What's in my (new!) handbag

Inevitably, my handbags always get a load of crap accumulated at the bottom of them - plasters, crumbs, (clean!) tissues, receipts...

I found this beautiful handbag in Clarks today and I knew I had to have it. I ummed and ahhed for a while as it was a little over my ideal price range at £29.99 - yes, I am cheap - but eventually love and my friend's handbag buying enabling skills won through and I took it to the till. I was therefore utterly delighted to find that it had 50% off that the shop assistants hadn't got round to marking yet! Fab :D So I got a beautiful, spacious and practical handbag for just £14.98. Definite bargain!

Swoooon!

So, what's in it? As it's brand new, I decided to give a little tour of it, which doesn't include the random icky bits that bags seem to accumulate...

1) The bag itself. Sigh. It's so pretty...
2) My trusty filofax! Now it's possibly a little odd that I carry this around with me, as I use it primarily as an exercise/food tracker, but I do have finance and to-do sheets in it so I guess it's justifiable.
3) Sunglasses courtesy of Primarni, sunglasses case from Accessorize (in the sale)
4) GHD hair brush. It's meant to straighten your hair as you brush it but uh, it doesn't really do that... It's just a nice handy size to keep in my bag.
5) Normal glasses, as it was so hot and sunny today I decided to stick my contacts in which means carrying my normal glasses around with me.
6) Radley purse. I got this for my 18th birthday (yes, over 4 years ago now!) and it still looks fantastic. I would thoroughly recommend Radley purses to anyone - they're a little expensive but they last FOREVER and they're so lovely and cute!
7) Blackberry Curve, I know many say that BBs are terrible and to be honest with you it's not a great phone but as long as it takes and makes phone calls and texts I could care less.
8) Oh dear, I seem to have forgotten to put an 8 on my picture...
9) You never know when you may need a tissue!
10) Neurofen, again another essential
11) House keys! Can't go out with those.

Not pictured - I tend to carry a book with me nowadays too, currently I'm reading Atonement by Ian McEwan. It's just good to have one for those little moments when you're out and about with nothing to do!

Hopefully you enjoyed my bag over view! I've got another memory card reader (though looking at it, I dunno how long this one will last... sigh) so more blogging coming up!

What do you carry in your handbag day to day?

Handbag Window Shopping

Apologies for the silence recently, I've been pretty busy doing... well, uhm, not very much. But hey, it's a time consuming job relaxing and window shopping all day!

I've decided that now I have two lovely filofaxes, and a lovely lovely purse, I should probably stop using my tatty old handbags that are filthy inside and get something sophisticated and grown up to use as my daily bag.

Option a - a 'big' bag, such as a bucket tote or bowling bag. It'd need to have enough space for two filofaxes (A4 and personal size), pencil case, my keys, purse, phone and as well as some space spare for anything I find out and about (Wales and their carrier bag charging ways have cost me two bags in the last year as I split them trying to stuff too many groceries in them coming home from lectures... sigh).

Option b - a nice, adequately (medium) sized handbag. Again, must be big enough for my personal filo, purse, keys, phone, pencil case and a little bit extra. I could then carry my A4 filofax with me to and from lectures; and when I come home I could use a different, bigger bag that I already have. The other possibility to this is that my parents could then, if I decide that I don't like this method, get me a nice (and more expensive than I could afford by myself) bigger bag to use at uni.

The only way to solve this clearly is to do a comparison. Here's what I came up with...

1) Accessorize butterfly lock bag, £35 2) asos liquorish tote, £35 3) Accessorize spotty dotty tweed bag, £32
4) Chants charm saddle bag, £28 5) Jane Norman quilted bucket bag, £30 6) Rocket Dog plaited shopper, £23

1) New Look mink crocodile satchel, £15 2) Accessorize kempton satchel, £32 3) Accessorize zip front slouch, £28
4) Jane Norman quilted boxy bag, £17.50 5) Debenhams grey shoulder bag, £12.50 6) Accessorize Evelyn bag, £30

It's a tough one. One thing I've noticed is that shoulder and smaller hand bags tend to come in really boring colours - greys, whites and blacks. Or red. I hate the look of red leather! However this may work best with my pink filofax, pink pencil case and pink purse...

What bag and bag option do you like best?