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Because There is Nothing More Important Than Shoes, Except Maybe Dogs. Or Babies.

Published 05.23.2006 | Permanent Link | Comments (11)

Long time lurker here. Just popping in to see if that picture in the banner for the Smackdown, is really your toes. Because they're great toes. And great floors too. So if it really is you, in your own home... what kind of flooring is that? Did you install it yourself?

Thanks!
Chronic Lurker and Home Remodeler

I’ve been kind of surprised at how often this question has been asked, so let’s get it out of the way: No, those are not my feet/shoes/floors/rejected breastmilk up there in the banner. It’s just a stock photo I selected from several sassy options Alpha Mom mocked up for me.

And I am sorry I also can’t tell you who makes those shoes, because I could really use a pair in a navy/pink combination to go with this dress, because the SHOE SITUATION IS KILLING ME. WHY DO I BUY NAVY BLUE DRESSES? WHY? THEY WILL ONLY HURT ME IN THE END.*

Ahem. Anyway. Here is an actual picture of my actual feet and my (antique, came-with-the-condo) floors. Real life is never quite as sassy.

Baby Chucks

*No, I don't care that Rebecca Taylor calls it "Smokey Quartz." The damn dress is navy blue and pink.

Amalah,

My wonderful, blog-wordly friend Carley introduced me to your advice column and I am now reconsidering our friendship since I have spent the last several hours reading your advice, checking the links to the products and feverously jotting down notes on post-its and covering my entire desk. Since it seems you may have solved my curly hair dilemmas and have enlightened me on the subject of primers and so on I was hoping you could solve another of my endless problems in my quest for beauty.

I have eyebrow envy. It's true. I am obsessed with other women's eyebrows, the shape, the color, the thickness or thinness, the length... Shall I go on? Please give me some pointers on how they should look and how to achieve that look.

Your new faithful reader,
Jolie

You know, my friend and I were just discussing eyebrows the other day in Sephora after coming across an entire, bolted-to-the-wall display of eyebrow kits. Eyebrow kits! What’s next, skincare kits specially formulated for use on an airplane? Manicures from a condom wrapper?

Oh. And OH.

Anyway, as we contemplated the designer tweezers and wee little eyebrow stencils (STENCILS!), we wondered if maybe some people are kind of overthinking their eyebrows.

My criteria for my brows: Neat. Naturally arched, which for me and my very thin brows means just barely. Just a standard pair of tweezers and my bathroom mirror. I pluck very carefully and thoroughly along the bottom line, but generally go a little easier on the top line (One time a waxer told me that waxing the top of your brows can make them grow thicker and shaggier there, and I have no idea if that’s true, but it pretty much put the fear of God into me and I’ve left the top of my brows alone every since.) Then I use an eyebrow comb, combing the entire brow straight up, towards my forehead. Then I slide the edge of the comb straight across the very top of the brow, from the bridge of my nose out to the ends.

I think most women would be best-served by letting their brows retain as much of their natural shape as possible. Overly-dramatic, mega-arched brows are just not really my thing.

(Also, Allure Magazine? Apparently declaring that “unkempt” brows are back? Can bite me. BITE ME.)

But if your brows are really, um…prominent, or a little flyaway, it wouldn’t hurt to go beyond the tweezers and get them waxed. Honestly, for the cost of those fancy kits with the stencils (which I can tell you, there is no way I’m that coordinated), you could get your brows professionally waxed multiple times. And if you like the shape, you can maintain it easily enough at home. Or just keep getting them waxed.

If you’ve got the crazy messy brows, use a little eyebrow gel or even just clear mascara after you comb them to keep their shape. There are about a billion different products to fill in and color your brows, and the only guidance I can offer is that your brows do not necessarily need to match your hair color. Trust me on this. It’s really okay for your brows to be a shade darker.

Obviously, if you’ve got an extreme disparity (blond hair/black brows, red hair/brown brows, black hair/nonexistent brows), you might want to play around with some of these products – especially if you get your brows colored and want to conceal the dreaded eyebrow roots between salon visits. I’ll leave it to our intrepid WAS commenters to recommends specific products.

Hi Amy,

My husband and I are parents to a miniature pinscher/ chihuahua but are planning on growing our little family very soon. We're going to start the baby making in the next couple months (yay! exciting!), but we're a little apprehensive about some things, money and all that, but mostly? The pooch.

The little guy is so spoiled, and is the center of our world, and we're not sure how he's going to react when we have a new obsession - baby. We're also worried about future baby's safety. Yeah, he's a friendly dog, but face it - he's part Chihuahua and that's about as high strung as they some. You've shared pictures of your adorable babe and and adorable pup looking oh so adorable together, but HOW? Any advice on how to get Fido ready for bambino?

