SophieCedar

Wet: holy strawberry! This is sugary sweet sticky candy bonbons strawberry. Drydown: a little more peach here but I'm totally missing the cheesecake note. The fruit and sticky glaze is overpowering any cheesiness. I might layer this with bread and butterfly.

Want.. to.. nom.. arm.. wait don't! Wet: heavy cream and brandy with a dash of nutmeg and a sweet eggy note. Smells exactly like egg nog! Drydown: same! I'm salivating. Need to get off the computer and forage for nog now. bye.

Very nice. This is dead black death in a bottle. The cedar is dry and unwelcoming.. The dust note is perfect! The frankincense provides a sense of somber spiritualism. This is great!

Wet: foggy for sure. I love the creaking wood note. It smells like an old house in a damp climate. The dying embers mixed with the fog note is translating to cigarette smoke? Drydown: this is very light. The cigarette smoke smell passed (whew) and it's mostly creaky wood and fog now. Love it.

Yessss. This one is good. Wet: vanilla marzipan-ish snow with an atmospheric fir touch. There's a hint of bakery sweetness here. Drydown: more balanced between the evergreen and sweet notes. It's sweet, wonderful, festive.

Oooh! I like this. Fresh, crisp, metallic, touches of sweetness, and a bit foggy and refined too. This will be nice for summertime.

This smells much different than I expected! Wet: the sweet parts are there.. shimmering amber, honey, pumpkin pie, cranberry. Then the pine cone and bayberry starts to amp almost instantly, squashing the sweets instead of working harmoniously with them. Drydown: pine cone and bayberry with a touch of cranberry. I smell like a xmas dinner table centerpiece.... in july. I hope this works for others!

Wet: The grass and ivy are strong here, probably amping the ozone, stone and aquatic. Smells a bit men's cologne-ish. Drydown: ahh.. much nicer. The most of the fire I can capture is the smell of chimney smoke on wet stone. I definitely feel the stone amps much more here. The mix becomes saltier with puffs of grey moss bursting out. The smell is similar to parts of the coast about a 1/3 of a mile from my house but this mix is saltier. If you add seaweed and remove a touch of salt, it would be dead on (we have plenty of spots similar to moors in maine. Some equate the landscape to scotland...but it's just "coast" or "field" or "marsh" though. )

I love black currant. I love myrrh. I mostly love vetivert. The 3 together is great. Very dark, sweet black currant with an overshadowing of myrrh and discomforting vetivert. Simple and great. Smells like like grim reaper cologne for sure. Add oppoponax, a touch of dirt, and black musk and I think this would be even better.. wait I think I have something like that.. this will be good for mixing!

Oooh! I almost didn't order a decant of this one. Woe if I didn't.. this is the unexpected winner of the pack. I forgot juniper loves my skin. Wet: lovely sweet juniper, ice ozone note, dark evergreen note of hemlock that doesn't oppress the other notes. My brain and senses are floating around in bliss. Drydown: I feel like I'm taking a walk and stopping to huff in the local evergreen and plants along the ocean (coastal rocky outcrops is where the juniper is primarily found). Uh what am I doing inside? Oh right, I need to go to work. Crap.

Wet: wintergreen, sugar, hint of vanilla and maybe maple? and a touch of pine? The wintergreen is too strong here to evoke a snow feeling. There's a touch of ozone too. Drydown: it does smell like sweet snow! If I went outside right now and stuck my face in the freshly fallen snow, it would smell the same.

Whoa. Wet: plumeria, chrysanthemum, tiger lilies, dahlias, and azucenas (lilies). KA-POW! Knock your nose on it's ass heady flowers, mostly lilies. Drydown: the unexpected like of the 2010 Yules. The plumeria comes out more and the lilies are wonderful. Turns a little sweeter too! Only complaint is that it fades quickly.

Wet: amber and vetivert with a touch of lavender. Surprised the lavender is taking backseat in this one. Otherwise the vetivert is masking it. The tea rose is coming out like rosewood because of the vetivert too. Drydown: more amber, actually! The vetivert still dominates everything else and turns it into different flavors of vetivert.

Wet: smells exactly like Alice! Drydown: smells like Hope and Alice mixed!

Wet: dark wispy lavender, oppoponax, and cognac. There's a touch of patchouli behind it but mostly lavender. Very soothing, murky, and a touch boozy and earthy. Drydown: all lavender and a slight hint of patchouli,blackberry and myrtle. I like it for it's soothing, not torturous, qualities.

