Shoes, Pair One and Pair Two

Actually these are Pair Four and Pair Five. I won't bother photographing Pairs One, Two and Three. I bought five pair of shoes in the last two weeks. Let me explain. For decades this is more pairs of shoes than I used to even own at one time. But since living up here in a four season climate, my shoe collection has grown. I have way more than five pair in my closet at the moment, and now these shoes to join them. But despite many pair of footwear (in my defense, quite a few of them are flip flops and rain or snow boots bought or given to me), I had worn all my walking shoes out until they were at the stage where there's really nothing to do but wear them in the mud or toss them in the garbage. I needed some attractive walking shoes for my trip. I plan to do a LOT of walking.

I wanted black shoes to go with my planned black basics travel wardrobe. I couldn't find anything in town so I shopped in San Diego. I planned on buying two pair as it's hard to wear the same shoes every day, it's better to go back and forth between different shoes. The first pair I bought was more casual than I'd planned, a sort of tennis/loafer style but I wore them a lot in the days following their purchase and they're comfy. A good buy. I wanted the second pair to be fancier so I could wear them with a dress. I couldn't find anything both fancy AND comfortable enough to walk miles in, so I bought a pair that, if not dressier, was at least a style that I could imagine wearing with a dress - a casual mary jane.

The third pair, a mary jane/ballet slipper fusion that was on sale and more what I had in mind to wear with a dress, I found and bought when I got back to Reno and had the afternoon to do some last chance shopping before leaving big city shopping behind again. They came in both chocolate brown and black. I liked the brown pair better but bought the black to fit my color plan. Of course my plan was thwarted by my inability to find a pair of thin, comfortable black travel slacks. I finally found the perfect pair of pants, on that last day in Reno - in BROWN tweed. I bought them and I'll figure out how to adapt my color scheme and make everything work together at the last minute.

I bought some other clothes as well although realistically I can't bring as many outfits as I imagine all the new pieces working with - decisions will have to be made. I was pretty good though, I only bought things I could imagine getting a lot of wear out of back here in my "real life".

I tried out my new wheeled back pack on this trip and found it a tight squeeze for the basics. At the last minute I found a really cute and slightly larger wheeled tote heavily marked down at Ross. I was really excited about the find until I got home and measured it. It's about a half inch too wide on a hard, unflexible edge. Dang. Well, I go through luggage on a regular basis, so I'll just toss out my oldest (with a ripped, zipperless pocket on one side) tote and use this new one for car trips. I'll just have to be ruthless in selecting my travel clothes to fit in the smaller wheeled backpack.

Now, on to the two other pair of shoes. Neither are for the trip but they were tooooo cute to pass up. Just for the record, I did NOT buy about six other pairs. So see, two "extra" pair (okay, maybe three "extra" pair counting the third black pair) isn't that many. Right? I'm not at risk of being called Imelda quite yet!

ORANGE walking mary janes! How could an autumn tones, Halloween loving gal like me pass up a pair of ORANGE shoes! Clearly I could not.

And some slip on tennies. I don't own a single pair of tennis shoes at the moment. I used to have two pair - a blue pair I didn't love but were functional and I didn't mind wearing for grungy jobs, and my favorite pirate tennies. I came home from a trip a couple years ago to find one shoe from each pair missing. I've never found them and I still suspect their disappearance is a result of my grandson's habit of "helping" throw things away at that point in time. He visited while I was gone. So, I deserved some cool new tennis shoes. I have a thing for "lacy" black and white patterns. Love these.