Taming the rampant consumer in me.

Today I was coveting a makeup case that costs $135. One hundred and thirty-five dollars for faux-leather. It's a very nice bag, I'll even show it to you:

It even resembles those cute round backpacks
the (Japanese) elementary school boys have.

C'mon, I bet even the boys would agree that it's a very sharp-looking case. (Black! And Red! Darling, I know you'd approve.) It's from Sephora. Which I have a gift card for. But not that extravagant of a gift card. And so I coveted and coveted and even checked other stores to see if they had something similar. (Of course not.)

So instead of pouting because I don't want to spend money, and instead of ignoring it until I forgot about it, amazingly, I went in search of my old high school makeup case.

Even more amazingly, I found it, and it was mostly empty. Two tubes of red lipstick, some broken blue eye shadow, you know, the usual high school suspects. I even found a sequin repair kit. (Sorry non-HSers, inside joke--the high school show choir I was in had regulation makeup, and we wore sequined dresses.) So I lovingly cleaned it out.

This is what it looks like, except mine's a *much* better color ::cough:: :

They still sell them (in sassier colors), you know.
Except now they call them "retro."
Seriously.

And you know, I'm pretty satisfied with it. It's sturdy, and I didn't spend money! Who's gonna see my arsenal case? Nobody that would actually care about that sort of thing. And when's the next time I'm going to carry my arsenal case in a public place? Did people actually used to do that? Carry a suitcase and a purse and a makeup case? Do people still do that? Insane.

I'm so retro now. But still not retro enough for leg-warmers.

That black bag is still a beautiful bag, but at least now I can say I don't need it. It would just sit in my bathroom, making me happy every time I saw it. I'll go treat myself to some fluffy makeup brushes or that orgasm blush (really, that's what it's called) or something. Maybe I'll go visit the case in the store and I'll go lovingly caress it. Maybe. But what matters is that I didn't buy it today. Yay me.

PS: I'm totally going to splurge that $135 I didn't spend, just wait.

PPS: All of my packages, all 10 boxes and 2 m-bags, have arrived safely enough! I'll post about how they turned out later.