Can you believe we are already at back to school time? Here in New York school doesn’t start until after Labor Day, but I know many of you out there have already sent your kids off to the first day of school.
Back to school shopping time is always kind of awkward for me–in early September here in NY we still have plenty of warm days where the kids can wear the same shorts and shirts they’ve been wearing all summer. It’s honesty too hot to pull on jeans and sweaters. So if I buy things they can actually wear in the temperatures now. . .in a month and a half it will be too cold to wear those items. If I shop for the weather that they actually will have for most of the year, they won’t be able to wear the stuff now!
I usually compromise by buying a few things that can be used throughout the year and then waiting on my main shopping until a few months into school. You hit better sales then anyway!
As one of my two final posts for the Walmart Moms program (which is winding down) they asked me to head into my local Walmart store and do some back to school shopping for my teens. I decided to concentrate on Buddy for this post because boys clothes/fashion just doesn’t get talked about anywhere near as much as girls.
First things first, of course we had to go find him some new jeans. He grew over the summer–of course. I find the whole pants thing difficult for young teen boys. It’s the sizing–we have “girls” “juniors” and then the regular “womans” section for the females–for the males there is “boys” and then straight on to “mens” which mostly starts at a 32 waist. Sometimes you can find the 28 waist for the guys, but that’s still too big for my 13 year old. Most of the boys sizes seem to go up to 12, but finding the 14 & 16 are a bit harder. And do we really jump straight from a size 16 boys to mens? Sigh.
We did find a decent selection of the size 14 boys jeans in the wall shelf display at my Walmart. Buddy liked the Faded Glory straight/relaxed leg in a darker wash. He really doesn’t like the “adjustable waist” that comes in all the boys jeans–he finds the buttons a bit itchy–but he’ll deal with it.
Next we needed a shirt. Now as a 13 year old guy, he likes graphic T-Shirts. Walmart has a large wall of them in the boys section, but they tend to be more, uh, immature in subject. Lots of cartoon characters and such. He has loved them in the past but now, well, he’s going into 8th grade. He is not going to wear minions. So we headed over to the Men’s graphic T wall and tried some of their smalls. They worked! He really wanted the one that said “Hold my beer and watch this” (my boy has a very sarcastic sense of humor) but I told him that would not be appropriate either for school or for a Walmart post! Instead we went with the men’s “Nope, Not Today” T for the bargain price of $4.97!!!
Finally we picked up some cool socks. The “in” thing right now, at least in my son’s school, is the crew socks that have a design going up the back of them. We grabbed a couple of packages of the Russel 360 Dri socks (which are great, they wick the moisture away from those stinky boy feet) in the snakebite pattern.
Here he is all dressed up for school:
That’s about as dressed up as a 13 year old boy gets (unless he’s going to church–then Mama insists on khaki’s and a shirt with a collar). Of course we didn’t forget the socks:
The arrow pattern really should be twisted around so that it will run up the back of his leg. . . but to a boy that’s not an important detail!
So that’s our back to school outfit from Walmart! What did you think?
****This is a sponsored post****
Disclosure: As a participant in the Walmart Moms Program, I’ve received product samples and compensation for my time and efforts in creating this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
He looks great! School started August 10th here. Alas my kids are past their school years, but the back to school sales work for everyone. Florida even has a ‘no sales tax’ weekend which everyone can benefit from.