So, this morning, via Catherynne Valente, I found an etsy shop that I love. Seriously, I would buy anything in this shop and glow as I wore it. Sadly, of course, that kind of luxury purchase would require us to be flush with money, which...well, we're not. We rarely are, to be honest, but right now we're particularly not. Sigh. And since we're hoping to move into a bigger house this spring, I don't see that situation changing any time soon...

I still like fantasy shopping, though. And lately, one of my favorite ways to daydream has been to come up with lists of what I would buy if I had...oh, say, a thousand pounds. Or 100 pounds. Or 50 pounds just to spend on nothing but frivolity - that is, nothing that I need, but all sorts of stuff that would make life even lovelier.*

Want to play?

Here's my current list:

If I had 50 pounds: I would go on an Amazon.co.uk book-buying spree, buying up books from my wishlist like nobody's business. Wooot! I LOVE books. I would wait by the door until they were delivered, and then I'd roll around in my pile of books and sing happy Sound-of-Music style songs about books and...ahem. Anyway! I would buy more books. :) And in today's particular mood, those books would be...hmm...Joan Aiken's The Serial Garden, Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, Maureen Johnson's Suite Scarlett, Kristin Cashore's Graceling (a pre-order, here in the UK), Peeled, by Joan Bauer, and the Love is Hell paranormal YA anthology. Whew! That was fun.

If I had 110 pounds (I had to adjust this number up from 100, since I realized these models were no longer on sale for 90 pounds, the way they had been last time I looked): I would buy a lovely, lightweight, foldable & reclinable Maclaren Quest stroller to push Mr. Darcy around in. And no, this wouldn't have sounded like a decadent luxury to me before he was born...but right now it honestly does, because our current stroller is too heavy for me to comfortably use, and although I love slings, there are times when it would be soooo much more convenient to use a stroller, especially when I'm on my own in the middle of Leeds.

If I had 1000 pounds: I would buy a year-long metro bus pass, so that I could hop onto a bus with MrD any time without worrying about the cost. Freedom! (Imagine me yelling this in a William Wallace kind of way. Well, as William Wallace-y as I can get while nursing a baby and typing into a Macbook with a Hermione Granger sticker on it!) That would leave me with about 250 pounds left over, which I would then use to...hmm...well, probably buy the stroller and the books and then do a lot of cafe trips with MrD.

What about you guys? What would you do just for fun, just for yourself, if you had money showered on you and you weren't even allowed to spend it on anything sensible?
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*Note: Honestly, I know how lucky I am that I can buy all the things I really need and a fair number of things I only want. This isn't meant to be a complaining entry, just a daydreaming, fantasy-loving way to spend a gray, rainy Monday. Please join me in it! :)