Toes and Dragonflies

We had some friends call this morning saying they were going to be in our area and did we have time to get together?  We haven't seen them in several months, so it was nice to hang out.  They have a 2 1/2 year old foster son who is adorable and full of energy.  He liked playing with the dogs and watching the dragons.  So, counting today that's 3 weekends in a month that I've actually been social.  Pretty sure that's some kind of a record for me of late.  At any rate, it was nice to see them and hang out for a few hours.  Plus, they're the first people to come visit our new house since we moved in.

In other news, today is Wiggle Your Toes Day.  Since sandals tend to show off toes I decided to do that, and then ended up looking for dragonfly sandals.  

Blue, dragonfly, diamonds are my birthstone, damn thing between the toes.  3 out of 4 isn't bad, I guess?

 

This is really cute.  You know my beef with it.

How cute are these?  I should have had these for the wedding!

I see variations on this type of jewelry all the time when I'm searching, and there were a whole bunch of dragonfly examples tonight.  Would this be more or less annoying than the flip flop strap between the toes?  Also, are they adjustable, because it would be really uncomfortable if the top part wasn't long enough and kept pulling up on the toe.

 

Also cute.

I love the colors on these.

Regardless of what you're wearing on your feet go wiggle your toes in celebration of the day!

Maundy Thursday

My inner Liturgical Calendar isn't as finely tuned as it used to be, but I DO at least remember that it's Holy Week and today is Maundy Thursday.  Maundy (from Latin mandatum or mendicare), or Washing of the Feet remembers the Last Supper Jesus had with his disciples.  They celebrated the seder, or Passover, and after the meal Jesus washed the feet of his disciples.  Many churches do a foot washing as part of their Maundy Thursday worship services.  I've been on both sides of it, as the washer and washee, and I'm definitely more comfortable doing the washing.  I always feel a little bit weird having my feet washed.  I'm like Peter who tried to convince Jesus to let him (Peter) wash his (Jesus') feet.  I guess I have to remember to let people care for me.

Since foot washing involves bare feet, I thought for today instead of doing shoes I would do fun pedicures.  You want those feet to be cute for the foot washing!  (Yes, that was sarcasm.  Yes, I do realize that having "cute" feet is missing the point of the foot washing ritual.  But, taking something seriously and holding a tradition within the respect with which it is due does not mean a little whimsy can't be involved.)

You know I love stripes.  You might not know that I used to always paint my toenails different colors.  I guess before I had my current shoe fetish I had a love of brightly painted toenails.  I had to dress those Birkenstocks up somehow!

 

More stripes.  These say spring on the left and fall on the right to me.

Beachy toes!  Although I'm not entirely sure what the design on the left is?

 

 Polka dots!  These are very springy and Eastery.

Of course I chose a blue option.  This is more along the lines of what I might get nowadays.  I'm not usually very adventurous with my pedicures these days.

 

More polka dotty Easter toes.

Ooooh, I love dragonflies.  AND they're blue!

Oh man, I might have to see if I can do this myself on my toes for Sunday.  Sooooo cute.

Don't let your pedicure, or lack thereof, keep you from getting your feet washed.  Jesus loves your toes no matter what!

Memory Lane: 2013 (it was the beginning of Holy Week three years ago). 2014 (elephants and Arts Camp).

3 Things:

1. Day 3 of the new hair cut and I still like it.  It even looks cute when I am lazy and don't do anything with it.
2. The weather is so pretty.  Lovely and sunny but not yet hot.
3. People in my life who tell me to shut up and let them take care of me.  More often than not I need that.

First Time

Poor Laughter is still sick. She did ok this morning, but as the day progressed her fever kept getting higher. Her mom and dad are worried about strep, so we might be taking her to the Urgent Care tomorrow. Poor baby. They leave on Saturday, so I hope she feels better before she has to fly. Needless to say, we didn't do much today, but one fun thing we did was to have Auntie-Niece pedicures. It was the first time for both girls and they loved it. They were both really good, too, sitting still and being patient. Especially Flower, who had to wait for her person to finish a manicure before she could do Flower's toes. I think I was almost 30 before I got my first pedicure, so it was a lot of fun to watch the girls' reactions to everything, and to watch other people also watching their reactions and saying how cute and sweet they both are.

