I've Got A New Scent-Sation

This week is going by so fast - I think because the weekend was really fun and this week's weather has been BLISS thus far. I work in Jersey City right by the water (so you can see all of downtown Manhattan, which is the redeeming part) and yesterday literally everyone in our building was on the boardwalk soaking up the sun.

Over the weekend I met up with my 2 best girlfriends from middle school (Sarah & Shelly, I love them so much!!) - I went to middle school in Tampa, Florida - and we had another activity day.

This was from Brooklyn Painting Lounge - we went to paint a couple Sunday's ago and each session is a different painting thing. Best part - it's BYOB so we sipped on Sparkling wine while creating these tie dye masterpieces.

Our activity days are turning out to be my favorite btw. First we met up at Freeman's, this awesome brunch place on the lower east side - you go down a (pee smelling) alley to find this dark cozy like barn-ish kind of restaurant with dead animals on the walls - definitely feel like you are in Kentucky rather than LES, which made my eyes light up right away. So we did that, then we went to The Wren before our activity (I'll tell you what activity in a moment) and we got drinks to get pumped up. I got an elf-sized mimosa thing (very delicious, but each sip was probably like $2.50 which is annoying) and Sarah who I thought didn't like spicy stuff got this literally beef jerkey peppered drink (DON'T ORDER IT) that literally would be used for hazing or something - had a chunk of beef in it, tasted like a liquid steak, and not a filet - because that I might consider.

This just in! Sarah captured every good moment of the day and even had a photo of this Beef Drank!!

Anyways, then we scurried along over to the East Village because our activity for the day was perfume making! #sniff

I'm glad Sarah did a little photo journalism here with this one - nice action shot.

So I forgot to mention that before we entered the fragrance shop I told the girls about my favorite perfumes - Bond No. 9 - and so we had this idea that we should go smell something we liked, Google the ingredients (how many fruits and flowers could it be?) and then duh, we'd just recreate it. Super easy. So we went to Bond - fell in love with a couple $300+ perfumes (they are cheaper on Nordstrom.com btw). If you are interested, my new fave is "Montauk," which is a unisex scent that kind of smells manly, but in the best way, and is so clean and cool - and my old fave is "The Scent of Peace" which is just beautiful.

Get them here - literally amazing scents

So back at the perfume factory, we had lists of things that we thought embodied these scents, so we tried to recreate them with the relatively limited selection of perfume oils available to us in the store. Clearly scents were becoming altered, because for example: to make Montauk I needed driftwood as one ingredient. The perfume factory only had "Woodstock" so I subbed that one in instead. If you are imagining the difference between the 2, I am sure you are already correct. Driftwood most likely smells like clean ocean air that you'd breathe in while having a nice outdoor lunch in the Hamptons, and Woodstock smells like unwashed hippie sunbathing by a lake. My final product consisted of woodstock, blue musk, mandarin "breeze" (flying oranges, I guess), Sweet heart vanilla aka Strippa, White Patchouli aka same shit as Woodstock. So the lady working at the story craftily squirted these perfumes on an INDEX CARD and rubbed then together with her index finger. 2 issues I have with that: 1) I am no perfume expert but I thought the general rule was DON'T RUB IT on your skin because the temperature change will alter the scent and 2) I don't know where that index finger has been!!!! My blend morphed into literally just Old Spice. Sarah's (she is the one on right side of pic at the top) became baby powder, and I don't know if Shelly (middle one in pic) even considered mixing her blend - She said aloud (so funny) "I just know this is going to smell gross so I don't think I want to even make it." But the activity was really fun and we learned a valuable lesson that day: buy expensive perfume.

After that we went into the chocolate store to the left and the guitar store to the right. The great thing about the east village is that there are so many very unique and specific independently owned stores and you can never really go to all of them because some change out over time. Each store seems to house someone who is so passionate about their craft; it's like professors at colleges who have dedicated themselves to not just one subject, but one topic in that subject (my adviser was from Harvard and focused on Work-Life balance - I majored in Sociology & Anthropology). The chocolate store had like 20 chocolates for sale in interesting flavors (even though the store was really small, selling 20 chocolates doesn't take much space) like peanut butter and jelly and bourbon and tea, and I guarantee that woman knows exactly what's in each one. One time I walked into a jewelry store and the artist was creating these little skull rungs that had such intricate faces and it was all by hand! Such cool stuff.

Me trying to play a guitar chord on the banjo.

And dennn Shelly and I went for drinks (typical) and had some wine (happy hour all day Sundays = $6 wines = yesss) and then had more drinks on my patio and had a fabulous day. I tried to rally for a concert (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) that evening which I went to (Yeah I did) - it was really fun but potentially not the best choice for a Sunday: the day of rest.

Cool venue, close to my apt which is nice.  

The concert was awesome - that lead girl is nuts, like actually nuts. She wears crazy shit and spits water in the air and screams and basically made me rethink what I wear each day.

This chick. She wore like the same outfit at the concert I was at. I googled this pic since I wasn't close enough to take one this clear and in such a fabulous second position (ballet position - basically just means "spread legs") Also my general philosophy at these small concerts is "stay as close to the bar as possible," which generally means far away from the stage (also a great choice in this situation, since I didn't know she was a spitter), UNLESS IT IS A COUNTRY CONCERT. In that case.. get up there!! The plus side is that no one really attends country concerts in this city or shares my passion for them (except Shelly) so really you can just do whatever you want there. 

And best part, we walked right by Glen Hansard who is the cutest man I've ever seen. If you don't know, he was in the movie Once which is now the best musical - it's incredible.  And that was a great Sunday.