The Shoes

A while back I broke my foot and when it healed none of my shoes were comfortable.  Then, during my waitress phase, I happened upon Crocs and have been wearing them pain-free ever since.  They're great except for one small thing - they're not stylish, a fact which my daughters mention, well, every time they see me.  I needed something a little dressier for occasions when Crocs with jeans wouldn't do.

Enter the NAOT shoes I bought on sale during a visit to Salt Lake City in 2005.  Now frugality (and college tuition) prohibits me from going wild buying shoes like my own dear mother did.  She had an entire closet devoted to shoes, aptly referred to as (drum roll, please) "the shoe closet."  That was an enchanted place where dreams were born!  Sadly, all that followed me into adulthood from it were the memories.

With a nod to Mom's memory and a great big gulp, I bought the mint green shoes for $50.00, and, that like I said, was the sale price.  They were unbelievably comfortable though - maybe you really DO get what you pay for - and I wore them everywhere, including, as it turns out, to tile and grout the kitchen floor of our house in Mantua. 

What was I thinking?  The shoes did not weather that event well.  Both the toes got scuffed up pretty badly and their upscale look immediately vanished.  I loved the feel of these shoes so much though that I toyed with the idea of replacing them and looked them up online.  That's when I realized what a deal my $50.00 shoes were.

These shoes are made in Israel and the current sale price for my style is $130.00.  Faced with my internal spending constraints, I knew that was never gonna happen.  I looked on eBay but didn't find any within my shoe budget there either.  Still, I kept the shoes.  They were so comfortable.  Sometimes I wore them around the house when I didn't have anywhere to go.  Occasionally I even wore them in public, although even I knew that they looked horrible.  But they were so comfortable!

Did I mention that these shoes were mint green?  Nobody, I mean NOBODY makes mint green shoe polish.  I called the company and asked if I could buy a little dye in this color to repair the leather and they said no.  That didn't seem very friendly to me. 

Next I bought some Rit Dye and tried that.  What did I have to lose?  The results were disastrous.  The shoes actually looked worse now that they had Koolaid colored toes. Still, I kept them.  I'm not proud.  Comfortable shoes are difficult to find and I liked having one pair that weren't plastic.

Yesterday while staining our deck Carolina Mud Brown, I got bored.  As fortune would have it, I was wearing "the shoes" when inspiration struck.  I started staining them with the deck stain.  I figured, how could they look worse?  It was so exciting to watch them go from icky to cute again!  When I was finished staining them, I took a Sharpy marker and colored an accent band black.  Upcycling at its finest!

As it turns out, I can wear the brown shoes places mint green never would have gone.  Only you and I will know the secret.  You won't tell, will you?