Mrs F's Shopping Expedition

So yesterday as promised I packed up the baby and headed to the mall... hot little Gap gift card in hand.
First things first it bears repeating that I hate to shop.
Secondly I hate to try things on.. with LARGE mirrors and florescent lighting which combine to act like a giant magnifying glass on my unclothed hideousness!

Like everyone else in the world I am hard to fit. Yes I realize you think you are hard to fit and might even believe you are harder to fit...but lets just say the feelings are mutual and call it a tie. I am short and kind of zucchini shaped... you know like a cylinder... so I have very narrow hips but a short and wide-ish waist. Oh pears I know you think the gaping waist is a problem, but waists you can have taken in... they cannot "let out" waists or "take in" the hip, butt & legs of pants. You don't really know Hell until you try on pants as a squash with a squishy hangy baby momma tummy no less!

Now I had heard rumors that the low rise pants were on the outs so I was hopeful that I might find some pants which could act as reinforcement around the aforementioned lower abdomen. I went to the Gap wearing my old jeans (size 6) which truthfully aren't too too big in the waist but after wearing them for an hour start to fall off my ass and look like Hell. I wrote a similar post about my other jeans (incidentally same size and cut just different wash) a few weeks ago. (oh yeah in the link the darker good fitting pair are the ones that are now in need of a replacement) These jeans are slightly lower rise than a mid rise... perfect ...not so low as to let my empty flap of a stomach spill out over top but not too high as to be too tight on my wide waist. Well guess what they don't fucking make them anymore. So I tried on every goddamn pair of pants in the place and typically ran into one of two problems... Low cut size fours looked HOT on me if my torso was cut off at the top of the pants... not so much with jelly belly spill over... The "mid rise" are okay but a little high on me (short waisted remember?) which is somewhat uncomfortable when you sit since the waist band then touches your ribcage. Yes in retrospect I realize I needed to have headed to a place that sells actual petite clothes and not just "ankle" length.

So mostly it was a bust. I bought a pair of the closest jeans I could find but despite being "ankle" length they are seriously 3" longer than my old jeans and although the waist is smaller upon returning home I see that that is only because the rise is higher and in actuallity these size 4 jeans are slightly bigger than the 6s I had worn for 4 days and in theory "stretched out"! So I'm returning them. I bought some other pants I'm no longer pleased with... and writing all this does make realize that the main problem is that I need my pants in a petite cut throughout not just in length. Those of you who don't know petite sizes run about 1/2 size smaller, so if you are under 5'4" this could be your answer once your old size is too big but the next size down in bafflingly too small still.

(missing picture of bogus size 4 ankle length jeans)

Because I got suckered into getting a Gap card I then had to buy $50 worth of socks for the kids and head over to Banana to see what they had to offer (15% off the whole day!). Boy Banana is in one of their fancy modes so there wasn't a whole lot for me to even consider... but let me tell you they are filled with jewel toned wrap style dresses and shirts. If you have been following my fashion quest (and how could you not?) then you know this is exactly what I have been looking for.
So I bought this little beauty...
(sure technically not a good picture of the dress.. or in general... and yes Mr F only took it cause he was looking at my boobs... but I do look hot people!)

I'm having great difficulty uploading my pictures. Check back over the weekend and I will add some more to this post when I get it all worked out.