My Busy Weekend (shopping at H&M, birthday picnic in the park, dinner with friends and Tory Burch sample sale)

I'm late on this post because I wanted to show you some outfit pics from the weekend that are still stuck in my camera but I can't seem to be able to get them out. So it's going to be a messy post with only the few Saturday morning pics that I had downloaded immediately.

I was really on a really tight schedule on Saturday. I needed to do some errands in the morning and return something to the new H&M store that just opened on 86th Street, then we had a picnic-birthday party of one of my daughter's friends at 3 and then we had to run home to cook (my husband is a good cook, that's why I'm using the "we" here) because we had invited friends for dinner.
This is my Saturday morning outfit (I didn't have the time to change myself before the picnic as I had to bake a cake but I was already picnic-ready in the morning as you can see):



I'm wearing the chambray seaside shorts and a Gap top. I can't tell how much I love this Gap "liberty" top. It's from spring 2008 and it is a such a pleasure to wear.

H&M is once again under my radar for disposable fashion now that they have opened a new store at 5 minutes from home. I went there last Friday, the day after the opening (they were giving away a tee shirt on opening day and that was a warning to stay away) to check if they had any items left from the Matthew Williamson collection but the SA told me that they didn't get them in the first place as by the time that the store opened they were already sold out everywhere. So I tried a few things on but I have to say that the music was so loud that I couldn't wait to get out of the fitting room and being back on the street. Is it me getting old or they really pump the volume too much?
Anyway I bought this dress as a cheap alternative to the Jcrew strapless jersey dress:





The material is definitively lesss substantial (or "cheaper") than the Jcrew but the nice thing of this dress is that it has a real bra support so it doesn't feel like your boobs are falling off. Anyway, I decided that I didn't like it in black, so on Saturday I tried this other color:





I liked it better in this color but not as much as to want it, so I just returned the black one.
I also wanted to show you this cheaper (only $24.99) alternative to the Jcrew drawstrawing dress:



It is in a silk blend and yes, much more sheer than the Jcrew one but I also tried over the skinny jeans and it looked definitively nice. I'm not sure that this one can be belted though as it is very high waisted.

For dinner I wore my fresco-print tunic with skinny jeans (I didn't bother taking a pic of the outfit since it's the exact same outfit than the one that you can see in my March fresco-print silk tunic dedicated post - sorry it seems that my new super-computer can't handle html links without freezing). It turns out that this is such an easy outfit to wear when having friends at home and the best part is that it makes the whole "what I'm going to put on it if it gets too cold" issue a non-issue.

So we are now Sunday. Sunday was the first day of the Tory Burch sample sale here in NY. I had been waiting for it for a long time this year because I was hoping to find my Love Bird tee (see April post - once again sorry, I can't post links until I figure out how to do it on this computer). I was so afraid that DH would somehow stop me from going (because it was on a Sunday morning) that I didn't tell him until the very last minute on Sunday morning when I announced him that he'd better go jogging right away because I was going to take off at 9.30 at the latest (the doors were opening at 11 and I wanted to be there at least half an hour before). I had to promise that I wouldn't buy anything but the tee but I could go without making a scene and I arrived at the sample sale location at 10.10.
Now, in my entire life of sample sale shopper I have never seen a line like this one. As soon as I arrived I knew from having been in this place many times that I didn't have a chance to enter the sale before hours. I waited anyway until the opening time and then I waited until noon and in all this time I made only a few more steps through the entrance which was all the way down the block. At that point the line behind me made almost the entire tour of the block. And you know what? I gave up. Really, this was crazy and
anyway by the time I would be in I was sure that there would be nothing left in my size, so why upset my husband and ruin my family Sunday? I will try to go again (with baby) the last day, when hopefully the crowds will be gone.
On a positive note, when I was in the line I spotted many Jcrew outfits. Really, I think that I've never seen so many people wearing Jcrew before all in the same place.

If any of you was in line on Sunday morning or went to the Tory Burch sale, please shout!