Beautiful Hand-Crafted Christmas Ornaments + A Way To Save On Baccarat Rouge 540

Welcome to the 777th Metamorphosis Monday! Wow, hard to believe Christmas is just a week away now! Lovely Norma (who lives in France) shared a few photos of her tree for this year and it’s beautiful! Norma makes a lot of her ornaments by hand so I love seeing how she designs/decorates her tree each year.

Her tree is so elegant this year–dressed in gold, silver, and white! As mentioned, Norma often handmakes her ornaments, embellishing them with beads in beautiful designs and shapes. You can see them on the tree in this photo below.

Beautiful!

The kitchen has a little tree too. I know we’re supposed to be looking at the tree, but I love that SMEG toaster!

Norma has decorated her home with festive Christmas pillows that she designed and sewed herself! I always love seeing her decorations for Christmas each year!

Tips for Saving on Expensive Perfumes: Switching gears, I wanted to share a couple of things I just discovered this past weekend that I never realized before–in case you find it helpful, too. After buying a Maison Francis Kurkdjian sample/discovery a year or so ago, I’ve been hoping to purchase a full-size bottle of their Baccarat Rouge 540, but the ridiculously high price was stopping me. This past week, I was shopping at Saks online, looking for something to use the $50 Saks credit my American Express card awards me twice each year. I missed using the one I received for the first part of 2023 so was determined to not miss the second one! During my shopping, I came across a special offer where if you purchased a bottle of Baccarat Rouge 540, you also received a small purse-size bottle of the perfume. That’s it there on the right below. The offer also included a ton of samples of other products, plus–a $50 Saks gift certificate! I liked that offer and decided to go with it.

These were all the samples included with the offer and some were quite large. It even included a leather-covered perfume atomizer! I’ve already used the $50 gift certificate toward the purchase of two Hermes lipsticks, one for myself and one for my daughter-in-law, and for once, I didn’t lose my $50 Amex award. Surprisingly, when I clicked to check out with my perfume purchase, a message popped up giving me the option of using Membership Rewards Points I had accrued through my Amex card. Since I have a lot of points, I decided to pay with points. I didn’t even realize that was an option when shopping at Saks. I guess it’s part of the partnership Amex has worked out with Saks.

TIP: I was talking with a friend this weekend and she shared a brilliant way to avoid missing out on using the twice-a-year $50 Saks award that comes with the American Express Platinum card. What she does is she uses her award each time it comes around to purchase a $50 gift certificate. Then she holds onto the gift certificates until they add up to the amount she needs to purchase something she really wants. Brilliant! So, if you have a card that gives you a $ amount to be spent in a particular store, and it will expire if not used, consider purchasing a gift card that you can save to use whenever you wish. I have never thought of doing this, but I will definitely be doing that from now on. Great idea!

From the samples that were included with my perfume purchase, I fell in love with Goldfield and Banks Sunset Hour fragrance. I watched some reviews of G & B perfumes on YouTube and their Pacific Rock Moss is super popular. So I decided to order one of their Discovery sets. Searching online for the best place to purchase a Goldfield and Banks Discovery set, led me to a site that has great prices on many of the perfumes I love and wear. Have you ever shopped at Maxaroma online? Knowing nothing about them, I was a little reluctant to order, but so far, they seem to be legit. I’ve received confirmation of my order and I’m looking forward to sampling these popular Goldfield and Banks perfumes. If I have any issues with my order, I’ll let you know, but if they do turn out to be legit, I’m sure I’ll be ordering from them in the future since their prices look really good. Do you own any Goldfield and Banks perfumes? I can’t wait to try Pacific Rock Moss. I really love their Sunset Hour fragrance!

The last thing I wanted to mention is I stopped back by the Saks website this weekend and I noticed they have removed the offer I purchased that included all the samples, the purse-size bottle of Baccarat Rouge 540, and the $50 Saks gift certificate. Instead, Baccarat Rouge 540 was straight-up on sale, $50 off! Did you know Baccarat Rouge 540 goes on sale?! I was very surprised to see that! Unfortunately, the sale didn’t run very long–I think just a day or two. Not sure why it didn’t run longer.

Anyway, I just wanted to share this because I had no idea that Baccarat Rouge ever went on sale! So if you’ve been hoping to pick up a bottle at some point, know that it does go on sale–so keep an eye out for that! You know, if I do as my friend does and purchase gift certificates twice a year when the $50 Amex award becomes available, by the time I finish the bottle I just purchased, I may have enough gift certificates to purchase another one during one of their future sales events. Are you a Baccarat Rouge 540 fan, too? Baccarat Rouge 540 is available here, but unfortunately, no longer on sale: Baccarat Rouge 540. I would not be surprised if it doesn’t go on sale again either before Christmas or right after.

Looking forward to all the great Before and Afters linked for this week’s Met Monday! Pssst: Did you know Between Naps On The Porch is on Instagram? You’ll find me on Instagram here: Between Naps On The Porch. Like to know when a new blog post is up? Subscribe for email updates (it’s free) and your e-mail will never be shared. Subscribe for free post updates here: Subscribe.

Metamorphosis Monday: Metamorphosis Monday is a party that’s all about Before and Afters. Please link up your Before and After projects like DIY projects, room makeovers, craft projects even recipes. Please do not link up Table Settings, save those for our Tablescape Thursday party on Thursday. If you are participating in Met Monday, you’ll need to link your post to the party using the “permalink” to your MM post and not your general blog address. To get your permalink, click on the name of your post, then copy and paste the address that shows in the address bar at the top of your blog, into the “url” box for InLinkz when prompted.