beetiger

I haven't been good about doing the "six reviews a day with little links to them" thing with the BPAL, and I've got a big pile of notes I wanted to share here. So, here they are. More organization later perhaps. I just ordered half-imps from a decant circle of the ten new salon scents, and have around a dozen other things either waiting here to be tried or on their way.

Estimated time to burnout and/or picking 3 scents and wearing them: six months. I realized I've kind of been neglecting some of my incense evaluation to do this stuff, and since that's supposedly business, I should try to motivate myself to get back to it.

Anyway, pile of reviews. Probably not well edited.
( Pile of BPAL Reviews )

I keep getting confused because on my breastfeeding communities, EBM stands for expressed breastmilk, but on my BPAL communities, it stands for Enraged Bunny Musk.

I've been trying to test a developing backlog of BPAL scent imps I've acquired over the last few weeks. This means that in the mornings, I'm mostly alternating between something I know I like, and something new. In the evenings, I've also been trying some things that seem eveningish before bedtime.

Last night, at about the appropriate time, I tried on "Midnight", which the website describes as "An ethereal bouquet of night-blooming flowers. Evening primrose, ruellia, flowering nicotiana, wild petunia, panani-o-kai, night phlox, night gladiolus, moonflower and the elusive scent of Nottingham Catchfly.". That's pretty much right -- it's a lovely melange of white night-blooming flowers. But more dramatically, at least for me, it's the smell of insomnia. It's a walking garden somewhere in the South, on a day that was way too hot, but the evening's cooled down. You're alone in the moonlight after everyone else has gone somewhere else. Somehow you didn't want to join them but you're not ready to go to sleep yet.

So of course, then I couldn't sleep. I lay awake in my bed for an hour or two, sniffing the perfumed air and feeling a little melancholy.

This is a devastating scent for me right now, a calm solitude shot through with moody wakefulness, not at all what I need. But it's really perfect in terms of the design of a gothic perfume. It's beautiful, evocative, and brings forth a mood that's really not for everyone.

On a lovely day ten years ago today, bard_bloom and I had a wedding. I don't know if I fit into the dress anymore, but I know I still fit into this love.

No one could be a better partner for all the roads I walk in this life than you, my sweet. Happy Anniversary, Bard.

projectmothra is sight-reading some phenomenal number of words these days. He's just randomly walking around places, trying to read signs, and getting them kind of right more often than not. (It say "Please Flush"! This store is "Closed on Sunday"! "Men"! That the bathroom of going with Daddy!" That lady's shirt saying "Soccer"!) It's kind of boggling. He'd been "playing" our Apples to Apples set by trying to read the cards, so we just bought him Apples to Apples Junior so he'd be able to get more choices like "Hot Wheels Cars" and "Cowboys" and fewer like "Henry Mancini" and "Adolf Hitler".

In any case, as I mentioned, his sight reading vocabulary is huge, but he doesn't have any interest in phonetics/sounding out words. He knows all his letters and the primary sounds they make, but he's somewhere between uninterested and incapable of "sounding out" a word even if I guide him heavily through it. He'd rather I tell him the word so he remembers it next time he comes across it.

My friends who know more about Early Education than I do: should I be fussing about trying to help him get the sounding out concept, or should I just let him build an arsenal of sight-read words and not fuss about it?

Another set of reviews. Still have more in the queue to share, and more in the box to try.
Compared to the $2K I just spent on a swingset, this still seems affordable.
I feel so exhausted lately. It's like I'm doing way too much and way too little at the same time.
I need a BPAL icon.

( Vice )
( Delirium )
( The Lion )
( 13(2005)(LE) )
( Skuld )

In my sampler for this month, I got a baby onesie from Max and Otis Shirt Co.

It's a lightweight fabric with blue stars and trim, an it says "Brat" in black lettering. It's marked as "Large" and looks to me to be a 12 month size.

I wouldn't give a shirt that said that to anyone without asking if they'd like it, and I'd probably gift one of my own designs in any case if I were gifting for an occasion. I hate to leave it sitting around, though, if someone could use it.

Any of you parents with little ones interested? I'll send it gratis to the first commenter who wants it.

Well, I didn't actually get any comments on the last round, so perhaps you guys aren't interested after all, but hey, it's content.

( Red Lantern )
( Wanda )
( Veil )
( Great Sword of War )
( Kathmandu )
( White Rabbit )


( A Personal Note )

Um, okay, who put the weather on "shuffle"? *looks disparagingly at snow outside a few days after it was 70 degrees out.*

So much going on here, both with stuff to share about the week with ladyperegrine and her daughter here, and just from the things swirling around in my head lately. More later on all of these, I think. For now, just a little picture of crafty goodness: my April Sampler contribution!

Tiger Treasure Boxes!

Only 25 of these -- they take a long time to make. They'll also be going on the Mother's Hearth site as soon as I get the new "Handmade by Hearth" section up, hopefully this weekend. I'll be offering them either empty or filled with incense goodies like frankincense tears, palo santo chips, white copal, or pure amber resin.