These boots were made for photos...

Just a little shout out to Nancy Sinatra...  ( you can thank me for this glorious earworm later)

We had family pictures this past September with Tracey Brown Photography, I had collections of photo ideas that I just adored... I kept coming back to these photos of great textures... I needed to figure out how to incorporate that into our family photos, without spending a lot of cash...

Here's a love bug photo of the apple of my eye and myself - just for funsies.  He's adorable!

Enough gushing... back to the nitty gritty's.....


My daughter is right on the brink of a growth spurt... so I was hesitant to purchase items that she would only wear this once for photos...
So...  I put on my shopping shoes... and hit up our local consignment shop, Extra's - I found some great rain boots here.  I also frequented the local Goodwill in Oskaloosa to look for some great clothing items that would add texture to our photos while not costing a lot.

Now these boots aren't exactly what I was looking for as shoes for her our little miss.... no worries,
Challenge accepted!  These were perfect for our Christmas Photo Color Combo: Black, Red, White.  What?  Dairy cows don't seem to be very holiday-ish? 

What holiday girl doesn't like a little "BLING"??????  Spray paint and glitter glue can make that happen!!!

I tied some fun ribbons on the loops and dolled those all up!    - Watch for a Christmas card sporting these bad boys.  :)

The next challenge was in the same court of shoes... I dearly love moccasins... and the fringe boot style is absolutely darling... if you have $65.00 to spare...
So my first thought was fringe leggings...  which I made out of fringe trim from WalMart that was $1.33 a yard... and a pair of ladies dress socks from The Dollar Tree....  for a whopping total of $2.33...  However, it wasn't love at first sight...

THEN....

I had another idea... why not spray paint  another pair of boots the same chocolate brown color and glue the fringe onto the boots???   I would just make my own fringe boots!  I had these boots at our house, they were the basic black rain boot from your local farm store...
Chocolate Brown Spray Paint - on hand...
Just need to pick up a couple more yards of the fringe at Wal-Mart...

Glued the fringe onto the boot... and viola.... Shoes for photo perfection...  Here are a few photos of those lovely fringe boots... 

Photos taken by: Tracey Brown Photography out of Ottumwa 

 

 

 

 

Now someday my sweet baby girl can totally have those fringe moccasins that cost upward of $60.00...  just not for these photos... 

*** Décor for the photo props***

 - material for garland - furnished by my mom and grandmother.  This material was from my father's work shirts, jeans, and other scraps that my sewing family had on hand.  It was nice to have that incorporated with my family photos. 
- Radio Flyer Wagon - was my baby brother's - it has had many years of use...  and love....


Would you have improvised, re-purposed, and re-used or just bought new?

Let's Spice Things Up!!!! The Smothers' Spice Cabinet Organization

I LOVE MY KITCHEN!!!
I can't say that enough.  I am very lucky to have such a great room... 

However... 

I have a corner cabinet that has a lazy susan in it...  and I have been keeping my spices on the bottom rack...  I can't ever find the right spice for the recipe I am making... therefore I come up with 4 containers of Rosemary Leaf, 3 containers of both Ground Mustard and Mustard Seed.

 Not the greatest thing for staying in our grocery budget. 

I visited our local Dollar Tree to see what containers they would have for spice storage, and I came up with these cuties...

I purchased 5 packages of 10 containers for a total of $5.00
Got out my trusty label maker - made up labels for each spice container - both for the top of the lid as well as the side.  Therefore I can see the spice name wherever they may be.  Great news... I also came across 3 containers of dillweed...  REeeeeallll Nice....

You can see our kitchen layout in this link : Smothers' Kitchen

I thought about using a riser system to display all the containers.... I thought about just stacking them up all in rows...  this is me "practicing" a new layout....

I have all these extra bottles that are odd balls... I put those guys all together on the second shelf...grouping the like ones together, I married the misc bottles of cinnamon, parsley etc. together into one big bottle, cleaning up some sq. footage. 

I decided to go with a smaller lazy susan inside the bottom shelf of the cabinet left of the stove... right about my cooking utensil drawer...

I even put my baking items on the top shelf.. so now ALL my spices and baking items are all housed together. 
Have you found a good spice organization system that works for you?