More Randomosity

I really miss this show. 

You may or may not know that USPS has increased their shipping prices from January 27, and in the case of international shipping, it’s a massive increase – in some cases almost double. This is a bad, bad thing for those of us who don’t live in the US but buy the majority of our online purchases from there. It’s also a bad, bad thing for little guys on places like Etsy who do a lot of their business internationally (such as indie perfumeries, as we don’t have much of that available to us here), because a lot of us will have to severely limit our purchasing from now on. In short – it’s sucktacular all round.  BOOURNS!

Speaking of perfume, I learned something interesting the other day. Apparently grapeseed oil only has a shelf life of 6-9 months, so beware of buying perfumes that use it as a carrier. Unless you’re someone who is going to use it up in that amount of time, you might find they go off. I have never used a perfume in that time in my life, so it’s certainly something I’ll be watching out for.

And speaking of using makeup (do you like my smooth segueways there?) I have recently had discussions with a few people (Natalie and Jacquie to name two) about our habit of buying beautiful products that we are coveting, and then either not wanting to use them because we don’t want to upset the beauty of it, or saving it for ‘best’ and only using it a couple of times a year. When you think about it, that’s insane. I mean, if you own, say, two lipsticks and you wear one every day and save the other one for special occasions like weddings and parties, then fine. You have a case. But if you’re like us and you have lipsticks in the dozens and you’re saving some of them for special occasions, you’re just wasting all the money you spent to have this beautiful product in the first place. So whether it’s lipsticks, a gorgeous eyeshadow palette, or a bottle of perfume, if you love it, USE IT. Enjoy it and make every day a ‘special occasion’. Eventually whatever it is will go off, and if you’ve barely touched it, then what was the point? So that’s my goal for this year – use all those things I put aside as special. If I use them up and I can’t get another exactly the same, at least I will have had the enjoyment of it while it lasted.

Speaking of goals for this year (oh wow – I’m so good at this), another one of mine is to learn to wear necklaces. As a young’un I always wore necklaces of one kind or another, but as I’ve gotten older (and let’s be real, porkier), I’ve found that I hate wearing anything around my neck – it just feels uncomfortable. I carry my work pass around in my hand because I hate the lanyard thing it hangs from. But I love the look of necklaces, and I own a few of them, so I want to relearn to love wearing them.

I had mentioned I was doing a No Buy for January, and that was going pretty well until I found out about the international shipping increases, at which point I decided to suspend the No Buy and get all the stuff I could manage from my wishlists while I could for a reasonable shipping cost. The No Buy is back on from now until my birthday in May. As a consequence I have  A LOT of little packages on the way to me:

Twyla Perfumes (20% off – how could I not?)

Possets Perfumes

Alchemic Muse

Midnight Gypsy

Solstice Scents

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

Various Etsy purchases such as earrings, a necklace, a lip scrub , posters for Noodles and a purse for my mum.

I love acapella. I know it’s cheesy but I really admire people who can do talented things like that. I especially like Matthias Harris and Mike Tompkins.

While you’re checking them out on YouTube, you should also watch this 10 minute documentary about a group of people with a lot of time on their hands at work, who spent it perfecting their strategy in the event of a zombie apocalypse. There are a couple of questionable comments about women, but consider the source, let it slide and enjoy the show. It’s pretty good. 

And finally, a slight whinge – I hate it when people have blogs with no ‘follow’ button on them. If it’s not a private blog, why would you make it difficult for people to follow (and bloglovin’ doesn’t count because that sucks)? Also, captcha on comments – I need new glasses, so trying to read captcha words is REALLY hard. I am sure that 99% of people don’t even realise when they have it on there, so it should be something that you have to opt in to rather than opt out of. Get on to that, Blogger!

Okay, I’m done now.