For the first time…

in 7 months, Mark and I went shopping for clothes.  I have not bought a single item of clothing for myself in the 7 months we’ve lived here.  Actually I take that back.  I bought a t-shirt in Prague, a shirt in Lipica and an I *heart* Sarone shirt since I’ve been here.  I’m an Old Navy/Target/Kohl’s type shopper and online shopping for clothes isn’t half as fun as shopping for clothes in person.  Especially when I’m changing sizes.  I really need to try things on.

So Mark and I went to Emisfero mall, which is about 40 mins east of us, and shopped at H&M.  That’s about all that was in our price range.  But still a 10E shirt now is still like $14.  And even if you buy 2 of them that’s $8 more than you’d spend in the States on 2 items of clothing.  It adds up quickly, but I got 2 new long sleeve t-shirts, a pair of jeans (yay!!) and a set of leggings.  Mark got 2 sweaters and 2 long sleeve button up shirts.  (Family that reads this – you want Christmas ideas for Mark – he needs new clothes!!!)  Abbie of course makes it very interesting (read: difficult) to shop and the whole time she was screaming and Mark was saying “Abbie, please!!!”.  (As in SHUT UP!!!)  So we were rushed and it wasn’t much fun, but we got a few new things which was exciting.

I really want to find a pair of boots that I like, but I’m kinda picky.  I know exactly what I want, but I can’t find them, at least not in my price range.  Boots are ALL the rage over here right now and pretty much 95% of people are wearing some type of boot.  They sell them all over the place here, but most of them are in the 200Euro price range, and I’m not about to pay almost $300 for a pair of boots.  That’s a lot of money and as I said, I’m more of a bargain shopper.  But you’d think being in Italy, the land of leather, I’d be able to find a decent pair in my price range.  I actually found a pair I liked when we went shopping, but they didn’t have my size.  Go figure.

I REALLY need to buy clothes that are a little more dressy.  I’m not even a little bit into fashion, and I am 100% about comfort.  Every time I look at clothes online I gravitate towards long sleeve t-shirts, hoodies and sweatshirts.  If I could live in those, with a comfy pair of pajama pants, I’d be in Heaven.  But when I go to squadron events, I feel vastly underdressed and I hate it.  Yesterday we saw this girl on base that had a really cute sweater dress on, with leggings and taller boots.  I told Mark that that was a really cute outfit and I’d like to wear something like that and he said that he didn’t want me to dress dressier because then he’d look like a slob.  ….  So it’s okay for both of us to look like slobs together.  Great.  Luckily for him, he gets to wear a flight suit 90% of the time.  However, most of the time I’m wearing what we normally wear around people who dress up, so I end up looking like a slob by myself.  I just found 2 sweaters and a sweater dress on Target.com that I like, but they’re $61 and I just don’t know if I should spend that money on myself when we have Christmas coming up.  Maybe I should apply for “What Not To Wear”.  Do you think they’d do an overseas edition?