The purse situation

My purse conundrum has been solved! I know you've all been waiting to find out what happened, so here's the story.

Last weekend I went purse hunting. The old purse I pulled out of my closet was rapidly disintegrating and leaving little flakes of brown pleather all over everything. I HAD to get something new. A couple of people suggested Charming Charlie, so that's where I headed. If you've never been to one, it's like Claire's for adults. And on crack. It was overwhelming. After much wandering, I found this purse.

It was $9.99 on clearance and met all my general purse requirements, so I bought it. It's ok, but nothing special. I definitely don't love it. I think it's a bit old-lady looking, but, you know, 10 bucks.

Wednesday was a bad day at work. By lunchtime, I knew I couldn't go sit in the lunchroom and socialize, so I decided to run some errands. I also decided to indulge in a little window shopping retail therapy. I went to TJMaxx (the novelty of having one at my lunchtime disposal hasn't worn off yet) and found this:

It's a gorgeous dark brown leather Michael Kors bag that wasn't in the store the last time I was there. It was also on its second markdown, which moved it into the "more than I was planning to spend, but not so outrageously more that I'm not still considering it" category. This is the gold purse from my purse shopping post that I said I could buy because it was gold. But now it's brown! I was still dithering as my lunch hour dwindled, so went ahead and bought it, planning to return it later when my guilt gets the best of me.

I took it to the lunchroom the next day to show the ladies my purse options and see if the thought the MK bag was cute enough to justify the price.

Aside:  As far a designer purses go, I didn't pay much. It was less than 1/3 of the price on the MK tag. It is also - by far - the most I've ever paid for a purse, so I think I was also hoping to be talked into keeping it.

The ladies all liked the MK purse more than the CC purse. One of them even pointed out that it'd be best to consider it a going away gift from the woman who retired and freed up money in the salary budget to give me my raise. If you knew all the history of this woman, you'd understand why the thougth of spite-spending "her" money was so compelling. Ultimately, I decided to keep the bag. It makes me smile.

So I have a new purse. I also got a new haircut and color tonight that's super cute and makes me happy.

Yeah, not a great pic (of me or the hair). It's a nice dark brown and cute and I think it'll be nice when I do it and it's curly.

It's been a very externally-validating week.