Happy New Year

The beginning of the new year, as we all know, is all about making claims about how we will improve our lives and better ourselves, (at least for most people it is.) One of my resolutions is to recycle. Confession time-I used to not recycle at all. It was too much to get different containers, and separate everything. I'm not proud of admitting to my laziness. But now my community has made this easier with single stream recycling, meaning anything deemed recyclable doesn't need to be separated and it all goes into one nice sized container (it's the same size as my trash can.) Love it! So easy!

I'm hoping that recycling will also help another resolution, to save money. Take a look at these sandals-they were a bargain!
Cute, right? They look great with shorts, skirts, jeans, almost anything.
But look again.

After a weekend at ACL Festival, (Austin City Limits,) the stones started falling off. Now, I could spend the money to have them repaired, but they were really quite inexpensive to begin with and while I'm a fan of the Shoe Hospital for my babies that I have a hard time parting with, I could easily throw these out and not think twice about it. But what happens come summer and I don't have anything to walk to the pool in but ratty tennis shoes? I'll be off to the shoe store spending money instead of at the pool soaking up the sun. Ok, so maybe new sandals vs. skin cancer wins, it's a pretty tough call, but my pocket book suffers and I could instead be saving up the money to visit some other beautiful locale, and chances are I won't find something this cute for the price I paid for them.
So am I up for trying to stitch the stones back on? While I am into D.I.Y. a shoemaker I am not. My solution?

Take the stones off. These sandals have good bones and removing the bling makes them somehow a little less sweet, but I really like how they've turned out. Too bad it's January 3rd- even in Texas it's still winter. And where will the bling show up? Who knows. Maybe a T-shirt or perhaps I'll try to create my own necklace like the ones at Prada with stones on grosgrain, but then again, I'm not a jewelry designer either.

J.