Clinton and Stacy and my aversion to shopping

I love shopping....I hate shopping....it's a love/hate relationship I have with shopping...clothes shopping that is. Clothes shopping for myself! I just have such a hard time with it. I always joke saying that I should nominate myself for What Not to Wear. I like that show. It's not really that I dress BAD, but I just never know WHAT to wear or what looks good on me. I find myself looking at other people as they walk through stores and malls...people who are my size (5'6/5'7, size lg/xl, 14/16) and even bigger, and wonder "how is it that they find cute clothes that look good on them but I can't seem to find anything I like". Maybe it's that I don't take enough time, or maybe I don't have enough cash to just buy whatever I see, (I shop the clearance racks more often than not) . Whatever it is, it is a dilemma, because the fact of the matter is, I really like clothes, and I'd really love to have a closet full of cute shoes. But the reality is, that I rarely go shopping, the majority of my shoes are black, and I wear my clothes until they die..the clothes, not the style. It doesn't help that I haven't exercised in several months and have gotten, ahem...a bit flabby.

This brings me to this week. Our church is hosting a women's conference this weekend and I am MCing it and speaking in a mini-session. Uh-Oh! What am I going to wear. My jeans are all looking rather old and I wear the same shirts over and over and felt like I wanted something new. So off I went to the mall on Monday. Home, I came empty handed. I put a FB post stating that Clinton and Stacy needed to come shopping with me, then later, that they had failed me. Tuesday I had to take Nan to soccer practice and had 2 hours to kill. I headed for Ross, Kohls and Target. They failed me again....I came home empty handed. Kat looked at me and said "do I need to come shopping with you?" "YES" was my reply. So today, she, Nan and I headed back to the mall. We went to Macy's first because they had a lot of clearance items and well, there isn't much I can buy at Macy's OFF the clearance rack. The girls spread out through the store finding things for me to try on. We hit the dressing rooms and wheedled it down to three shirts. We set off to Penney's to look for some jeans. I found a pair for $20 that they said looked good (though I don't think the REAL Clinton and Stacy would have thought so because I had watched their video on finding the perfect jean and I'm not sure these would be them, but they worked). Back to Macy's we went to decide which shirt. I settled on a cute striped shirt that I really, really liked. As I tried it on again, I cried out (thankfully no one else was in the dressing rooms), "there's a hole in the shirt". Sure enough there was a hole. It wasn't a material that could be patched and between the three of us and a sales associate we couldn't find another one. I decided on one of the other options I had set aside. I really liked it too, but because my heart was set on the other, it was hard to REALLY like the one I got...and it was about $10 more that the first option. We were running out of time to shop so I just went with it and bought it. We headed back out in to the mall to find shoes...no luck....well, within the budget I wanted to stay in.

Sigh....I'm glad I went with my girls..they were a lot of fun and they really did help me make a decision. I'll probably take them again, and again! A $5,000 shopping gift card would be amazing though, but to use wherever I WANT to. A girl can dream! I think I might have a few more gray hairs now! And I spent all my money and a bit more so I won't be buying hair color for a few weeks...haha!

With Joy UNquenchable,