Cat in Heels

I’ve decided the best way to live life post-baby is to simply pack the little droolers up (seriously, so much drool) and do the things I used to do. Except go to bars. Babies aren’t welcome in bars. Granted, packing them up is like an hour ordeal, which includes figuring out which of the three strollers to take (none of which are ideal), making sure there’s at least one extra outfit per baby, bottles, maybe a breastpump (and accessories), diapers, wipes, baby sling (because sometimes they hate the stroller), and I’m sure there’s other random crap I pack without even thinking of it. Nightmare heels by Iron Fist This weekend Husband and I packed up the girls and their little ruffle-butts and drove off to Flashback Weekend , a local horror movie convention. Because babies should totally be at horror conventions. It also gave me a chance to wear my Freddy Krueger shoes again, this time with the chance that Robert Englund would see them, because he was there somewhere. For the rec...

2013 was emerald and Pantone has declared 2014 the year of " Radiant Orchid ." Steven does purple velvet with a bow. Good thing it's a nice, lush color and not the color of Barney the dinosaur.  Personally when it comes to purples I'm more of a deeper purple, eggplant kind of girl, but especially with spring coming up (rumor has it all this snow will eventually go away) it's the perfect color for spring.  Best of all it's a great color for shoes. Adding a purple (or radiant orchid) shoe to almost any ensemble is the perfect way to bring in that pop of color. It's also a popular color in all those florals that show up each print, so adding a floral shoe will automatically put you right into the Pantone pallet and make sure you're rocking the color of the year.  Get a little edgy with Iron Fist . Of course it remains to be seen how this shade is actually pulled into fashion this year by designers, but I hope that we see quite a bi...

Halloween is right around the corner, which means it's a great excuse to wear some amazing clothes, and I don't mean costumes. While Halloween used to be all about costumes, now it's graduated to other things. There are those lame t-shirts that flip up and show everyone your belly and a picture of a werewolf face. There's the shirts or dresses that have a skeleton on them...and then there's the shoes. Which are the clothes made for Halloween that don't suck. I would wear these all the time.  Charlotte Olympia has released an entire Halloween collection (because she has a collection for every holiday), and it's awesome. She has added fangs to her classic kitty loafers, put bats all over the Dolly island platform to create the Midnight Dolly , has a pair of pumpkin loafers, a pumpkin purse, bat clutch, and the absolutely amazing purple Nocturna l sandal with an island platform, ankle strap and a bat on the toe. More shoes should have bats. I would s...

Today I had a rare day off, and I found it somewhat fitting that today (the 21st) is also the end of the world. At least according to some people who decided that they know what the ancient Mayans were thinking. So as I got ready to leave the house, I wasn't sure what kind of shoes I should wear for the end of the world. I mean, if they had explained how it would end that would be helpful, but they didn't so what;s a girl to do? Ready for the zombie apocalypse.  I mean is this going to be a Walking Dead zombie style end of the world? Are we talking Mad Max where I have to wear leather and chain mail and fight? Or will everything just explode and that will be the end of it. All of these scenarios involve very different footwear needs. I asked my Facebook and Twitter peeps what they thought would be appropriate footwear for the end of the world, and the responses were amazing (and varied). My mom's suggestion was that I wear something I could run in. But th...

I get these ideas where I am suddenly convinced that I don’t have a certain kind of shoe. That of course means I immediately need said shoe. Black, red, floral, it’s all happened, but none more disastrously, or repetitively than blue. I was in Washington, D.C. a few weeks ago for work and decided to take the last remnants of the day to go out and shop at the limited stores around my office/hotel. Lucky for me one of those happens to be Nine West , which means I get new shoes pretty much every time I’m in DC. Also lucky for me, they were having a sale. Just a sampling of blue. Unfortunately, it appears everyone in D.C. who works in that area wears a size 7, because every shoe I asked to see, sale or not, they were out of. For someone hell bent on buying something, this was an awful position to be in. Then I saw them. A pair of abandoned blue, pointed toe pumps, size 7. Perfect. Mostly because I don’t have any blue shoes. It turns out I am entirely delusional. ...

