Valentine's Dress!

I had some extra money come in this month, and since the Joker was making a special trip to see me for Valentine's Day, I figured I could splurge on a new dress that I will most likely never wear again!  I had looked at dresses online some. One of the stores at the mall had a website and I picked out a few dresses that I liked.

We went out on a Wednesday, The Baby and I.  I picked The Baby up from the daycare and off we went!  I found the store I had looked at online, Forever 21.  I only found a couple of the dresses I had looked at online, but both had my size.  One that I knew would look bad on me (and it did) and another that I was stoked about trying on because it was extremely cute!

For reference, here are the ones I found in the store:

#1 - looked horrible, I guess it was wishful thinking that even got me to try it on.It's really not my style at all!  Feels kinda Madonna-ish with the emphasis on the boobs, doesn't it?

This next one is that one I liked best out of all the ones I saw online.  I loved the rose-like embellishments around the hem!  So, you can see why I was so stoked to try it on when I found it in store AND in my size!  Alas, my enthusiasm was all for naught.  The dress didn't seem very well made.  The straps were removable, but in order to keep the dress up, I needed the straps to be taut.  When I tightened the straps enough, they pulled the lining up instead of the dress!  I was so disappointed.  I had them hold it for me for a day.  I figured I would look around the mall some more and if I didn't find anything, I would still have a day to think over whether it would be worth it to buy a dress I needed to alter.

It's cute, though, right? I wanted something like this so that I could get a black petticoat skirt to put underneath it to make it fuller and so that you could see a hint of black out the bottom, but this dress had a liner underneath, so that would have been awkward anyways...

So, I searched through the stores I had in mind and some that I didn't.  My last resort for the day was a newer store that I hadn't seen before and can't, for the life of me, think of the name!  I had low expectations.  The store was small, only a few red dresses, barely any selection in sizes and no rhyme or reason to organization that I could see. 

Then I saw it. 

One red dress randomly placed on a rack with other black dresses that were not similar to it at all.  It had the rose embellishment on it that I liked, and the poofy skirt that I wanted.  I was skeptical.  What are the odds that they would have such a cute dress like this in my size so close to Valentine's.  I walked carefully over to it, gently pulled it towards me so that I could see the tag...

SMALL!!  It was a SMALL!!  MY SIZE!!

... but, how would it look?

Well, here, you decide!
Side Note - I had The Baby (yeah, yeah, I know she's 3 1/2, now) take these pictures... perhaps we have a budding photographer here?

#1 (I cropped it so as to spare you the sight of my horrendous morning hair, I snapped these pics to send to my mom)

#2 (When I saw that she had cropped the bottom of the dress in the previous picture, I told her we needed to see the bottom of the dress, too.  She didn't quote get the 'too' part)

#3  (Now she's getting all artsy on me, isn't she?)

By this time, I think she was getting tired of me telling her to try again, so she decided that she wasn't going to follow my suggestion of holding the camera sideways anymore.  (I had thought that would be easier for her to get the whole dress in the picture... I was wrong.)  She got this picture on the first try.  Granted, it's a little blurry and the color is off, but she still gets props for it.  Haha!

#4

Wanna know my favorite part about this dress?  It has pockets! *hee hee*