Wet: ooh wow! This is spicy sweet warm, woody. the sherry note is there. This cobbler is saturated! There's a nutmeg or cinnamon note and a bit of orange and nuts? Drydown: the booze wore off and there's more firewood but still spicy and warm. I'm not sure this is safe for work. I smell a bit like a sherry hangover. I like it but it's one of those that need to stay at home, like unsavory gravediggers.

In imp: perfect. smells like late november, early december at dusk. Wet: reminds me of something I can't put my finger on. argh! The bitter currant is much sweeter than I imagined it would be. The crackling leaves are there however translate to sweet soap mixed with firewood on my skin. There's a cold wind/ozone note coming out. Drydown: my skin has turned this into a bizarre incense. Think along the lines of midnight on the midway...It's darker and a bit more empty. Kind of eerie!

In imp: I almost ordered a bottle instead of a decant. So, when I received my decant package, I rushed to smell this one. In imp, all I could describe it as was "utterly cute" with a hint of blue chamomile. Wet: something that smells like china berry or kiwi notes typically used in oil format. That was the biggest surprise. Must be the lemon peel pomegranate and sage? french vanilla pops in and out but generally stays tucked underneath. Drydown: same but weaker. Totally bizarre!

In imp: smells exactly how it's described by the lab. lovely mince pie spice, dark stout beer, woods. Wet: spice explosion! I smell all mince pie with a strong winey apple? Smells like mulled cider on me. Drydown: ok there's more beer and woods, but it still mostly spicy mulled cider and possibly a touch of fig.

Wet: black currant and frankincense with blue musk. It's a dark herbal resin with a blue black color impression. I'm surprised by the way this turns a bit sour on me because I tend to do well with every ingredient listed. Drydown: apparently, I'm not the right chemistry for this. The frankincense it colliding with the rest of the notes. I think I would have fared better with myrrh. I had very high hopes for this one. It was right up there with Jacob's ladder. Unfortunately, something is not mixing well with my skin.

Wet: dirt, stone, ice, moss, marsh felwort (whatever that smells like..I saw the flower and we have a ton like that up here) and a hint of buttercup and buttery spicy baked goods. Drydown: moss mostly, stone, dirt, hint of ice that smells a bit like aquatic cologne, flowers. Interesting. I'll need to chew on this one.

When I read the description, my fingers were trembling and scrambling, because of excitement, when I typed to my favored decanter to order this. Being this is my 1st full year w/ bpal; and last year I was too distracted by the overwhelming lovely chaos of kicking off my bpal habit, I didn't try any yules. This is like hearing about a new movie coming out on your birthday where all your favorite stars are in your ideal setting. Needless to say, this scent is perfect for me. Amber, benzoin, and tonka together? Yes, please. Plus the sweet gummy pine-like smell of the galbanum and the costus are perfect. The rockrose is incredibly mellow. This is awesome and causes me to daydream.

For some reason I mistook the orange blossom and vanilla together for apple blossom? Maybe because of the carnation and teas. It quickly breaks apart that image when applied to the skin. It's nice however I think mate does not agree with me, as it's too close to green tea. This will be passed along to the mate junkie in my life: my husband.

Mmmm.. This is unsavory gravediggers minus the booze. aka: SFW unsavory gravediggers! I love the combination of dry green and wet earth. Has a lovely morbid bitterness.

Wet: wow. really impressed with this one. Memories of from the 1990's flood back: ethnic shops, new age shops with tons of oils incense and resins, the smell of manic panic herbal base, essential oil mixing perfumeries tucked in weird cramped locations, hummus plates in the smoking section of wonderfully eclectic restaurants. (One with antique wood cathedral where people smoke hookahs with fresh tobacco and the other with a steady big fireplace at my back.) I can't believe I found a scent that properly interprets the whole thing! I think it's mostly the burmese part of the rosewood and the tumeric. During the wet phase, this is sweet rosewood, currant leaf, benzoin, frankincense and oude. All there obviously. Just enough unique notes that I can pick all of them out. Drydown: gets sweeter and there's something that reminds me of the indian and arabian sandalwood oils I used to buy as a teen. Must be the burmese rosewood and benzoin. It's pretty dreamy at this phase. 10 out of 10.