Thanks,
Caitlin

Um. You do remember that I am the girl whose dog BROKE HER LEG the very night we came home from the hospital? Clearly, I did not do such a great job preparing the pets for a seamless introduction to the new family member.

Conventional wisdom says to start treating your pets like second-class citizens well ahead of the baby’s arrival. Keep them off your lap, out of your bed – any spot the baby will get first dibs on. I couldn’t bring myself to do any of that, nor did we remember to bring Noah’s blanket or hat home from the hospital first so Max (our cat) and Ceiba (our busted-up MinPin) could get used to his smell.

We pretty much just sprung him on them and spent the first few hours alternatively trying to comfort a panicked and nervous Ceiba or yelling at her to stop being such a pain in the butt.

(Max, however, could not have cared less. He was all, “After that stupid rat dog, nothing you people bring home surprises me anymore.”)

So the very first night, Ceiba tried to crawl in my lap while I nursed the baby. I ordered her off the bed and mentioned to my husband that she probably needed to go out, since we hadn’t walked her all day, forcing the poor little thing to relieve herself in the nursery. (Okay, she probably enjoyed doing that.) She went predictably wild at the sound of the word “out” and took a flying leap off the bed, landing right on Noah’s bouncy seat which flung her promptly onto our hardwood floors (illustrated above), and then there was yelping and crying and her leg was obviously broken very badly. Awesome.

She’s fine now, and after a few months of pointedly ignoring Noah (who loves her more than any of us), she’s finally warmed up to him. Part of this probably has to do with the fact that he always seems to have a Cheerio stuck to some part of his body, while part of it may be because Noah is not always monopolizing our laps and we can once again lavish attention on her. We've never had any fears or problems regarding safety, although we did crack down on the gentle "mouthing" she does using the "yelp and shun" method just in case.

I don’t know if you can ever completely prepare your pets for a baby’s arrival (especially the high-strung types). But if I could do it all over again, I’d at least TRY to prepare Ceiba for that initial downgrade in affection levels. I’d make her sleep on her own bed and bar access to my lap – at least occasionally.

Of course, as I type this, she’s curled up under my arm with her chin resting in the crook of my elbow, sound asleep. So while the transition might be hard on your dog, you can take comfort in knowing that dogs are resilient little things and are unlikely to be scarred for life because of one or two bad parenting decisions.

Unlike, you know, HUMAN BABIES.

Amy, Queen of Everything and Princess of Pretty Shoes,

Hi! I have a problem. (That's the first step right?) I need a good all-around pair of closed-toe dress shoes that'll go with pretty much anything. The additional problems:

1) Am mildly poor. But willing to invest more than usual...just not too much...(that totally made sense, right?)

2) Am freakishly tall. 5'11" and not entirely comfortable with it, so I really don't care to wear high high heels. Low to medium is okay.

3) Have mondo feet. As if this is a surprise with the height factor? My feet are a ladies' size 12. All of the shoes I can find that I like don't come in my size, and dress shoes in my size tend to look like crazy drag queen shoes.

Help me find shoes! Please!

Yours truly,
Heather

I refuse to believe that there is anyone left in America who has not heard of Zappos. I refuse! So instead, I choose to believe that while you have indeed HEARD of Zappos, you just haven’t spent any time there, or are intimidated by trying new things. This is just mildly disturbing, kind of like people who ask, “So what IS this ‘TiVo’ thing I keep hearing so much about?” Or people who still use rotary telephones.

(FULL DISCLOSURE: My parents used a rotary telephone until 1994. And for two years after that, we owned touchtone telephones but never upgraded our phone service, which meant after you hit each number you still had to wait for the clickclickclickclick sound to end before hitting the next one.)

Seriously, go to Zappos.com right now. I know the site looks crazy and overwhelming, but I am here for you. I shall walk you through this. It is going to be okay.

Click on “Womens.” Behold! Every category known to shoekind! Low heel! Mid heel! High heel! Round toes! Square toes! Strappy!

So you have two options: If you have an idea of the kind of shoe you’d like, pick that sub-category to narrow your search results. (Hint! Round-toed pumps make your feet look smaller, as do Mary Janes or anything with straps. Stay away from mules, slides and ultra-pointy toes.) If you’d rather be shown lots of different styles, click on the large, brilliantly-named category of “Shoes.”

From here, you can narrow your search using the drop-down menus at the top of the page, including (drumroll please): Heel height! Price range! Size! (You can also search for specific colors and widths.) Enter in the details you gave me and see what comes up.

If you don’t see anything you like, try searching by size at Nordstrom.com. Yes, the shoes cost more but oh, they are lovely.

