Flatting?

Yes, it is another shoe post from me.

Lets talk flats, I need some serious help. Until pregnancy & motherhood, I was a high heel kind of girl. Day and night I really just wore heels. Being short, unless you are Eva Longoria Parker then you have to wear heels or you look stumpy and squat.

Anyway these days I really need to wear flats, pushing a pram or chasing a toddler doesn't quite work with heels. I'm a big fan of ballet flats but they don't work with a lot of dresses and skirts. I like my pretty sandals but they only work with summery dresses and skirts.

So for those that wear flats, what would you suggest I wear with, say this dress here:


It is the classic DVF wrap, this print is Boko sort of a charcoal/purple/grey mix. Because I am not tall the flounce ends below the knee. If I wear ballet flats my calves look about 1 inch long. Sandals don't work because it looks like a wintery dress.

I wonder what Lorelai wore on her feet with this dress, probably heels.



I love my DVF wrap dresses, but now I have to wear flats I am struggling with footwear. The Boko is really pretty but I'm not able to wear it, it hangs limply in my wardrobe.

All that glitters

My daughter Tinker (her name for the purposes of this blog) just got some new shoes and they fit beautifully. This is them, everyone needs some gold sneakers, surely?:



I also bought her a pair of these sandals but they don't fit. Way too big. Oh well, given my record one out of two isn't too bad!

Shoes

I can't buy shoes. I love them but I can't buy them.

For as long as I have been buying my own shoes I have had great difficulty with fit. I have bought more shoes in the wrong size than I can count. Something about shoe shopping gives me the creeps. I don't know what it is exactly.

Take for instance my stunning leather and denim ballet flats from Louis Vuitton. My husband bought them for me a few years ago. I had to have them, they were so gorgeous.

Tried them on in store they seemed comfortable. Wore them once for 20 minutes and realised they were too small. So small that I felt like one of those poor little girls in China hundreds of years ago with the foot bindings on my poor tootsies.

Two sizes too small. Of course being leather soled they were scuffed and couldn't be returned. My husband, then boyfriend, kept asking why I hadn't been wearing my new shoes. The gorgeous generous gift he had given me. So I squished my feet into the size 36 flats and I limped around town until the blisters were on the verge of sending me to an early grave.

So now my pretty little shoes sit on a shelf looking fabulously lonely and I flap about in some cheap ballet flats from witchery that aren't even leather lined. My friends have done well out of my shoe buying. I have given away more shoes than I have kept because time after time I buy shoes that don't fit. It is so bad now that I have not bought a new pair in over a year. The last pair I bought was from Kmart. Mens size 10 thongs. Why? Because I was 35 weeks pregnant with blood pressure so high that I was carrying 12 kilos of fluid squelching around in my feet and ankles so bad that only massive mens thongs would fit. My best friend who I love dearly kindly referred to my massive swollen feet as canoes. Nice. She has some nerve, she has inherited lots of my tiny shoes over the years.

My latest problem is that I need to buy new shoes for my daughter and I have started getting that same anxious feeling I get when I need to buy shoes for myself. Oh dear I can't pass this condition on to her. She has perfectly lovely feet I am so worried I will buy her the wrong sized shoes as well. Until now she has mainly worn Pediped shoes and Tip Toey Joeys. I counted and she has 33 pairs of shoes already. Almost as many as her father who is a complete shoe nut. They are adorable little baby shoes made for the most discerning little feet. Now that she is finally walking at 14 months of age, she needs some proper shoes. No more soft soled pre-walkers.

I am in a right tizz about it! I have spent this morning trawling the web for info about the best thing for new little walking feet and I found some adorable little shoes but panicked at the online checkout and didn't buy a single pair. This is exactly what I do in stores when buying my own shoes. I try them, prance about the store then at the last minute I pull out. The poor salesgirls look so deflated. I'm sure many shoes stores in Sydney have photos of my face up in their staff rooms. "Time Waster" I'm sure the heading says...


My little girl in her first shoes: