Observations in October - 2018 - Jewelry

I am going to be spending the month of October doing a project I've been meaning to do for a while now.  It is called 31 Things and it is offered as an online class by Ali Edwards.  Last year I did the One Little Word class with her where each month she gave us a project to do based around our word of the year.  It was very interesting to try to bring my word (which was Believe) into my life in different ways.

31 Things is similar but this time she gives us a different prompt each day for 31 days and we are to explore those in depth.  She suggests making an album which of course I am going to do but it is going to be slightly different than the one she suggests, which is a 12 x 12 album with two words on each page.  I'm using a smaller journal type book and putting a picture on one page and doing some writing on the other.  For each word she will give us questions to think about in relation to that word.  I'm hoping to be able to post each day here too.

The first word is "Jewelry" and here are my thoughts on that:  Always silver, white gold or platinum.  I think the diamonds sparkle more in those settings.  Even if there are no diamonds, I still like the silver shine. 

The most important piece of jewelry to me is my wedding ring.  I clearly remember the day my husband proposed.  He didn't have a ring to put on my finger because he knew that it would be something I would wear every day and he wanted me to like it.  We went shopping together and I chose the ring I did because when you look at it from the side, to me it looks like a castle on top of a winding hill. 

When we had been married about 10 years, I thought it might be nice to have an anniversary band to go with the wedding ring so we got this one:

I don't have a picture of them together, but even though the stones are of a different cut, they stacked well and I wore them every day for another 20 years.  In 2015 I happened to look down at the palm of my hand and noticed that the rings looked funny.  I had trouble taking them off and when I did, this is what I saw:

I have no idea how that happened.  My hand itself was not injured.  Obviously I had to take the rings to a jeweler to have them repaired.  First time I would be without my rings in 30+ years!  My hand felt naked.

I wore this ring so I wouldn't notice the empty space as much. 

It seemed to take forever for them to get the rings back to me and the anniversary ring was never quite the same as the stones could not be put back into the proper alignment.  It bothered me to wear it and since we were now at 30+ years of marriage my husband said I could pick out something  different.  I got a ring wrap or enhancer and my wedding set fit nicely inside it.  This is what it looks like now:

I'm expecting it to last another 30 years as the back is soldered together to make it stronger.  

Another piece of jewelry I wear quite a bit is this locket.  In it I add a quote or saying for my word of the year.  The picture is from last year when my word was "Believe."  This year is "Create" and the saying is "Create the life you want to live."  I am really trying hard to do that, little by little.  When I have the necklace on, it seems to strengthen my resolve. 

This silver ring is probably the other piece I wear most often.  It came with a bag of marbles and I can change it up to match whatever I'm wearing.  So versatile and definitely a conversation piece.  I get a lot of comments on it since it is pretty large.  People are amazed when I pop out the marble.  Some of the marbles change color depending on how the light hits them.     

Since I work from home, I don't generally get all dressed up with a lot of jewelry but in addition to my wedding ring, every day I wear a necklace and some bracelets.  It is kind of a tradition that every year at Christmas I pick out a little bauble that I like and give a picture of it to my husband and that's what he gets for me.  They are usually not extremely expensive but most of the time it has a special meaning like the Journey necklace which symbolizes the way the journey of love goes (starts out small and keeps growing), 

 

I switch the necklaces out every few months, but I always have one on.

My constant bracelets are an "Open Hearts" charm, an aquamarine stone bracelet and a bracelet our daughter gave me one year that I was supposed to add charms to.  I have the charms but never added them.  Maybe that's something I'll do this year. 

One more story about rings...When I was 4 or 5 I had my tonsils taken out and it required an overnight stay in the hospital.  Even though I was not a baby, I remember being put in a crib-like bed.  When my mom was there with me I remember her putting her hand through the slats in the side and I played with her wedding ring.  Fast forward to about six or seven years ago, after my dad had passed away, my mom was distributing things to us girls.  She gave me her wedding set.  I wore it on my right hand and noticed that the band had cracked a bit.  Instead of taking it off right away and putting it in a safe place, I wore it one more time.  I don't remember feeling it fall off but when I went to bed that night I noticed it was not on my finger.  I was so upset.  I didn't know how to tell my mother.  She and my dad had celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary shortly before he died.  My mom was so calm about it.  I was crying as I told her and she just said, "Don't worry honey.  It's just a thing.  I gave it up when I gave it to you and I still have the memories of your dad and I.  I don't need the ring to remember him."  I still feel bad and pray sometimes to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things, to help me find it.   

So, there is a pretty in depth coverage of my relationship with jewelry.  Got any jewelry stories to tell me?  Love to hear them!