NineWest.com also lets you search for shoes using similar parameters to Zappos, and the shoes tend to be cheaper and a little trendier. But “cheap” and “trendy” are not always good things when it comes to shoes, ya dig? Think ouchy fake leather, broken heels or shoes that are hopelessly out-of-style in six months. But I will not lie, sometimes all you want are six really fun months, blisters be damned, and some money left over for cocktails, and there is nothing wrong with that.

If you would like to submit a question, email Amalah at amyadvice@gmail.com. By submitting a question, you agree to allow us to post your question here on alphamom.com.

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Comments (11):

PaintingChef said:

May I add an eyebrow grooming suggestion? If you happen to have an engineer and/or perfectionist husband/boyfriend, offer him "favors" in return for a little tweezer action. Sometimes, if you're really fast, you can even get in a few plucks at the insane monobrow men seem to grow.

My husband will kill me for sharing that.

Posted on May 24, 2006 09:46

Z said:

I had never heard of Zappos.com or the "yelp and shun" method until today. Thank you. Seriously. THANK YOU.

Posted on May 24, 2006 10:42

foodmomiac said:

Our spoiled weimaraner was three when our daughter was born. We found that the book "Childproofing your Dog" was very helpful. It is also very short, which I liked. And very cheap, which is also good.

Posted on May 24, 2006 10:59

E. said:

Now that Zappos has been thoroughly introduced, these shoes would be great with the dress. I mean, yeah, they're a little pricey, but that's why I can only suggest you buy them, not get them for myself..
http://www.zappos.com/n/p/dp/14741018/c/9.html

Posted on May 24, 2006 11:35

mdvelazquez said:

I have the same problem as Heather except I wear size 5 (am really 4.5, but who can find shoes that size?), so I'm very sympathetic.

Here are a few other recommendations.
http://www.shoesofyourdreams.com/
http://www.imeldascloset.com
http://www.bigandbeautifulshoes.com

Maria

Posted on May 24, 2006 12:11

Heather Barmore said:

I have the same problem with finding shoes that fit my size 11 feet. I've resorted to Nordstrom, Stuart Weitzman, DSW, and Zappos, I will also buy any shoe that I find that fits, no matter how expensive because I end up being so damn grateful to the designer for going above a size 10.

Posted on May 24, 2006 12:52

Sara said:

I've found some cute, low shoes on Zappos in the Camper and Fluvog sections. Those might be nice...

Posted on May 24, 2006 12:55

heels said:

On the subject of eyebrows, I follow the advice of the late, (I think) great Kevyn Aucoin (and here I paraphrase): Pluck, don't wax- waxers make mistakes where plucking is a single, well chosen hair at a time. Pluck only from the bottom, unless you have major outliers at the top- it will look more natural. Brush hairs up before plucking so that you can really see where they're coming from. Pull hair away from brow before plucking to make sure that you won't create an unintentional hole by taking it away. Fill-in with pencil if you have holes (sounds dirty tht way...). Use clear mascara for a really groomed look and to keep flyaways in place.

Those are some of the main points and I swear by them. Them and REALLY good tweezers (they make a HUGE difference!)

Posted on May 24, 2006 14:16

Muirnait said:

I kinda maybe forgot to mention that I'm in Canada, and Zappo's won't ship to me? (Because they suck a little tiny bit. But only a little!) I'll see if I can get around that somehow...and I will check out some of the WAS readers' suggestions though, and thanks so much for answering my questions and the other tips for making my feet look smaller!

Posted on May 24, 2006 19:41

honestyrain said:

HOW can you buy shoes online? HOW? i must try shoes on because in some i need a 7 and other a 7.5 and others still a 6 or an 8 or or or! sometimes size isn't even the issue. sometimes a shoe just doesn't fit me right or looks terrible on my foot. HOW can you buy shoes online? i do not understand! help!

Posted on May 29, 2006 12:27

Amy Corbett Storch said:

Because Zappos has the world's best return policy! FREE RETURN SHIPPING! They even send you the handy label to slap back on the box! I routinely order several pairs of similar shoes and then return all but my favorite pair.

And as for the sizes, Zappos has buyer feedback that tells you whether the shoe runs big, small or true to size.

I am telling you: Do not fear the Zappos. The Zappos is love.

Posted on May 29, 2006 18:13

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Amalah is a pseudonym of Amy Corbett Storch. A Washington D.C.-based freelance writer. The Smackdown is published on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays. You can follow Amy's daily mothering adventures at www.amalah.com. Also, it's pronounced AIM-ah-lah.

Amy also documented her second pregnancy in a Weekly Pregnancy Calendar, Zero to Forty.

Amy is mother to delicious preschooler Noah and baby Ezra. NomNomNom.

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