• Navy & White Houndstooth Faux-Wrap Dress: Thrifted! (Banana Republic)
• Black Tights: HUE
• Brown Riding Boots: Franco Sarto via Zappos
• White Nursing Tank: Bravado Designs via Figure8Maternity
• Necklace: BeadleBop via Etsy

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you had a wonderful holiday with family and friends, and that your return to work or school (or dawning comprehension of same) wasn’t too brutal this morning! We had a whirlwind week of visiting family members (mostly mine, and an increasingly large group), a drop-in from Emily and Chris, and . . . a long time trying to put the house back together afterwards. But, baby m. got to meet her cousin, my brother’s sweet daughter a. (cue “Our Children” from Ragtime, big love and big sappy tears), and her great grandmother (my mother’s mother), which was both deeply moving and surprisingly hilarious (who knew age and disinhibition could be so correlated?).

I’ll be back later this week with a much-belated 2011 wrap-up and some thoughts on the coming year, as well as a long-awaited redesign. I hope you’ll pardon our dust if you notice any funny business going on while I’m making some changes on the backend, and I’ll do my best to keep downtime to a minimum.

In the meantime . . . this outfit. Although many bloggers I know have outstanding thrift karma, I’ve struggled to get as much mileage as I’d hoped for out of our local thrift stores, even as I’ve had good luck sourcing second-hand items on eBay (see, e.g., most of my maternity wardrobe). I’ve always been frustrated by this, so in 2012, I’ve vowed (okay, vowed is a strong word) to make more of an effort to incorporate the previously loved into my wardrobe as both my body and my style continue to evolve. Happily, my renewed sense of commitment was rewarded with an unexpectedly good haul last week. This dress (which is from the days before vanity sizing at Gap, Inc. brands, which may qualify it as vintage!), two skirts and two pairs of pants found their way into my closet for under $30. I don’t know that I’m making a huge political statement or saving oodles of cash or doing much about the overall amount of clutter in my house. I am, however, reminded that my sartorial needs are not nearly as urgent and specific as the PTB would like me to believe they are, and that my zone of “make it work” moments is larger than I often think it is. And that’s probably a lesson worth learning, whether or not I’m taking a stand on any kind of broader agenda. So, here’s to what I hope will be a year of great thrifting, and to less time spent sucked down the rabbit hole of online shopping. (Except maybe during 4 a.m. feedings. Cut me a little slack, right?)

What are your best thrift tips, or your favorite haunts? What motivates you to thrift? 

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