Best Laid Plans...

I should've known better than to plan a whole Christmas party outfit without as much as visiting a shop. I had it all planned, didn't I? The dress, the shoes, the accessories. And a cunning plan to hit the shops in carefully planned order to maximise my haul in record time. All of that went out the window when we got to the first scheduled stop, Marks & Spencer where I had planned to get the dress. The dress that I had drooled over and fantasised about for a number of days. Though titties to me, they didn't have it.

So there was very little point in going for the cute ankle boots to go with the non-existent dress. Plan B: drag myself and Teresa into every possible shop in Galway city trying to find a nice dress. And shoes. And accessories. Hi-Ho!

Tried on a  John Rocha dress at Debenhams, it was very unusual and could've been dressed up nicely with some purple tights and boots, but it was really more summery than christmassy. New Look had a nice black playsuit but it was way too short for me to enjoy the evening without being very conscious of my legs. While in New Look I had a quick peek at the shoes and quickly noticed the boots I had spotted online weren't there, either. So much for that part of my brilliant plan. Onwards and upwards!


Penneys came up trumps. Again. I found two dresses, coming to a grand total of €41. Two dresses. For €41! Brilliant. One is a dark blue embellished collared, ruffled, sleeveless dress. The other one is super-cute, wool blend, check pattern, A-line dress. Dorothy Perkins supplied boots to go with both. Unfortunately, after getting home I realised the grey ones aren't a pair. One is size 5 and another one is a size 6. I rang them today and they told me they were really sorry about the mistake and went to make sure they had the boot there for pick up. I explained to the very helpful Rebecca that I don't live just around the corner, that it is in fact over an hour's drive away for me to get there and to do so just to pick up a single boot seemed a bit too much. She was very understanding when I suggested that they could send out a courier to deliver the right boot in exchange for the one I got given by mistake. She told me she'd get back to me. She rang me back in about half an hour to ask me if it would be possible for me to pick the boot up from Oughterard (that's about half an hour away from where I live). One of her staff lives there and was offering to drop the boot off at the petrol station and arrange for me to drop mine off there for her to collect. Random but helpful. Courier would've been a feasible option had it not been a week before Christmas. They would've gotten out here sometime next week. When I'm in Finland.