Take A Whiff Of This

To celebrate my birthday, again, I headed over to Aveda with T. Neither of us had been there before; she'd never heard of it until I told her about my birthday postcard. She asked if it was actually in the mall, and I figured it wouldn't be since she's my go-to gal for all things mall-related and if she'd never heard of it, it couldn't be in the mall. Then I looked it up and saw that it was.

After a quick look around Macy's for rainboots that they don't have and avoiding the attack of the overly-pushy sales woman and her get-a-credit-card-scanning-machine, we went into the mall and found the directory. I couldn't find the store at all. T found it on the map; it was teeny.

Usually, I look at a map, look around, look at the map again, and then head off in the wrong direction. Not T. She found the spot and then was like, Let's go this way. A few quick turns and I was dizzy. She, on the other hand, was exclaiming, Oh, there it is!

Aveda is much like Origins or Whole Foods--it's for specific products but has a very zen-yoga-rainforest vibe. The woman working there said hi from across the store and I told her I had a question as another woman asked for help. Of course I couldn't find the post card so I told her she should probably go help the other woman while I dug through my bag.

By the time I found the postcard, she was finished with the woman and calling out, Happy Birthday! Come on over! She asked if we'd done this before and I answered that I didn't even know how I got a postcard for my birthday. She said they have my birthday from when I signed up online. I don't remember signing up other than signing up on another website for something from Aveda, so I guess I's signed up then. I'm not complaining. I was getting something free!

Something free from Aveda is no small deal. Their shit is expensive!

So we sat at a long, tall, wood table on fancy wooden stools--not barstools--and she placed a tray of about 12 essential oil bottles in front of us. She explained that I could smell them all and then decide which one I liked and suggested not cheating by looking at the chart but going by the scent I liked best. I smelled a bunch of oils and decided if I liked them or not and then smelled them again by looking at the chart, too.

New job: sniffing scientist.

T began testing them as well and shook her head at a lot of them. I liked most of them, but thought about how much I would like them if the scent stuck around all day. That narrowed it down. I was surprised to find that, although I like patchouli, sandalwood, and jasmine, I did not like all three of them together as one scent. I usually do not like the smell of roses, but anything with rose in it, I did like. Wow, this was throwing me for a loop.

I found a few peppermint ones that I really enjoyed. I told T there was definitely mint in them and she smelled them and was like, whoa yes there is. Then she held one up and said it smelled like Christmas. I looked it up and said, well, yes, it has cinnamon; you're good at this. She gave me a look and answered, I come up with Christmas and you come up with hints of peppermint and I'm good at this?

Really, if someone didn't smell the peppermint in the one I did, something was wrong with their nose. I started to really like it, but then worried I'd smell like Trident.

While we sat with our experiment, two women were getting advice on facial scrubs. The Aveda Gal was explaining that if you use St. Ives scrub, it creates tiny tears in your skin because the scrub doesn't dissolve. I mumbled to T that while that's true, St. Ives is also cheap as opposed to the bottle the women were looking at from Aveda. T's eyes bugged out as she whispered back, That bottle is 45 bucks! Yup, and that's why I slowly rip my face off with St. Ives.

Aveda Gal came back over to see what I chose and I went with the Trident peppermint. She poured out the oil into a lotion. The bottle was large. I could have gotten lotion, body wash, bath salts, massage oils, or purfume. I went for a big bottle of something because the bigger, the more expensive, and this was free, so I wanted a great deal. In a few moments, I walked out with a very large very expensive customized bottle of lotion, all for FREE!

To celebrate, we headed over to Teavanna, the uber-expensive, also zen-like tea shop and tasted all their free samples, taking double shots of some of the flavors, until both sales people asked us if we needed help with anything, meaning it was time to stop drinking all the free tea.