Dressing Down For Thanksgiving

As every year we are spending Thanksgiving with friends at their parents' in the Upper West Side. While they usually contact us just after Labor Day to ask us what we are doing for Thanksgiving and if we want to be their guests, this year I kind of "forced" the invitation (they had more family members coming down for the holidays than usual so I think that if I hadn't asked they wouldn't have invited us for lack of "available seats"). In the invitation email, the mom of my friend said that everybody will be wearing jeans so no need to dress up. Uhm... I don't know if I have to take this as an indication that I usually overdress (but honestly, last year I was wearing the tartan perfect shirt and my navy tootpick cords without any jewelry and I don't think that it was an extravagant outfit), but I am really going to try to dress down to the minimum.

Initially I had planned to wear the Talbots merino cardigan that I had bought a while ago during a 50% off one item promo. I still don't see it on the website, so it might be that this is store only (this is a P. I have to say that in general Talbots knits fit me well in P):

But now I think that even this might be too "festive". So instead I am going to go with an "unfestive striped tee". At least it is something new that I am excited to wear. It is the Boardwalk-stripe zipper tee. I had tried this tee as soon as it came out and I liked so much that I almost bought it FP. But that day I probably hadn't drunk my daily dose of Crewlade and could resist (the voice of the reason said "wait, it will go on sale"). So I bought it last week during the 30% off promo (Crewlade is more powerful when there is a sale). The first time around I had tried the XXS and it fit great except for the sleeves that were too short/tight at the zippers, so I went with a XS even if it is slouchier in the body:

I bought it mostly to wear in the spring (I love this color combination and I think that it has a lot of potential for spring) but with the weather being so mild I already wore it last Sunday to a kid's party and if tomorrow is too cold to wear it like this, I can wear a tissue turtleneck under it.

In other news, I started my Black Friday shopping in an unusual way: my grocery store is having a $0.99 sale on De Cecco pasta (which is the best Italian pasta and usually is very expensive at $2.69-2.99 a box). I especially love the Fusilli and my daughter loves the Racchette (that are shaped like tennis raquets), so I stocked up! Otherwise our "family tradition" on Black Friday is to hit Best Buy, where my husband, who is normally very retained, usually loses it (that's how we got a Wee, a Playstation 3 and an additional flat screen for our family room). But we just bought an iPad (even if we knew that they are going to have an iPad promo on Black Friday, but they are going to be sold-out in a nanosecond), so I don't know if this year we will spend more money on technology (I will go anyway for the deals on DVDs).

Are you dressing up or down for Thanksgiving? Happy Thanksgiving to you all!