Look at how pretty our toes turned out!

After pedicures we had lunch and I got to introduce my Montana family to Chipotle. Yum!

This evening Laughter stayed home with her daddy to rest and snuggle (and play with the puppies without having to share with sister) while the seester, Flower and I went shopping. We each found a maxi dress we really liked and got them, and got a pair of adorable pants for Laughter. Even though it's hot here, all she has wanted to wear is paaaants. Shopping with Flower is way fun. It's like having a personal shopper, because she kept finding really cute stuff for us to try on. We all tried out clothes on together and had a totally fun and girly time critiquing each outfit.

So, a lazy but lovely day again. If poor Laughter wasn't sick, it would have been just about perfect. Too bad they have to leave soon and I won't get to play with them anymore.

Sigh

So...I might be broken.  Shoes just aren't doing if for me lately.  I haven't been posting for a lot of reasons (depression causing major lack of motivation being a big one, not being at church for Holy week comes into play, and other stuff).  I know I told you I'd give you a post and explain everything, and I will, but I have no inspiration right now.  Oh, and thank you for all of you who sent me fun thoughts to inspire me, and especially the Pinterest Friend who continues her excellent work as my self-appointed intern.  But I look at shoes and think.  Eh.  Whatever.  Occasionally I get mildly excited or horrified, but not often.  And you know what else is weird?  Today (as well as other days lately), I was in a fairly good, kind of goofy mood, and also grumpy as hell.  (How grumpy IS hell? is what I would ask the hubby if he said that)  I don't know, y'all.  I just don't know.  In happier news, SKD took me out for a late birthday lunch and a pedicure today, which was lovely.  For the first time ever we chose the same color and now have matching Easter toes:

I'd actually had pretty spring toes before, as well:

But the puppies like to lick and bite my toes, so that tends to ruin the prettiness.

Thank you, fabulous friend, for getting me out of the house!  Even though I know your real reason for inviting me is so you can see the puppies...

Hopefully I will snap out of this funk soon, because Shoetopia without shoes is just...topia.  And that's boring.

Advent 2

Today is the 2nd Sunday of Advent, so a second pair of blue shoes:

 

Advent means the paraments are blue, so I get to wear my favorite chasuble.  If only I could wear it for more than just a 4 week season.

 

These were my very first pair of Advent shoes.  I bought them 5 or 6 years ago, and I still love them.  I probably would have worn them for my wedding if I hadn't gotten the pair that was dyed to match my sash.

 

And here are my new pretty toes.  You can't tell from the picture, but they are purply-blue and sparkly.  I think they look very Advent-y.  SKD says they look like the skies over the nativity.

 

Today was another busy day.  After church I had a luncheon with the Octegenarians at church, and then went to an open house baby shower celebration. These are the shoes I made.  I didn't think about it when I made them, but they are quite Advent-y themselves.  I tried a different pattern than the first pair, and they turned out OK.

 

 

Pedro is once again modeling the hat I made for the baby.  Isn't he just so cute?  Don't worry, I've since made him a Thanksgiving hat and a Christmas hat, so he won't be jealous of the babies...

 

Lunch Date

A friend of mine took me to lunch today.  (It occurs to me that this friend needs a blog name since I mention her fairly frequently...hey friend...any thoughts?)  This wasn't your typical lunch date, though.  Actually, it was originally just going to be a coffee date, but when she picked me up from at church she had snacks in the car.  We still got coffee, then went to a really lovely and quite spot by the river to eat our lunch.  She was very sweet and brought me all of my favorite fruit AND Reese's peanut butter cups!  She is awesome and we had a really lovely time eating and chatting and watching the river.  It was just what I needed.  I had originally planned on taking a picture of our feet by the beautiful river, but like a dork I forgot.  So I took one the parking lot at church.

