If the Shoe Fits . . .

Theme Thursday and I could have walked a mile with a gazillion things on this week's theme of

'Shoe'.

There is always something special about buying your baby's first pair of shoes. It's one of those rights of passage when they actually need some support for those stumpy little toes. I still have my first shoes. For some reason my mother decided they were worth keeping. A little pair of white Clarks leather baby shoes with a buckle on the side and tiny perforated flowers along the front as decoration. They're worn and powdery with too much chalky white polishing (they never did get white polish right) and they're hidden in the Red Case on the top of my wardrobe for posterity or Narnians or the things that go 'boo' to find, whoever is brave enough to delve there first.

So taken was I, with my own ankle biter's little pitter-patter of tiny feet, that I've preserved their first shoes, well not quite their first but Clare's first satin ballet shoes and Adam's first pair of soccer boots, by having them bronzed. At great expense I might add but they did look rather cute on their shelves until they became as passe as My Little Pony and Duplo. Unfortunately, the ballet shoes are no longer on display and whilst they are safely tucked it was too big a project to retrieve them for a blog post. Rooms have changed as have tastes and little Queen Anne bedheads and nick-nack shelves have been replaced with a slick and colourful double bed and modern wall unit adorned with little else than hats, scarves and jewellery and, oddly enough shoes! The 'boy's' room now has a modern black cube unit, adorned with a Playstation and flat screen TV and another persistently unmade double bed. His little Puma soccer boots however were handy enough and once divested of the thick pall of dust that seems to congregate on his shelf unit, reasonable enough to photograph.

You can go "Awww" now . . he's a size 11
Were his feet ever that small?

My sister was quite impressed with the bronzing and so I offered to do the same to my little nephew's first shoes as a Christening present. What a lovely gesture on my part. Because I wouldn't normally have spent that much but hey, he's special. He's little when the other nephews have all left home. He's sweet and fragile and I rarely see him these days so . . bronzing was just never going to be too good for this little poppet's teensy footwear. . .except . . . .

He's now 10 years old! This theme Thursday finally prompted me to grab these little blue sandals which I've had safely tucked in the wardrobe for a decade . . . in order for them to be bronzed!


I'm such a procrastinator . . .well, you know what they say ". .if the shoe fits!"