
You also have to choose where you go on your holiday. Make it somewhere that you will be forced to interact and talk.

 

My Answer:

OK, no surprise to you all that I choose to take Jin. He’s excellent company and good at thinking his way around situations. He also has a pretty easy going personality that is perfect for smoothing ruffled feathers (mine usually). Having been together for a few years we also are getting pretty good at reading each other, important.

Sandra Bullock. I know, she’s not who I’d have though I would want along either but she fascinates me. I’ve been watching her movies for decades, have laughed, cried, loved and everything else with her along the way. I completely lose myself in her films and she has a way of melting herself into a role that makes each one special. Somehow though I don’t feel as if I know her at all and I have a feeling she would be epically cool. She has played the Hollywood game so much better than almost everyone else and that takes brains as well as talent and luck. I bet she would be a really interesting travel companion.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brigitte_Macron_(2017).JPG

Brigitte Macron. The wife of the French President and his former High School Drama Teacher. This is a cool and classy woman, she is clearly adored by her husband and in my mind I think she would be an excellent conversationalist. She also looks like fun. I am hoping she would have some wonderful stories about her life, could help me understand French politics or politics in general a bit better and maybe also share some motivational tips. She is a woman who power seems to have settled on lightly and through all the odious stuff has sailed flawlessly above.

Where? Where could the four of us go that would allow us to see a part of the world I’d not imagined wanting to visit. Somewhere that would need us to be quite resourceful and work together as a team yet give us ample time to discuss lives, the meaning of the universe and to share ourselves.

My mate Janek and a small group walked the Italian Dolomites this month. It’s supposed to be an 11 day hike right over the top but they did it in 6. It looked so ridiculously amazing that I am inspired to do it myself. There are guest houses and cabins along the way, you can get a guide and it can all be done at a very reasonable pace. Obviously these guys are fit and were up for a challenge but I’ve been looking into it and there are treks so well paved that wheelchairs can do them. So what you do is get a guide who can help choose your level.

Edited from Janek: Feeling on top of the world, truly. Such a huge sense of accomplishment having just completed the 139km Alta Via 1 hike through the Dolomites in the Italian Alps. It took us six full days even though the recommendation is 11. It was the hardest, most challenging thing I’ve ever done. But ultimately so rewarding. Actually indescribable. And so many beautiful moments. At times I seriously doubted my abilities which was weird. Ascents seemed impossible to me. Totally not passable. But id just put one painful foot in front of the other and somehow made it to the end where we hugged it out. The bond we built with each other will be cherished always.

 

My Saturday Question to you is:

Who would be your three companions, where would you go and why?

Génie des Bois by Keiko Mecheri

Heya Frag Friends,

After going through my fragrance wardrobe before leaving for holidays I came across a bunch of samples that remained untried, they needed some loving and skin time. I am trying to work my way through some of these and so over the next few weeks there will be a slew of fun new things to write about, new to me anyway. If you wonder I write about a fragrance usually after a minimum 3 wears, that gives me a slightly broader understanding of a fragrance and how it reacts in different situations. The first wear is often to bed, even for my afternoon nap, where I can focus on the fragrance and its subtleties without distraction. I find this also calms whatever worries or cares i may have and lets me really unwind.

Génie des Bois by Keiko Mecheri

Genie des Bois Keiko Mecheri  FragranticaPhoto Stolen Fragrantica

Fragrantica gives these featured accords in one line:
Violet, violet leaf, cacao pod, Brazillian rosewood, benzoin, tonka bean

Interesting, every time, there’s something slightly minty that comes out in the Genie des Bois opening that plays with the violet leaf and resinous wood. It doesn’t stay long but it adds a glamour of intrigue over what is essentially a simple and pretty fragrance, modern, extremely wearable with moderate sillage and projection. Does a cacao pod smell a bit like very bitter chocolate? Is it the resins keeping everything smooth because this is smooth and beautiful like a polished stone that has had time to warm in your hands.

Genie des Bois Keiko Mecheri  Violets squinza FlickrPhoto Stolen Flickr

Sugared violets? They are sweet and more like violet lollies, even a bit like the violet tea additive from Walter Reimer in Vienna. Then through all this comes the softest powdery violet (?), so fluffy, soft and downy. I cannot tell you what is happening really because the note list seems way too short for how much lovely fragrance action Genie des Bois offers up. Musk? There is a small reminder of Lolita Lempicka EdP but the sweetness is way less fizzy in Genie des Bois, if LL were to grow up and be made for a woman ready to go forth and glitter at an event then I think this could be an excellent choice. Do you remember the moment in Two Weeks Notice where Sandra Bullock arrives at the gala in that gown, hair done, perfect, radiant, soft focus and breathtaking. She is at once modern and eternal, a picture of lovely historic Hollywood glamour and every modern girls  (and quite a few boys) dream of how good it can be. That’s what Genie des Bois says to me when I wear it.

Genie des Bois Keiko Mecheri Sandra_Bullock Sketch cameralucPhoto Stolen cameraluc

GAHHHH! I have no idea what I’m smelling here, violets and woods and a bunch of yummy other un-named stuff. What I can tell you is that it is very, very lovely and I am seriously thinking of a purchase.

LuckyScent says this: This is not an old-fashioned powdery violet by any means, this kitten’s got claws! As the name hints, this woods- based scent uses cedar and other exotic woods to impart an unusual base on which lies violet. A very green violet, that is, which gradually sweetens and softens as the fragrance evolves on your skin. Genie des Bois falls somewhere between a feathered-slipper wearing, gold cigarette holder-wielding, old-school movie star and a very naughty bacchanalian romp in a forest blanketed with wild violets. We think you’ll love it, dahling. Kiss kiss.

Genie des Bois Keiko Mecheri Shannon_-_Lady_Violet WikiMediaPhoto Stolen WikiMedia

Further reading: Il Mondo di Odore and The Fragrant Foodie
LuckyScent has $115/75ml
First In Fragrance has samples €5/3ml

Do you have a violet in your wardrobe? Do you like the Keiko Mecheri line?

Till tomorrow, be nice to yourself,
Portia xx