Ballet Shoes

If I can just fully break them in, I found some winter shopping shoes.


I looked all over the Houston Galleria - and narrowed it down to these $69 Steve Madden ruched ballet flats in Red or Brown Suede and these $65 Naturalizer ballet shoes in bronze. In the end, since they are for walking & shopping - the Naturalizer ones won out with their well-constructed, super-comfy supportive sole and cheaper price.

Turns out, however, that they had been mispriced, and even though they gave me the $65 price (AND honored my 1-day-expired $10 off coupon!!), the saleswoman quickly replaced all the price tags with $69 as I left.

I wore them shopping in Atlanta, and they rubbed a little on my foot bone, and rubbed one blister, but damn, the soles are comfortable. I'm definitely going to have to break them in a little more before NY in 2 weeks.

Also, for my trip to Atlanta & NY, I needed a warm coat that matched brown. Not wanting to spend too much (and not having seen anything that I wanted to spend money on), I headed to Burlington Coat Factory. I used to shop there when it first opened - when I was in high school. I remember stocking up on Abercrombie & Fitch denim shorts (before I had ever heard of A&F!)... Anyways, my friend has a cute coat that she got there, so I thought it couldn't be too bad.

And it wasn't. Although it definitely required a time committment, I found lots of cute coats by MICHAEL Michael Kors, DKNY, Esprit, Via Spiga, Calvin Klein, etc. I ended up with 2 coats:

A $49 green hooded down jacket that may be going back to the store if I can't justify buying it since I live in HOUSTON and it's kind of big to travel with.

...and a $59 gray Esprit Pea Coat (not online) that looks just lovely with my brown boots and red scarf/hat/gloves combo.

It looks a lot like this one, except it's gray & doesn't have a hood.