Wednesday, January 1, 2014

What my true love gave to me . . .

Happy New Year! Did you stay up until midnight or are you a celebrate-at-ten o'clock type person? I didn't quite make it to midnight; I was asleep by 11:30, but it was a very enjoyable evening. Anna was at a friend's house, and the rest of us played Apples to Apples: Bible Edition. Sometime during the evening, Ryne asked if I was ready for the Christmas break to end. No. Definitely not. I could use another six weeks of this, couldn't you? So I think I'll talk about Christmas just a bit longer . . .

Some time ago, I fell in love with a jewelry organizer over at IHeart Organizing (one of my favorite home blogs). I'm really not much of a jewelry gal (I wear the same small silver hoop earrings and a simple necklace 90% of the time), but I have enough that I was starting to have trouble containing it all. Long necklaces were getting hopelessly tangled, and I was leaving earrings all over the place because I was running out places to put them.

But when it came to making one of my own, I kept holding off mostly because of cost. It's not an expensive project (the decorative sheet metal is between $15-$20), but it was going to come out of my own spending money, which I try to reserve for caffeine fixes and my book addiction. But when Christmas rolled around, I asked Marc if he needed any gift ideas for me, and he was relieved delighted to have some help.

So now I have a new jewelry organizer, and I just love it!!! And I love it even more because my hubby made it!

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Go to Jen's post to find out the details on how to make your own. The only things Marc did different was use glue to attach the decorative sheet metal right to the frame in addition to using the frame brackets, and I asked him to attach some hooks along the bottom so I can hang necklaces. I was able to get the frame at JoAnn's for 65% off, and it was almost the same size as the metal. Marc just had to trim a little off the edges.

The biggest bummer was that one of the kids accidentally knocked the frame over and now the top right corner has a little gap that won't close up. Oh, well. It's just in my closet where no one will see it. Except for the entire internet, now that I've posted this. ; )

I had so much fun arranging everything!

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Am I the only one who keeps a single earring for more than two years, hoping the match will someday turn up? I lost it at church, so the likelihood of that happening is slim, but you never know.

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I decided to hang those sweet baby bracelets on one of the hooks, so now I can see them every day, and ponder over whether my girls were ever really small enough to wear those. {sniff}

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This isn't the only jewelry storage I have. There is a lingerie dresser squeezed into the closet, just to the left of my new organizer. In the top drawer I keep a couple of those clear plastic eggs cartons to hold bracelets, rings, earrings with backs, and other odds and ends. Like I said, I don't wear a lot of jewelry, but it's just a nice place to keep all the things that collect over the years.

Something I've been wearing more lately is my mom's high school class ring that still has the original box. It was fun to go through some of those old treasures that had been buried in the mess.

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Thank you, Honey, for a wonderful Christmas present!

Now if I could just get the rest of my house this organized! : )

4 comments:

  1. Love it! And yes, I'm just the same when it comes to being asleep before midnight on New Year's Eve. : )

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  2. That's great! I have a single earring that was part of a set I wore during my high school senior year. It is a large-ish diamond shape (like a big cuff link) with 1991 painted on it. I lost the mate who knows when but kept it in my jewelry box all these years in hopes of finding the other one.

    Your mom's class ring looks just like mine. How neat you have that!

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    1. 1991? You have me beat! ; ) But that's a high school memento, so I can understand holding on to it that long. Holding onto an earring from the clearance section of Target for two years is questionable. : ) How neat your class ring looks similar -- I like it because it doesn't even look much like a class ring. When I picked out my ring, I tried not get something that screamed "class ring!" but the blue stone gives it away.

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  3. I love how you appreciate every gift given to you by your loved ones. The way you arranged your jewelry is amazing. It looks so nice, that I'm kind of envious. Hahaha! Anyway, thanks for sharing that, Kellie! I wish you all the best!

    Ricky Rowe @ Find A Jewelry Expert

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