Mamas: Stop Buying Your Clothes at Target (Yes, we can tell!) Try Beyond Pink Boutique

When I used to work and wasn’t sitting about all day eating bonbons and wiping little teeny tiny person butts, I wore nice clothes.  The people around me wore nice clothes.  Of course, we didn’t always dress well  or expensively and I was still young and trying things out.  My clothes were all Casual Corner suits with a sprinkling of Target and Marshall’s mixed in. My hair was another matter.  Like when I had personal struggles and  colored and permed my hair within an inch of it’s life over the course of one particularly rough month. My colleague BFF Jean and Precious Boss Texas Suzanne worked together to get my hair into Haircrafter’s Salon to fix the mess.  And there might have been a highly inappropriate incident in which Someone was in a professional meeting and removed, just for laughs, a hairpiece which one should not have been wearing anyway.  In order to brag about how one could have long hair even when one actually had short hair.  Talk about wisdom in older age...yeesh.  Anyhoo.

Just realized this sweater is too big!

Now I am a Mama.  I dress pretty well for a stay at home mama.  Mostly because of my neck skin.  It has started doing interesting and creative things and so I dress nicer lately to distract folks from looking at it.   My summer uniform is usually skirts and tshirts so I might look dressed up but can sweat and play and sit on the ground with the best of them.  I just look fancy.    My thighs aren’t up for any modeling jobs and shorts tend to show that.  Or the skorts I am now addicted to.  But...I digress.  As a mama the only new clothes I am buying are more tshirts I do not need from Target.  And every time I go in that store I want to buy more pajamas.  Like I hang out in my pjs?  (If you haven’t seen this picture, just pretend with me, OK?)

Beyond Pink, interesting but not quite right

Date night was coming as it does every week.  Most weeks I do shower, but my wardrobe needed a lift.  I got my haircut at Vanis Salon by the famous RJ (back when I could afford her....*sigh*) and I figured I would take my special gift card I got from Mothers and More Spring Fling right on over to the nearby Beyond Pink Clothing Boutique in Valparaiso and see if I could find a little something SASSIER than Target’s latest offerings.  I was still blushing from seeing fashion guy Nick Verreos from Project Runway speak on style and he said “Ladies, stop buying ALL of your clothes at Target!  You cannot be fashionable only buying clothes where you buy food.”  I was wearing a Target jacket and shirt and about died from the truth of it.  Mamas, They Know.  So Beyond Pink.  Thought I would try it.

Tempting but a few flaws.

I came in dripping from the rain with salon fabulous hair.  My gift card was $25 off of $50 or more, so frugal me planned to spend EXACTLY $50 in order to get Something Wonderful for around $25.  This boutique is very LaDiDa for me, so I headed for the clearance rack.  Lesley Steele was working that fateful night, and as I blathered on about my gift card and stay at home budget and Target wardrobe and date night she began to pull things for me to try on.  Lesley was a GIFT to me.  We decided to look for a marvelous shirt and the things she brought to me were between $20 and $80 for a variety of shirts, some from the clearance rack, some clearly not.  (Sisters, when one buys $8 tshirts from Target, can you imagine the sticker shock to see a shirt for $80?)  Does it wash and fold itself?  No, in fact it needs to be NOT WASHED IN A GREAT BIG PILE WITH OTHER STUFF?  What does “hand wash" mean, anyway?  Like what I do after touching sticky dining toddlers?  HUH?

Lesley Steele, wearing a scarf I loved

It was so exciting and interesting to me to shop at Beyond Pink.  I was so out of my element and yet felt so pampered and special.  Lesley took pictures of a few more interesting options and tho I REALLY wanted to spend less, I did find a shirt that was AHHHHMAZING. It was an ethereal robin’s egg blue shirt with ruching and a longer length.  The drape of expensive clothes is amazing...it really does make a difference.  With my coupon I still paid $60 for it, but it is worth it.  The last time I paid as much for a shirt I only had one child, and I still love and cherish it.  (It is a cobalt blue Cabi Designs wrap shirt that makes me thinner, smarter and more beautiful.) 

The last time I even tried on anything lovely was at Ivy Boutique here in Valparaiso way back in November, but I didn’t shell out and probably should have!  I’m paring down my wardrobe and figure if I stop buying Target Tshirts every week and purchase quality clothing once in a greater while, I can have a smaller, better wardrobe for these mama years.  Plus a little splurge makes me feel good.  And a little guilty, which admittedly has it’s own innocent pleasure, amIright?

THE Shirt, Jane from Mad Men, Anyone?

So here is what I bought!  Thank you Lesley & Beyond Pink & Mothers and More! It is currently waiting to get washed carefully and respectfully because Somebody was crying against it the last time I wore it on Mother’s Day.  Somebody who was at brunch with our family but really would rather be napping and declared rather loudly “DONE!  I DONE!” and dissolved into tears.  I held her as I finished my fabulous Susie’s Cafe meal and felt gorgeous in my little ruched robin’s egg  blue top.  Sure, a Target T-shirt would have dabbed those baby tears better....but the mama in blue holding a sad person felt absolutely alive and ravishing and that has no price. As long as there is a coupon, anyway!