The pencil skirt/tube skirt trend and lucky it was cheap!

I love the pencil skirt look, but I just don't think I can pull it off. And part of me remembers when I was 13 and made my mum make a whole lot of short tube skirts that I wore to death, I can't try on one now without having flashbacks lol.

I bought a pencil tube skirt from Tempt for $9.95 (as pictured). I really like it, but it just confirmed that I don't really feel comfortable with that style - one skirt will do :-).

I received my Mimco clips that I posted about previously - they are 'worth' $65, but I bought them for $9.95 due to credit from Mimco's credit scheme called mimcollective. I am massively disappointed with them, of course if I saw them instore I wouldn't of bought them, but I didn't - I purchased online and made the assumption that for that kind of price they would be quite string and suitable for my thick hair. Basically I feel that these may as well be flimsy clips that are cheap from Lady Jayne with Mimco stamped on them. Very poor look and feel, Mimco come on! I have been a long time buyer of hair wear and bags from Mimco and it's just not good enough - lucky I only paid $9.95!!!!

A shady Blue

I need blue sunglasses : http://outfitidentifier.com/?p=90794. Don't ask me why I have to have these, I just do! So they are SO not in my budget: http://www.visiondirect.com.au/designer-sunglasses/Ray-Ban/Ray-Ban-RB2140-Original-Wayfarer-96340-74888.html. I need an outing with baby G today, so I'm going on the hint for a cheaper version of these! By the way I LOVE Jessica Alba's style, she is definitely moving away from the maxi dresses she wore (in my opinion a bit excessively) in pregnancy and has her fashion mojo going on.

Mimco and bling bling bling

With Frugal February blown, the purchases continued! I'm going on holidays in a couple of weeks, so I now have no more money to spend - for real as its inaccessible and as I've mentioned in previous posts - I have no credit card! I bought a pack of assorted blue stud earrings including dotty hearts - so cute, a peacock ring and a ok of three earth tone rings. I could try and claim that it was a bargain buys it was buy three and get the third one free, but they were $$ so it wasn't really a bargain at all. However, for some reason I had $70 reward points allocated to my Mimco account - free money whoo hoo. So I bought these sets of clips and only paid the $9,95 postage for them.

Book club and Ebooks

Recently I borrowed Strictly Confidential by Roxy Jacenko from the library. This book is a thinly disguised memoir, which of course makes it more fun to read! I really enjoyed this book and read it very quickly, however, it was no devil wears prada. It seems to be set up so there will be a series of books around the main character, but to be honest I'm not sure how interested I would be in reading an ongoing story about the character.

I use my IPad to read Ebooks, I use the Kindle app and get books from Amazon. I also read magazines on my iPad via the Zinio app. To be honest I love the feel of a book and a magazine, but I am just so tired of the clutter. I dont have alot as I am able to get most of the books i want from the library, and im also pretty tight on forking out $$ for books - i read the Amazon reviews for a book very very closely! Ebooks are like iTunes - not really that cheap considering the sellers don't have to manufacture the book, ship it etc. I have a lot of makeup books but wanted Scott Barnes About Face for awhile. I was really indecisive about wether I wanted to pay the extra $15 to buy the hard copy to sit on my shelf or to just get the Ebooks. Eventually I decided to just get the Ebook - that way I have the added bonus of having a makeup book on my iPad that I can travel with and access easier.

New frocks and new shoes = frugal February fail!

So I ended up buying the two Dotti dresses I featured a couple of posts ago. They were out of my allowance range and I hate paying full price at Dotti, but I really need to break the festival feel of my casual wardrobe. At $110 for both my allowance was bust. After wearing the red Dotti dress and pairing it with silver Sportsgirl sandals, I still felt too casual. I have tons of ballet slippers and heels but it's SO hot at the moment I still needed Shoes that had airflow. I ended up picking up these shoes in black from Novo for $49.95. This extra purchase pushes me out of the running for Frugal February! No matter how much I've saved in groceries, bills and everyday living - my personal shopping expenses blow it. I am pretty determined that these will be the last clothing and shoes purchases for awhile. I have enough dressy casual wardrobe choices to get me through the next couple of months I have left on maternity leave.

