Clothing Woes

We decided we should sign our posts at the beginning rather than the end so you know which one of us is talking. It's Kirsten this time.

Mostly, we like living in Canada. The only downside for us (at least in our very northern province; it may be different closer to the US border) is that it's really hard to find affordable basic clothing in our size.

Warning: Brand-specific clothes talk ahead! If you don't care, you may want to skip to the last paragraph... the last paragraph is about family stuff. Now, on to the clothes!

They do sell Springfield Collection here, but it's pricey. It's kind of hard to talk yourself into spending $14-16 plus 13% sales tax for that quality level. (I mean yeah, it's Blakeney's money, we don't have jobs, but still...) The store is also all the way across town. Once you get into that price range, you start to ask yourself if it's really worth it in comparison to American Girl brand clothes.

We've heard rumours of Our Generation being offered at Zellers. So far we haven't seen it, but we haven't been out there in awhile; it's on the other-other side of town and public transit has been on strike for almost three months, so we had no way of getting there in the past little while. (I'm the oldest, at age sixteen, and I don't have a car anyway.) The bus is coming back Monday finally, and offering free rides to make up for it, so maybe we'll take a trip out there. If we can get there for free, we wouldn't lose anything either way.

Of course, we could always order stuff. American Girl has nice stuff, but it's expensive, and shipping things here adds another $10 on top of what the shipping cost would be to the United States. So basically, we could potentially be paying half-again the cost of the outfit just to get it here. (And I mean... we all think the Liberty Jane Collection stuff is hot, but the prices... there's no way!)

Lately we've been looking at Etsy, Ebay, and people on the AGPT board. We hadn't really given that much of a chance because it's so hard to sort the good from the bad (and the bad is pretty hideous!) on the bigger sites, but we're starting to think it might be worth it. There's some nice stuff out there, and the shipping is often much more reasonable.

We need some new clothes. Some of our stuff got lost when we moved, and we're short on some of the basics like shirts and jeans. We don't want to spend a lot of money right now, because... well, we're trying to save money.

I can't really say much yet about why we're saving money. It's not because we're suddenly poor, don't worry! It's actually because of something really good! I think when we can finally say, our friends will be very happy for us. Blakeney says I can't tell anything until it's for sure, though... so at least a couple more days. Then we might have a big announcement! Stay tuned.

Love,
Kirsten