Pants Shopping Troubles

I have done two major online orders, one from Burlington Coat Factory and one from Kohls, and most of the items I bought was pants and every single one of them I had to return. It's very disappointing having to return them, but none of them fit right. I was really hoping I hit the jackpot with Burlington because I got so many cheap pants, though the material was strange, they were short, and they were too tight on me.

It must be that I am just too picky because it should not be this difficult to find clothes to wear when teaching. I can find plenty of stores to purchase black or grey dress pants, though I want some other colors. They don't have to be dress pants, but I have been trying to find capris that are not denim in different colors. Lots of stores used to sell them and now I can not seem to find them.

Another problem is finding pants that fit me nicely. Adult pants don't fit me right and most of the time are too long on me anyways. When I would try on those pants, I looked like a little girl playing dress up in her mom's clothes. I decided to try petites, thinking they wouldn't be long on me, then they turned out to be too short. Which was a shame because they fit better on me.

Recently I went back to Kohls and tried on a pair of pants and capris that I was unsure of before. And they fit amazingly. I only got the capris because they were on sale and the pants were not, though I am keeping an eye for when they do and hopefully I will have a 30% off too. I am also thinking of getting the capris in the light khaki color too, since I want more then one pair of capris for placement. The capris are something I can wear anywhere.

Below is the picture of the capris I got:

Here is the link to the other pants I had tried on at the stores that I want. 

This is all of the other pants that I have in my closest that I plan to wear to my placement school:

College Organization: Tip 7

Buying Textbooks

College is already expensive enough, but then you need to buy textbooks to go along with it. Don't do what I did freshmen year and that is buy new textbooks. There is absolutely nothing wrong with buying used textbooks. I have received some used textbooks that were like brand new.

A really great site to use is Bigwords. This site is great because it allows you to create a book-bag with all the books you will need for that semester and then it compares different sites to show you which website is selling the book the cheapest.

This site is also really great to use when the semester is over and you want to sell your books. It does the same thing by finding the website that will give you the most money for your book. Plus most of the sites will pay for your shipping.

I've recently been using this site and it has been great at finding the sites to get the most money from selling back my textbooks. Keep in mind that you will most likely never get close to what you paid for the book.

Laminator Plunge

I known that there is some tools that I want to buy when I graduate, which will be in about a year. Like a new laptop, a labler, a laminator, and possibly other items like a camera.

I might have gone out and bought a laminator already last weekend. Is it too early? I need to laminate items in my prop box and literacy bag. I figure that in my last semester when I will be full time student teaching it will get used a lot.

I did some searching on teacher blogs about what brand I should buy. I was leaning towards Paper Monster which wasn't bad for a price, but I wanted to buy one from the store, so if I have a problem then I could return it.

I ended up buying the Scotch TL902 at Walmart for only $20. Beware, on the website its priced at $37, so if you are going to purchase it then go to the store.

I wanted to match sure that the pouches for it weren't going to be too pricey. I found the Scotch brand 8.5" x 11" at Sam's Club for $20 for 200 pouches. That is a great price. On the Walmart website they are selling them for the same size at $14 for only 100 pouches. Way better deal at Sam's.

I have yet to laminate anything. I'm cheap and don't want to waste any of the pouches, though I'm very happy and excited that I took the plunge by buying this already.

Update on Teacher Look

My order from Kohls came in a few days ago and the pants were okay. I had order five and two had to go back right away because one did not fit correctly and the other I didn't like. The three others were alright, though I wasn't overly thrilled or excited about them. Then a day after that my order from JCPenney was ready at the store, so I headed over to the mall. I only order two pairs from there and I loved them. I'm very happy about the pants. They felt and fit great, so I'm keeping both of those and returning the other three pants to Kohls.

I think only having two pairs of pants will be fine and besides I do have one other pair of pants that I could wear. I'm only going once a week to my placement.

Looking like a Teacher

On Friday I went shopping to buy clothes that I can wear when I'm student teaching because I only ever wear jeans, so I needed some other pants to wear. Also I mostly only have t-shirts, so while I was shopping I bought some tops that I can wear with my new pants. This shopping trip to turned out to be a bust. I don't want to buy too expensive pants, but I also want something comfortable to wear all day.

I mostly shop at Kohls and also had a 30% discount that I could use, though I didn't find pants at the right price or of course they didn't have my size. My other problem is that I still shop in the juniors, which don't have that big of a selection.

The other day I did some online shopping at Kohls and JCPenney, so I'm excited for when my clothes come in. Hopefully I like some of the clothes that I got. If not, then i don;t know what I'm going to do. The pants at JCPenney were only $18 per pair, while at Kohls it was $30 per pair.

Here are some of the items I picked from JCPenney:

I couldn't copy the pictures from Kohls, but I will let you know about them when they come in.