iTunes vouchers and Who What Wear

One of my big 'how to cut expenses' tips and also 'how to cut clutter' tips is iTunes vouchers. Before I started buying music via ITunes, I bought CDs - a lot of them - I haven't bought an actual cd for many years and i currently have three boxes of CDs packed away. Total clutter, and a confronting way to see the amount of money I've spent. Initially I started borrowing CDs from the library and loading them into itunes, which saved a little money, but they don't get every cd in that I want. Initially I was against buying music from iTunes as I felt it was quite expensive considering you don't get a physical cd. Eventually one day I decided I had enough of clutter and decided to start buying music from ITunes. Then one day I discovered that iTunes vouchers were on discount sale at Coles and a lightbulb went off - I could save even more money! Generally i buy the vouchers at 20%, combine that with the slightly cheaper price they are on ITunes I get four albums for the cost of two if I bought instore - that's a pretty good saving. Plus I have no clutter yay :-). I have iCloud on my laptop, iPad and iTunes so the purchased music automatically uploads on all devices, although I do have to sync my iPod to get them on there. To find where to get discount iTunes vouchers check out this website: http://www.giftcardsonsale.com.au/.

Who What Wear Where. As part of my style revamp project, I'm going through all the look books I've put together over the years and reading style guides. I subscribe to updates fromthe Who What Wear website and also have the IPhone app. I also found their latest book What to Wear Where at my local library, it's got some awesome tips and great examples of what to wear to what kind of functions that I decided to buy it! I always have those kind of dilemmas and now I can check the book and see what I like in my wardrobe :-). I ended up buying it from Book Depository (online), I was trying to buy it as an ebook, to save on clutter but it wasn't available. I bought this and a baby book (see baby blog), and funnily enough the price at Amazon was exactly the same including delivery price to the Book Depository full price cost (book depository has free shipping), I went with BD because their shipping was faster. My next post will be about this weeks allowance purchases, which combined with this officially make me a frugal February fail in terms of personal purchases.

Wish lists and limitations

While I begin sifting through my wardrobe I realize the limitations I have in dressing up my casual wear. I am breastfeeding my daughter, she is six weeks old and I plan to keep breastfeeding for at least a couple more months. This means I need easily accessible clothing, so far I stick to strapless dresses, off the shoulder dresses/playsuits, button up dresses/tops and even zip down dresses/playsuits. Unfortunately for me a style I am loving at the moment is 'skater' dresses. Or high neck dresses, obviously I cannot wear these types of dresses. So frustrating! So for now I will just put all these dresses from ASOS and Sunny Girl on the wishlist that will never be fulfilled. I did however find a Dotti dress (the red v neck one with birds in it), this might be on my shopping list when my allowance gets topped back up. So far digging through my work wardrobe I have only found one dress that is day casual and BF friendly, bummer.

My life is a festival - style revamp - part 1

I have been on maternity leave for over two months and plan to be for another three months. You can read all about my baby journey on my other blog Oooh Baby Baby! Being on leave from work for so long has created a style dilemma. Let me start a bit of a long story, when I was deciding on what to do for a career I did a lot of researching. I read lots of self help books and really thought long and hard about what would make me happy. What I decided was I wanted to contribute to society, not to the profit of a company, I didn't want to work weekends and I didn't want to wear a uniform. So I started a career in Government and have worked in lots of different roles in the public service over the years. I have to be honest, I love dressing up for work - high heels, accessories, clothes - the whole deal. Sometimes planning my outfit motivates me more than the actual work for the day!

So fast forward to today, I have not dressed up for work for over two months and I'm really starting to feel it. My work clothes are completely divorced from my weekend wear. Basically my weekend wear is very casual, and I have come to the realization that a majority of my casual wardrobe is festival wear! I'm basically dressing to go to a festival every day now, shorts and singlets, sleeveless short summer dresses and playsuits. Of course a lot of my wardrobe at the moment is dictated by the tropical north Australia climate I live in. When I lived in a colder climate my casual wardrobe was more jackets, jeans, dresses and tights.

