They had me at red

Come early July, I open my mailbox every day with bated breath, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale catalog. Usually I do a couple-hundred-dollars worth of damage at the sale every year, and most of the time, I choose what I want to buy via the catalog -- before I even step into the physical store. This year, the catalog touted its "affordable" items, but though I appreciate it when, say, a jacket is $150 off the original price, I don't exactly consider it affordable if it's still like $200!! Yeesh. Anyway, after going through the catalog, I was only intrigued by a few pairs of shoes and a pair of sunglasses. I finally made it into the store Tuesday night, a bit exhausted after a haircut that ended up taking nearly two hours due to some miscommunication between me and the stylist (in all honesty, she didn't listen to my instructions, so her supervisor had to finish the cut up and ended up comping my cut after all the hassle). There was a bit of a wait to get help in the shoe section, but after 30 minutes I finally tried on a pair of tall black boots. They were the pull-on kind, but not elasticized. I've definitely built up my calf muscles a bit due to the increased amount of walking I've been doing the past year or so, but I'm obviously still a bit wimpy from the knees down -- after putting on the boot, I could stick my arm down the back of the boot all the way to my heel!! Even the sales lady was a bit wowed. So...those were a no.

While I'd been waiting, I'd seen another salesperson put away these really cute, shiny dark-red wedges. I'd seen the brand, but hadn't been able to find the shoes anywhere on the display things, so I described them to my saleslady, and she was able to find them in the back. They were even cuter up close, and bonus: they were on sale! They either weren't in the catalog, or perhaps I just missed them (the shoes' red color is one of my faves, so they could've been in the catalog but in a different color, in which case they wouldn't have caught my eye easily). As a rule, I'm not a fan of wedge heels, but I have a couple pairs of jeans that require only about two-inch heels, so wedges look great with those (plus you can't see the wedge unless I'm sitting down). I still need to go back to Nordy's to look at the sunglasses, but I'm very happy with the shoes for now:

I'd also been eyeing some Ugg boots (no, not the outdated traditional Uggs that most people seem to have), but they're suede, which I doubt would fare well in rainy Seattle. I'll have to quiz a salesperson about those to find out for sure, but I'm a bit hesitant to jump on the Ugg wagon, so we'll see.