One of the most commonly asked questions I get is what height are the heels I most commonly wear. I wish that was an easy question to answer. I have heels of all different heights. Everything from kitten heels to 6" stilettos with the mother of all platforms. A smattering of some standards. Now granted, I don't wear the kitten heels, which is kind of a shame because they're a great pair of Kenneth Cole , zebra phony hair sandals. But with a heel that short and my 5'4" frame I look like a hobbit playing dress up. I should probably get rid of them, but they're pony hair. And zebra. You can't just get rid of zebra. Or Kenneth Cole . Most of my heels are somewhere between 3" and 5" and they serve all kinds of purposes. Some of them are for running errands, some for work, some exclusively for going out (because my Iron Fist Zombie Stompers aren't really work appropriate) and others are used for everything. Some of them have a platform...

When I was in college I went to a haunted house. I also went to one in high school and one when I was in third grade. The whole experience was generally terrifying, and despite my love of horror movies and all things Halloween, I vowed to never go again. This year my husband tricked me into going in the name of family fun, and promised that if I survived we could go see the original Nightmare on Elm Street  (Johnny Depp in a half shirt), which was showing at a recently restored theater in the city. To my absolute horror I found out we weren’t going to some small little haunted house either. It was Dream Reapers , A big, scary haunted house with Yelp reviews and more actors than animatronics. The kind where people chase you through the parking lot because they think it’s funny to hear you scream and watch you run. The kind I had successfully spent years avoiding. Where's Freddy when you need him? When we got to the haunted house we stood in line, and I looked down at my...

Every so often I do something nice. Actually I do lots of nice things, but sometimes it involves volunteering my time and being part of something really cool. So when offered the chance to walk as a model this Friday at Threads of Equality , a FashionEsque Show benefiting the Human Rights Campaign at Spin Nightclub , I jumped at it. I'm not a runway model by any stretch of the imagination, my first problem being that I am an underwhelming 5'4" without heels on, and the other problem being that I do not have the figure of a runway model.  But for those wonderful people who don't care that I'm not a size zero and eight feet tall, I'm totally willing to be part of something fun. Local designers and Chicago boutiques will be featured on the runway, and there will be dance and burlesque performances by some amazing local performers. I'll be walking the runway in sweaters by Emily Rohrer, which I am totally excited to see. Any of these shoes could be o...

This weekend I took my boozing out of the house and went to a bar to celebrate a friend's birthday. I dressed up, donning black and gold stripe heels and an Armani tank with sequin straps. I swear no one who was in the bar that night owns a mirror. There was also a memo that went to half the bar that stated that you no longer have to dress up when you go out and summer is a totally OK time to wear flip flops to the bar and dress like a hobo. And not like cute, "I don't care" totally, casual kind of hobo. More like the "I've been sleeping in this for days, and I kinda stink" hobo. Beer covered shoes The other half of the bar tried to dress up and failed. A note to the girl in the in the polka dot dress: Polka dots are not slimming, and don't wear Iron Fist wedges with eyes on them just because the eyes are circles. That doesn't mean they match your dress. Although they are cute shoes. Apparently the total lack of fashion in that place wa...

Every woman I know has a love hate relationship with Cosmopolitan . We can’t ignore it, and yet, we love to make fun of it. It makes us feel bad about ourselves, but we still look at it in the grocery aisle. It’s like a drug. I know that their “business” clothes only work for girls who don’t go to an office, and that the sex tips they offer are the same month after month, and occasionally throw in something awful like, “twist your hand like you’re opening a jar.” True story. I’ll let you figure out what they were talking about. (Hint: not opening jars). Then yesterday in my Facebook news feed about people's kids, what someone had for breakfast, how much someone loves their S.O., shoe posts, and various other bullshit there’s an article someone posted from Cosmo; “ Women and Shoes: a Love Story .” They of course start with an opening about Cinderella. Because that's not a cliche or anything. I did not buy these because I can wear them all the time. So I click on it a...

