I don’t know about you, but for me, shopping for clothes usually takes hours. It requires me to try on everything in the store in my size, only to find maybe one piece of clothing I don’t think looks absolutely horrendous on my body. So, as you might have guessed, I don’t do it very often. Shopping for my daughter, on the other hand, is loads of fun. Everything she puts on looks fantastic. Oh…to be eleven again.

This week, I took her to a pop-up boutique in a woman’s home. Her birthday was coming up soon, and the clothes on the on-line invitation looked like something she’d like to wear. As usual, everything she put on looked adorable, especially the print on this one particular dress. But it needed a belt.

No problem, I thought. A Ross store had recently opened in our small town. So of course we drove straight over after purchasing the dress. It wouldn’t be a very good birthday present if it wasn’t a complete one.

Unfortunately, the store had been massively picked over in the belt section. They had like three, and none of them were cute. I refused to give up. I said, “Let’s go look on the women’s dress rack. If we can find a belt we like, we’ll just take it off and give the dress to Goodwill.”

On the very first rack we find this wonderful belt, so we buy the dress without even looking at it. As soon as we get home, I take the belt off and toss the dress in a bag for Goodwill. And there is where it would have stayed, if my husband hadn’t come home and asked about the bag sitting on the counter.

“You’re just going to give it to Goodwill without trying it on?” He said, shocked.

“Yep,” I said. “I don’t even know what size it is.”

“Well, you should at least look at it.”

So, I roll my eyes and take the dress out of the bag. Uh, it’s surprising not ugly, and holy cow, the thing is in my size. When I tried on the dress, I looked downright awesome.

“Great!” My daughter said. “Now we’re going to have to fight over who gets to wear the belt.”

Oh, honey…yes—yes we are. 🙂

Maybe this is how I should have been shopping for myself all along.