My mother so loved a sale that sometimes she would buy things she really couldn't use just because it was a smoking deal. We lived in a small, older house and grew up eating home canned fruits and deer venison, and money was always tight. Seldom was there extra to buy furnishings or school clothes so often she would find something for the house or fabric to sew with at sales. By the time we were in high school, we had this entire closet of random material (yards and yards of strange colors or patterns) and a huge, deep drawer of (sometimes slightly outdated) sewing patterns. Every summer, in the hottest part of the year, we would rummage thru patterns and fabric and come up with totally unique combinations that became our school clothes wardrobes. To this day when the weather is scorching, I have an uncontrolable urge to sew. Then, every year, shortly before school started, we scraped up a little money and went shopping for one pair each of black shoes and a few undergarments  and that's what we wore all year. But we were well dressed and we certainly never had to worry about running into someone else at school wearing exactly the same thing.

One day however, mom threw me a curve by bringing home a pair of purple flats. They fit great but they were flats in a wedgy, sandal world, and...they were PURPLE!  I had absolutely nothing to wear with them so I tucked them into the back of my closet and time went on. But remember, we started school with one pair of black shoes and once in a while, I would pull out the purple shoes, try them on, shake my head secretly laughing at my mom, and put them back. Then just as it became too cold and rainy to wear wedgy sandals, she came home with a huge white bag of fabric and down in the bottom were yards and yards of purple suiting! I stitched up a very technical suit and it matched the shoes perfectly. Then slowly, purple became the new, more adventurous me.  Soon I dug out a fabric piece of delicate yellow with purple flowers and turned it into a sundress that I wore with a sweater until warm weather arrived. Then came a purple and red print skirt and so on, and so on. I wore those crazy shoes until the toes were scuffed colorless and the soles literally cracked.  But there was no going back to the old style-less me. My prom dress? White lace over (what else) lavender!

To this day, we love to joke with family about mom buying me those "useless" purple shoes but in reality, they subtley taught me tremendous things. First of all, they are a reminder to be appropriately frugal. They encouraged me to be resourceful and creative, and taught me to be more expressive in my personal style. On a deeper level however, they were one of those life markers that you can identify as the beginning of something important to you. For me it was a love of surrounding myself with deep, rich colors and is part of why photography is so rewarding.  Fast forward to today and you'll find that my closet still holds more black shoes than any other color.  But my couch?  A gorgeous deep red!

Thanks Mom...