(click to zoom into my bag)

I wasn’t always a bag person.

I even had to be convinced as a teenager to give up my wallet for a purse. Now I have quite the collection! So as I  browsed the internet, I saw an image of an amazing Prada purse I “needed” but couldn’t spend the hundreds to own it.

So between my husband and I searching for a Christmas present, we found a very similar “hobo” style bag with simple lines and a deep reddish brown leather that was an equivalent match. Plus it was about $20!

I haven’t changed purses since I found it, which I should do soon

Most days I have it filled with the basic girly essentials: makeup, lotion, bobby pins… and on the weekends I add mommy must haves like granola bars, an epi pen and a toy or two. I love my bag and am especially glad I didn’t spend a fortune on it!

(click to zoom into my bag)

Now that we are inspecting our bags, I realize that I have had this bag for about 9 – 10 years! But it was love at first sight, so in my eyes the bag still looks as good to me as it did the first time I saw it in the window of a small shop in the middle of Rome, Italy.

I had just finished visiting the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. It had been an interesting day of meeting a lot of people and having a delicious Italian lunch on a patio under a roof of leaves. On the way back to the hotel, I remembered that I had seen something out of the corner of my eye when I had rushed by that morning. Now, I was determined to look more closely. And there she was! Such a beauty – and with a price to knock my socks off!

Well, what can I say; what could I do in the eye of love? You might think I am the stoic German. But hey.. here I was in Rome..in Italy, and just had to give in to the romance of it all!

And as with any good love story, we live happily ever after. We are getting a little frayed at the edges as we go through life together, but she holds my secrets as I will hold hers.