Grunge guilt, defined

Do you have a complicated relationship with blogs?

I do.

They make me get inside people's lives too much. My psyche begins to interact with these characters in weird ways... like I'm driven to build fuller stories for them. They're my soap operas. It doesn't matter if they pimp endless pictures of their family or not... the imagination will run wild.

Blogs, man. They're crazy.

What complicates my feelings even more is when I find things that I just LOVE, only due to reading these blogs. Cup of Jo is probably notorious for this.

My particular soap opera with Joanna Goddard is one where she's not exactly my best friend, but she's a great person. Jo is tame and likes neutral things. When she links to a personal item that she currently loves, like summer sandals, I click on it to see if she can shock me with how not me her choices are. She also shops at a way higher price point than I'm accustomed to. We share an edge on the tomboy side of things, but other than that... great hair?

This is all a long-winded way of saying, it's Jo's fault that I bought a dress from Madewell:

Left, the dress Joanna linked to when she hailed it her next spring dress.
Right, the dress I fell in love with when I made my way to Madewell.
"Um yes, actually, Joanna Goddard helped me with my purchase today."

I ended up going to the Madewell near me (rich area, cha ching!) to try on the blanca dress above so that I could try to buy it when it went on sale... but then!!!.... it was there and on sale. I loved it the second I slipped it on, and ended up buying it for less than half the original price (and yet it's still full price on the website.. hmm).

Seriously, although not a fucking "flattering" dress, this dress is like the light in my soul. I want to take it and some (machine washable) fabric to a dress maker, or maybe even learn to sew just to make more of this exact damn thing.

And now for some daydreaming... If I could get ALL THE DRESSES from Madewell that I wanted, these four (some sold out, never to be nagged on sale) would be tops:

But I'm not done with my monetary expressions of discipleship.

Oh no.

There's lipstick.

I really love lipstick. It might not seem like I do, but I do. It's fun. It's COLOR. I mean, how cool is it to totally change the entire tone of your face?

But you have to do it well. Not everything works for everyone. There's a slim difference between a pink that makes you look fresh and one that makes you look flat. And, like hair, there are many factors that go into guiding that "right" look for you, or looks (if you're lucky!).

So I took these lipstick reviews pretty seriously. I don't have time to figure out the best lipstick in the heavyweight (>$20) price range. NARS stood out to me from the description and the comments (and if you click on the link, you'll see the writer/model is wearing my blanca dress!!! That's a gross violation of my psyche!).

It took a lot of courage, but I did it. I went to Nordstrom, sat in a chair, and allowed a 21 year old young woman in a bedazzlement of blue eye liner test about 5 NARS lipsticks on me. It was awful, but I made it. I could have tried on like 10 more. I mean, I'm in color candyland. Let's find the BEST one. But I didn't have it in me. Perhaps I need to shop on anti-anxiety medication.

The top color was the one I didn't pre-identify in my internet research (which I'm sure everyone does before a beauty counter visit), yet I ended up liking quite a bit. The middle color was most like the kind I would normally gravitate towards, but the goal was to find something that popped. The bottom color was the one I got. Liking it a lot so far.

Due to that pesky lipstick column, I also want all of these now. What's a reasonable lipstick budget for one year?
Honest question!

And that, my friends, is the pervasive power of blogs. My life is made better - I'm clearly enriched - by having these new things. I don't budget, but it's safe to say I spend wisely. These items are, hopefully, high quality, long lasting staples of my lowest energy self. So why do I feel like such a schmuck for being led to these purchases through blogs (and they weren't even sponsored posts!)? 

Here's why - It's because they're priced higher than I'm used to and the fact that I didn't find them myself. It's like... grunge guilt. I don't know what that means, exactly, but let's go with that.