You know how they tell you when you’re trying to lose weight you shouldn’t deprive yourself of all the goodies you like? Because when you do deprive yourself, you usually end up binging on something making matters worse?

I’m pretty sure the same theory applies to me and shopping. I had spent quite a bit of money trying to get my house prepped for sale (Spend money to make money, right? Probably isn’t going to work in this case.) My knee-jerk reaction to first seeing my credit card balance was no more spendy money, Modern Gal!!!!!

In practice that only worked for a couple of weeks. Yesterday, I went to the mall to finish off my my Mom’s Day shopping for the Modern Mom. The plan was to go just barely inside the mall to this story that should have had exactly what I was looking for her. But of course, when it didn’t have it I went farther into the bowels of the mall, and it’s power sucked me in as I feared it would.

I resisted the powers of The Gap, instead falling victim to the jCrew sales rack. Here’s what I got:

I actually got this in a khaki color. It’s so thin it’s like a shirt, but it’s totally a jacket. And I always need jackets during the summer to keep me from freezing my elbows off in the office when it’s 98 degrees outside. Plus, it can make the trip from work to post work very easily.

I tried so hard to talk myself out of this one. It’s really freakin cute and was very cheap by jCrew standards, but I really didn’t need another purse. I bought it anyway, hoping my senses would kick in and tell me to return it. They haven’t.