You can buy them A few weeks ago husband asked what I wanted for Christmas. I told him I needed a pair of plain black ankle boots or a pair of unembellished red heels, preferably peep toe. He pissed and moaned about how boring that was, and we went back and forth with a million pictures and Web sites, and then I sent him the shoes I wanted. Iron Fist Freddy Krueger inspired heels called "Welcome to my Nightmare." Horror movies and shoes all rolled into one! And they were amazing, and contained the original colors I was looking for (plus blood spatters), so that's got to count for something. But with little time left to order shoes we decided to shop for them in stores. The weekend before Christmas the over-crowded mall failed us. A couple days before Christmas the local stores that carry Iron Fist shoes failed. And instead we were left staring at walls and walls of shoes in the store and they had all kinds of Iron Fist shoes, but not the ones I wanted. So we a...

Yesterday I was picking my shoes out of the closet and realized I was wearing shoes with bows two days in a row. Not the same shoes, mind you. Two different pair of shoes, in different color schemes, with different types of bows, but still bows. I was then that I looked around and realized just how many pairs or shoes I have with bows. Some have them on the front, Iron Fist has them on the back. One pair has a small bow above a leather tassle/fringe. Still another pair ties in big giant bows and remind me of tap shoes. Really tall, kind of club kid tap shoes...but the overall feel is there. Then I realized that I was also stalking bow shoes. There's the Louboutin 's on my Facebook page, and the mint green ones that Pin-Up Girl Clothing just started offering (I don't currently have mint green shoes). I even sent my sister a link to a pair of Betsey Johnson peep toes with a bow that I thought she would like. I think I'm developing a sickness. I should really star...

A friend recently posted a link on Facebook to a website called ifshoescouldkill.com . This is of course amazing, and I immediately had to look, and make mental notes of all the bizarre stuff on there, including the psuedo wearable. Then I saw a pair of shoes I actually own . Really. Right there on the page were my Iron Fist Zombie Stompers. Those are shoes that could kill? I understand that they're zombie print and all, and they have teeth, but really? Compared to the other shoes on the site, they're kind of tame. And if it's about heel height, my Aldo Mary Jane stilettos are way higher. I've even fallen over in those shoes and wrecked myself (in the shoe's defense, I had been drinking). If all it takes is a killer heel, and some kind of crazy print, I'm sure I have all sorts of crap that could land on this website. Other shoes on the website aren't even shoes, they're art. And not really wearable art either.  I wonder if Lady Gaga and I can...

I have a complete lack of self control. After abstaining from buying the leopard print shoes with the red ruffle, and being all proud of myself, I have caved. And it was not to zebra. And it is not, in the truest sense of the word, leopard. OK, it's leopard. I bought new leopard shoes (by Iron Fist ). But they were on mad sale, and they're peep toe... And they're BLUE!!!! Blue leopards totally don't count as leopard, and it makes sense because I don't have blue shoes. Wait, I do have blue shoes, but one pair is a suede, wedge, peep toe and another one is navy patent leather loafer (with a heel) that's very corporate-chic. Blue leopard is not corporate. I will inevitably wear them to work though, with the one outfit I have that goes with them. In an effort to not totally waste them on work, I immediately wore them to Easter dinner at my sister's with a black dress and a peek of a blue shell underneath. Easter is apparently very hip at my family...

There is no better feeling than finding a shoe that is so crazy, so over-the-top that no one else would wear it. At least not for a regular occasion anyway. Behold: shoes with teeth! I got the Zombie Stomper Platforms a few months ago (seriously, that's what they're called), and have found only one occasion to wear them so far. Then again, it's also been winter in Chicago, and that's not the best time to go running around the city in open-toed platforms. The Wolfbeater Platform I found online and ordered immediately, terrified they wouldn't have my size or there would suddenly be a run on shoes with bloody teeth on the top. While I haven't really been able to justify wearing either of these shoes to the office, I am sure they will come in handy two or three times this summer when I go out to non-conservative, non-family events. Both shoes are made by Iron Fist , and the sizing is a little odd. They run about a half size too big, but don't come in half ...