Put Away the White Shoes, It’s Labor Day!

Labor Day is here
should I keep wearing white shoes?
Serial Mom says no

Ah, Labor Day. Time to say good-bye to summer (my favorite season), hi to fall, and a big HELLO GORGEOUS to the Labor Day sales at the home improvement stores!

I also say a little sad good bye to kicky summer sandals, even the white ones. Now, I was taught that you shouldn’t wear white shoes after Labor Day. Apparently, arbiters of What Not to Wear fashion Staci and Clinton disagree. They say you can wear white shoes after Labor Day.

Fashion, like home decorating and design ebbs and flows. Things change. Over time what’s in goes out, what’s out is in, up is down, black is white. I get it. Therefore, I’d be willing to give the white shoes after Labor Day thing a chance if it weren’t for one thing. The movie Serial Mom.

The woman scares me to bits. Come on. You have to remember how John Water’s seemly sweet and perfect homemaker Beverly Sutphin (played by the amazing Kathleen Turner) was really a raging sociopath who humorously and violently offed her neighbors for such heinous offenses as not recycling. She bludgeoned a woman with a leg of lamb for not rewinding a rented videotape (hey, the movie was made in 1994 way before Netflix.) And then Beverly gets even with a juror who commits the sin of continually wearing white shoes after Labor Day during her trial.

Remember?!!

How to Hem Pants Into Shorts

A recent closet clean out revealed that I had three, count them three pairs of khaki pants. What I am going to do with three pairs of khaki pants? After looking through some photos from last summer, I had a What Not to Wear moment that gave me the answer to the pant overpopulation problem.

I needed some new summer shorts. Bermuda shorts in fact. So, I made a pair of shorts out of a spare pair of khaki pants. I cut the legs of the pants to my knee and hemmed the pants into some much more fashionable summer shorts. (The demo plays twice in the following video.)

Growing Miniature Sunflowers

I tried to grow miniature sunflowers on my back patio from seed this summer. For the longest time my flowers looked like this:

I wondered if they ever would bloom into sunflowers. Maybe they weren’t sunflowers after all. Maybe they were really some sort of mad man eating plant?

Growing Upside Down Tomatoes: Watering Schedule

I thought it was time for an upside down tomato plant update.



I’m happy to say that I have five green tomatoes growing on my plant and several flowers that I hope will turn into tomatoes. Keep your fingers crossed.

“What a minute”, you say, “You planted two tomato plants in your topsy turvey upside down tomato planter, not one. What happened to the other plant?”

Easy. I overwatered the planter and lost one of two tomato plants to root rot. Oops.

Upside Town Tomato Watering Schedule Old and New