Debenhams purse

You know how it is. You have a purse that has been with you for years. It's falling apart and quite frankly, embarrassing to pull out when settling the bill in a restaurant or doing the weekly shop. But because of that emotional attachment - knowing that it has been there for you all these years and has travelled with you from country to country - you just can't bear to part with it. I experienced this first-hand with a purse that had seen me through university, right up until the present day.

Purse shopping was incredibly difficult because no matter how hard I searched, nothing I found matched up to a Mulberry. £200-£300 may sound like a lot of money, but I saw it as an investment. Consider this: I haven't changed my purse since I was seventeen. So it's not like I chop and change at every opportunity I get. A new purse would potentially last me years.

But I had a think about it, and decided that I would rather save the money for travelling and nice meals out. Just when I was about to give up, I discovered this beauty in Debenhams:

Isn't it lovely? This John Rocha purse retails at roughly £30 - a huge saving on what I could have easily spent. I don't know about you, but I find it very Mulberry-esque with the buttery soft leather and the postman's lock fastening.

Although it looks yellowy here, it's actually a cream sort of colour. It's a much smaller purse that what I had before, but still has plenty of space with individual compartments for cards, coins and cash. The interior is really pretty with a grey lining and big white polka dots. It's definitely much more of a grown up purse to suit my 20 something year old self!

My pictures are from the weekend when we were blessed with blue skies one afternoon. The trees in Martin's garden are incredible. The leaves change from green to yellow, to orange, to burnt orange, to a deep red. But never uniformly - they all change colours at different times and the rainbow effect is just beautiful. All the leaves are red now and most of them have fallen to the ground... but they still give that wonderful autumn essence!