i manage to drag fenton off to the suburbs look at the pingu case – sadly the remaining case was much bigger than the picture i showed recently (and rather less cute) – too big for our very small land and too big (by the Australia Post guidelines) to package up and post to Harriet.

However I did manage to drag him around to several thrift shops – which he bore with reasonably good grace (despite the fact that this is one of the activities he loathes).

In one shop I forced him to try on a suit jacket which I quite liked – it fit very very well (which is remarkable, for most jackets do not fit him well at all). I checked out the brand, it was from The Oxford Shop  thank you very much! and a steal at only $69.99! The jacket has very nice detailing on the collar and lapels – something I remark upon whenever we are in the real Oxford Shop (so the jacket itself is only a season or so old and would normally retail for around $400-$500)

When we went to pay, the shop assistant said “oh that is part of a suit”, to which i responded “woo hoo” and then added, “we couldn’t find any pants” – so we toddled over and found said pants hanging on another part of the rack. A whole Oxford Shop suit for $69.99 – HOORAY!! Fenton tried them on and to our collective dismay they were too small (which is quite weird because the jacket fitted so perfectly and fenton does not have a weirdly shaped bod – obviously the previous owner *did*). So we said our thank yous and left.

About 5 paces away from the shop we had the same idea – why not just buy the whole thing for $69.99 and just not wear the pants?

So we returned and grabbed the suit. Fenton told the woman that we’d take it because he really wanted the jacket before he knew about the pants – she nicely offered him the jacket for $50! while this was transpiring i was checking out the racks (something i don’t get to do as thoroughly as i would like when accompanied by the boy) and discovered a very nice pair of Country Road flat-fronted suit-type trousers for $19.99! – made Fenton try them on and they fit quite well too! so naturally we grabbed them as they matched the suit jacket fairly well (even under strong natural light).

When we returned home after a brief detour to the city I discovered that we had *both* pairs of pants! All for $70! Naturally we will have to add dry-cleaning to that amount, but still – what a score (the retail value of both would be around $600-700)!! I have undertaken to attempt to let the oxford shop pants out a little (if that doesn’t work, it doesn’t really matter because we didn’t expect to have them!).

I love shopping.

On our detour to the city we visited the gracebrosiwillnevercallitmyer sales and picked up 2 business shirts with french cuffs for 50% off! So finally Fenton has a full week’s worth of shirts (his old ones were very tatty) I was only commenting earlier in the week that the shirts with french cuffs were by far the nicest, but the prices were exorbitant! Interestingly the Trent Nathan shirt had a proper (and quite nice) cufflink on the cuff – but only *one* – is this some scheme to encourage the purchase of 2 shirts so that one has a *set* of cufflinks?

I love shopping.

So a fun day was had by all.

I love shopping.

well the pants can’t effectively be altered. i unpicked, but although the back-seam is quite generous, there is not enough fabric to let them out. so they can wait until Fenton loses weight (although the jacket will probably be too big then). the Country Road pants go nicely anyway.