Eke, eke, eke.

The girls changed schools this year which meant new school uniforms.  Further, the new school has a stricter approach to uniforms.  At the last one, if you wore the right colour t-shirt it was considered close enough.  And frankly, they weren't all that fussy on the shade, style, or degree of fadedness.  Nice!

Sadly, we are at a low ebb, financially.  This begs the question: how do you afford summer and winter school clothes for two girls who grow like topsy?  Just to make things worst, there are no hand-me-down options around here.  If the younger one doesn't slow down and the older one doesn't hurry up, the 5 year old may be able to start passing things to her 7 year old sister when she has grown out of them.  As things stand they are mostly the same size.

I got a running start at the school fete last year when I purchased a number of 2nd hand items for $2 each.  Sadly, being inexperienced in the uniformy arts (see vague-o t-shirt requirements, above), I assumed I needed to purchase uniforms in the size they wear in normal clothes.

It turns out uniforms are sized differently.  The appropriate summer dress size for my girls is 7 (which is refreshing because one of them is 7 and the other is a human string bean), whereas I usually buy around 9 or 10 for them.  The result is that most of the bargains may be OK in a year or two but at the moment are cupboard cloggers.

Much as I hate it like the plague (nobody wants buboes buggering up the line of their pants), I took in the waist of 17 million pairs* of skorts to get the girls through summer.  This is not happening with winter pants because I refuse point blank to take up legs as well as waists.  As I get paid $20 a week from consolidated revenue, I am definitely not getting enough for that sort of malarky.

So, as Autumn tickles along (only in theory so far with a sustained balmy stretch) I have been thinking of how to eke out the summer gear.  To this end I purchased some long socks.  Maybe that will keep the little devils going for a while before the hard frosts start to turn their knees blue.


*Some exaggeration may have slipped in at this point but if you were trying to push a needle through 4 layers of cotton drill that was so tightly woven it may as well be carbon fibre sheeting, you would be bitter too.