Shoes…ordinary, everyday objects…necessary to our lives. We don’t pay much attention to them, do we, after they’ve served their purpose…
Some, however, are special—are saved and kept carefully…
Here are some of the shoes carefully kept over the decades at my house…nearly a century represented here…
Steps taken on special days…steps taken on ordinary, everyday kinds of days…
Wedding day…my great-grandmother Estella’s wedding shoes from 1914…married at the age of 19…
I sadly don’t have a picture of her on that day, but this high school basketball picture was not to much earlier…
There’s Estella…front left…the beautiful, happy blonde…so excited about life…
The steps she took on that most important of days in her life led to these…
…baby steps….
…my grandmother Velda’s baby shoes…which led to these…
…belonging to toddler Velda…
Can you imagine buttoning all of these little buttons on a wiggly little 2 or 3-year-old whose just itching to get outside to play?!
Velda’s baby steps changed to those of a wife and mother’s steps, which led to these sweet, silvery shoes…
…my mother Karen’s well-loved, well-worn silver leather tap shoes…fabulously scuffed from long hours of practicing, leading to dance recitals where she could show her parents all that she had learned…
Happy tapping steps led to wife and mother steps for Karen as well, which led many years later to…
…the shoes worn as I took my first steps as a wife on my wedding day in 1988…
Watching me take those first steps into marriage that day were Velda and Karen…walking with me…sharing advice and memories of their own steps taken along the way…
…just as I will do with my three daughters one day not too very far away…
A project made this morning—inspired by my sitting and looking at these shoes the other day…thinking about the steps they’ve taken…
…vintage mother-of-pearl buttons, a typed sentiment in one of my favorite newly found fonts…reminiscent of another great-grandmother Anna…more stories for another day…
…images from Crafty Secrets’ new “Girlfriends” Creative Scraps, some lovely Graphic 45 paper, and another image found online, a wonderful “page” from a large label shaped album from Maya Road, that is now being sold by Crafty Secrets…
…some luscious crumpled-up creamy seam binding, platinum Stickles and a touch or two of Dazzling Diamonds finish it all up!
The photo on my collage is my young grandmother Velda…isn’t this gorgeous? I love the attention given to the matting on the photo…the early 1930’s were beautiful years for detail, weren’t they?!
Well, that’s it for me today…I hope you have a beautiful fall day…and may the steps you take today remind you of those you love who have taken similar steps before you…
See you soon with something new.
Julie
***P.S. Please join me, and many other vintage-loving bloggers in celebrating the launch of a wonderful new publication—“Creating Vintage Charm”!
This beautiful new magazine is available to order now—I can’t wait to receive mine!
Also, don’t forget to enter my blog anniversary giveaway, if you haven’t already! It runs through midnight next Monday!***
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