I don't want to look like I'm going to a music festival EVERY day, I would like to dress up a little on my casual wardrobe. So I need to firstly figure out what I have in my wardrobe and secondly figure out what my dressy casual style is! Last year I downloaded an iPhone app called Closet, I photographed all my clothes and it was a fantastic app to remind myself what was in my wardrobe and also what I had worn as you can attach the photos you wore to the calendar. But late last year we had a prolonged move and with moving, renovating and preparing for baby I stopped adding the new clothes into the app. So starting tomorrow I am pulling out my wardrobe and adding everything into the app. I'm also going to pull out all the look books I have put together over the years of styles I like and start researching! Maybe exploring my wardrobe will help slow down my shopping purchases!

Leopard print style tips and sales vs frugality the tug of war continues

I love the website Who What Wear, I get email updates, I have the app and I am also contemplating buying their style book ( I have currently borrowed it from the library). They recently blogged about how to work the leopard print look. I heart the leopard print which my hubby isn't NOT a fan of, I think a little bit because my mum also rocks the leopard print look lol. I already have a lot of leopard print but this week I also added a pair of jeans and shorts - both from Jay Jays and both on sale - a total of $57 for both, I also chucked in the flower print shorts that we're $20. It's really hot where I live so I can never get enough shorts. Although lately I have been really struggling with the casualness of my everyday wardrobe and will blog about that soon.

This week was a semi tough week, and it kinda shows with the extra shopping purchases I have made when I am trying to practice frugality. On a good note though I have successfully stuck to the budget in every other aspect - just not with clothes :-(. I also bought this mimco pouch, as a mimco collective member I received a $50 credit which I used to buy the pouch - I had to pay the extra $20 and the ten dollars shipping fee as there is no Mimco where I live now. This Mimco pouch will come in handy with baby bags and when I am going for a walk with the pram and only need a pouch to chuck my phone, keys and some $$.

One last confession - I bought this sequin dress from sportsgirl, I've had my eye on this dress for ages - at $199 I had absolutely no intentions of ever actually buying this dress but today I found it on the sale rack for $59.95- I had Baby G with me so couldn't try it on as she had her squirmy hat on, so I grabbed the medium - as pretty much all I own is medium size. Well turns out its a little bit big, only a little though and they didn't have a small - and who knows the small might of been to small. I think I can get away with it being a little loose and if I waist belt it, it looks really nice. On a related note to the photo I have taken of the dress, I need a dress mannequin! It would make taking photos a lot easier and of showcasing outfits as well. But that's a purchase definitely low on the priority list.

Book club and end of the vouchers

This week I finished 'Then you came' by Jennifer Weiner. At first I nearly didn't get past the first chapter, it seemed like it was going to be quite an emotional read. At the moment I am really after some light hearted reading, but I persisted because Jennifer's books are always good. So I am glad I did as it was a really good book, I can totally see it being made into a movie. It's basically about a couple who decide to have a baby with someone else's egg and also via surrogate, and the story is from everybody involved in that process perspective.

This week also marked the end of the never ending Ally voucher. I bought a totally unpractical dress that I will be unable to breastfeed in! But it was pretty. To be honest I am kinda over Ally now after purging on it for 5 weeks. I also used my last xmas gift voucher on a pair of leopard print jeans from Jay Jays. So now I am outta of free purchases.....poo. I've been thinking its time to go through my look books and my wardrobe to refresh it and get some new ideas. All of a sudden I feel like I don't really have that much to wear, I think it's because I haven't worn any of my work wardrobe for 9 weeks now so I'm missing that variety.

Does skin care count as personal purchases??

This month is Frugal February. Though in theory I try and practice frugality (or being savings conscious) every month. So this fortnight I did not spend my $100 allowance so was feeling pretty good about things, until I wandered into my local chemist... I really needed Estée Lauder Perfectionist, and they were having a gift with purchase deal - gift with purchases are the reason why I haven't bought any lipstick or eyeshadow for years! The lovely chemist lady pointed out that they had some awesome deals on the 'bargain' table that were Estée Lauder Xmas gift packs reduced to clear. So I ended up getting a bottle of the Perfectionist and the Advanced Night Repair that I was running low on - I got them both plus heaps of extra moisturizers for the price of one Perfectionist $190. I'm wondering does ultimately saving a ****load on skin care be considered frugal. Eek.