 

 

First, this is a terrible picture.  Second, it would have been way more fun down by the river.  Third, even though they look pink here, the friend's toes are orange and the color is called My Chihuahua Bites.  Which is hilarious and perfect, because she has a Chihuahua that bites.  Anyway, today was a reminder that it is good to have good friends who give you river-side lunch dates when you didn't even really know you needed them.

 

My Inability to Keep Flip Flops

An awesome friend of mine took us out for pedicures today.  I forgot to bring flip flops with me to work, but then I remembered that I don't actually have any.  Remember these?

 

These were the shoes that The Bean was wearing when we got to MT last week.  A day or 2 later, they broke.  She kept trying to walk in them anyway.  So I gave her mine.

 

I had packed them in case we went to the pool or I encountered a particularly scary shower during our travels.  But they fit The Bean, so I let her keep them.  This isn't the first time this has happened.  A few years ago AA's flip flops broke and I gave her mine to wear.  I think in that case it was supposed to be a loan and she just decided to keep them.  I didn't even try to make it a loan to The Bean this time; I learned my lesson.  Thankfully flip flops are cheap and I don't get attached to them.

 

So, today I got to have a pair of the fake flip flops they give you when you don't bring your own.

 

 

Between green flops, pink toe separators, and lilac toes, my feet looked like an Easter basket.  Oh well.  My toes are happy.  The Bean has summer shoes.  I get to go see if Target still has flip flops or if they've all been pushed out by Fall stuff already.





Turquoise?

I redid my toes recently, and the bottle said the color was turquoise.  I thought it looked more green, and still do, but liked the color and went with it anyway.  What do you think?  Turquoise or more toward the green family?

 

 

Outside, in natural light, they look more green to me.

 

 These are the shoes I wore to church today (not on all the way for the picture, which is why my toes are scrunched), and I definitely thought they looked green in comparison to the shoe, but in this picture, I'm leaning more toward turquoise again.  Go here for a better view of the shoe, although be prepared for creepy first.



 

Inside.  Bathroom light.  Turquoise background.  Looks pretty close the same color.  So what do I know?  Maybe the bottle was correct.

 

In other news, today marks the 6th month anniversary of writing this blog.  I started December 30th, and have only missed 1 day since then.  It's been fun.  Except for my mom, though (hi, Mom!), I'm not really sure anyone actually reads it.  Which is maybe OK, but it seems kind of silly to keep putting stuff out there if no one actually reads any of it.  My page views are definitely on a down-ward trend.  This isn't a pity party (what kind of shoes would I wear to a pity party?), just a throwing it out there kind of deal.  If you read on a regular basis, and would like to continue to read on a regular basis, would you let me know?  Thanks!

 

Odds and Ends

AA sent me a picture yesterday and said I could put it on my blog if I wanted.

 

She is in the Spring play and these are her shoes for it.  It's set in 1951, and Mom told me AA went through the pennies yesterday and found 2 that are actually FROM 1951, then Dad polished them up for her to put in her loafers.  I love that kid.  That's why we call her Double A (one of the A's stands for Awesome).

 

I realize the internet tracks everything we do online these days, but I still can't decide if yesterday's Google Doodle is totally cool or just freaks me out.  A little of both, I think.

 

 

I had a pedicure yesterday for my birthday, and it was lovely.  But dang, I waited 2 hours to put my shoes on and STILL managed to ruin the darn thing.  I think I ruin approximately 75% of the silly things:

 

 

Finally, I was looking at Shoe Box P--- on Facebook yesterday and came across these:

 

I thought they were just a little too spot-on for a pastor.  The hubby thought they were hilarious and perfect, and even dragged our poor waitress into the conversation.  She proclaimed them to be "hecka cool," so who am I to argue?  Doesn't mean I'll be getting a pair anytime soon.