A Pretty Bag and A Bad Feeling

I have always been a handbag admirer. I have coveted other women's adorable purses, and shoes. Up until recently I have also always been tight with my money and not wanted to spend much more than $25.00 on a purse, which of course means that usually my new purse literally falls apart in a matter of months.

Sometime in August I decided I was going to just take the plunge and spend a little more money on a handbag, and hopefully find a bag that would last me more than a few months. In fact I was thinking that if I were to spend a bit more money a higher quality purse would last me for at least a year or more, so in reality I would probably even save some money in the long run.

So I set off on a search for "the" bag. A bag big enough to hold my things as well as the random things a mom has to carry around (you know sippy cups, boxes of raisins, half eaten apples, a change of clothes/new diaper, a book of stickers...). A bag that was structured and not too trendy because honestly trendy means 1 of two things to me... ugly and/or even more expensive because it just needs to be replaced more often to "keep up" with fashion. Said bag needed to have more than just one huge pocket, because it drives me crazy to have to dig through everything in my bag to find my sunglasses or keys. And to top it all off this bag needed to be a shade of brown. Not tan or cream. Not black or burgundy. Brown.

I spent the better part of a month scouring every online retailer I could think of along with all of the stores selling quality purses in a 3 city radius. After weeks of looking I finally found a bag that was as close as I was going to get without spending a half a mortgage payment on a bag. Bleh, just the thought of a bag that expensive makes my stomach turn.

It just so happens that all this purse shopping happened around my birthday so this new bag was my birthday gift from Monkey and Luke, which is one of the only reasons that I finally broke down and got it. So now I have this bag that I really like, and I can tell it is going to hold up for a long while and fits all my needs, but there is one thing that is bothering me.

I know how much I paid for it. I feel like other people see me with this bag and automatically think I am in a different social class than I am. (I mean come on, even though I took the plunge and bought a pricier bag, I still bought it on sale from an outlet store.)

I know that I rarely spend money on myself.

I know that my family lives on a pretty strict budget and I write my grocery list planning how much I will spend to within a few bucks every week.

And most importantly I know that it was gift and not an every day purchase.

I'm starting to feel show-offy or something. I know times are tough right now and it makes me feel like a "typical" young America to have spent that money on something so superficial and unnecessary. But I like my bag.

Am I crazy to feel this way? I know it doesn't make me a bad person to splurge on nice things every once and while but why do I feel like others are looking at me with judgement in their eyes?