Back from Rehab (and a few Outfits)

It has been almost a week since my last post and in case you are wondering where I have been all this time, let's say that I was in rehab. My husband found out about my multiple Jcrew orders of the past month and he thought that I needed a little bit of a detox cure, so he HIDE my computer cable before leaving on another business trip. Yes, he hide it (don't people divorce for less than that? But I didn't fight it because I felt guilty), but instead of tear down the house to find it or go straight to the envelope where he had noted down the cable hide-out (in case of emergency) I decided to take on the challenge and see how many day I could resist without the computer. Have you ever tried? I don't have an iPhone or Blackberry, so that means no Internet at all, no emails, no iTunes, no Netflix queue, no pictures, nothing. Well, I hang on more or less two days and a half, then I found the cable by chance (hidden in my husband sockets drawer, which clearly means that he thinks that it's a fairy who puts away his sockets after the laundry) and I couldn't just IGNORE it.
It was quite hard, really but also quite instructive. It is incredible the things that one can do in a house when one is not blogging, or checking email or buying stuff on the Internet or stalking the Jcrew website, or just daydreaming in front of the computer. For example, I cleaned up my closet and found clothes that I used to love but I had completely forgot to have; I sew the buttons of my husband's shirts that needed some maintenance; I even cooked.
And even if in front of him I denied that it was as bad as he was depicting it, he was right about my Jcrew addiction and my needing some sort of electroshock.
I don't know how long it is going to last but these few days of fast from the Internet and Jcrew.com did some good. I feel more detached and less compelled to spend. If I look back, I have never spent this much (I mean on a DAILY basis) in my life and I'm not even working.
That doesn't mean that I'm going to stop shopping at all (I love shopping, I always had and I always will), only that I'm going to try to focus on what I really want/need as opposed to what looks like a deal that I can't pass on, or what I "have to have" only after seeing it on other fabulous blogger.

While I was in rehab, the boxes from last week kept coming (I must admit, it was less thrilling to receive them) and I have a couple of outfits for you.
The first is an outfit with the Donegal Shawl Cardigan, that I scored on sale. You know that I loved this at first try (if not first sight) but when a cardigan hits the $150, I normally wait for it to go on sale. Obviously this went on sale while I wasn't paying attention and my size in this color sold-out immediately (in fact it was already sold-out FP). But they always come back, don't they?




The reason why I'm showing you this outfit is because the jeans that I'm wearings are a pair of bootcuts (by the brand Paul & Joe) that used to be my favorite and I hadn't worn in ages just because they were at the bottom of my jeans pile. How could I forget those? I feel immediately sexy when I wear them (I know that the outfit itself is far from sexy), it has something to do with the placement of the pockets and the fact that they are a little bit stiff. Anyway, back on the spotlight they went, I wore them every day of the week.

Speaking of sexiness, do you remember the "sexiest chinos ever"? Yes, I'm talking about the Scout chinos, that hit the $19.99 price low last week. I had ordered them once already when they were $29.99 but decided that I wouldn't pay more than $20 for these, even if I like them. The reason is that they come "distressed" and actually I almost thought that my pair was a defective one when I received them the first time, but this second pair confirmed that it wasn't someone at the warehouse who accidentally spilled a bottle of Clorox of them. The fact is that the "distress" is placed in a weird spot on the leg:



Anyway, I like the fit and for $19.99 I can live with it. The following is not really an outfit for this time of the year (they are going on hibernation until next spring), but you can see the fit in case you want to order them now that they are really cheap (I ordered a 0 but they also come in 00. I have to say that the first pair was more fitted like the one that I had tried in store, this one is a little bit looser but I'm not going to order a third pair):




The shirt in this and the previous outfit under the Donegal cardi is the Cotton Contrast-stitch perfect shirt that I believe is still FP and has been restocked in some stores. I have a strange relationship with this shirt. I'm still not sure if I like it (I thought about returning it and I even put it on sale on the JCA Weekly Exchange once), but in the reality I wear it a lot. Has it ever happened to you, that you don't know if you like something that goes with a lot of things in your closet and thus keep wearing?

This week I have also started to wear my Script coat, the one that I bought at the sample sale in a bigger size than my usual 0. I had been on the fence about this one too as you know, but I resolved that I have made my decision when I bought it as I knew that it wasn't returnable and I'm not going to leave it hanging in my closet instead of wearing it. Guess what? I LOVE it, especially with jeans with is what I wear 99% of the time. I received a lot of compliments (not only from the JCrew SAs but also from people in the street and the teller at the bank). Actually because in this color is a day coat, I like it a little bit roomier. This has been my uniform this week:



I have checked out the new arrivals this morning (without buying anything. See? Rehab works), pics coming soon.