We're not really close to finished, but we're way better off than where we began. We have a LOT of stone work to do, and we want to add a plunge pool and re-do our fences and on and on and on. Houses are more endless than jewelry - and that's saying something!
Wow, mrs-b, the transformation is truly amazing! I cannot imagine what the previous owner was trying to achieve with those strangely placed and clipped shrubs. Looks like a totally different house now and so lovely. You obviously put as much care and planning into your garden as you do into your jewelry collection! Beautiful color and texture going on there.
I assume those are Limelights out front or very hearty Little Limes? I planted only one Limelight, but I wish I had planted more because it turned out to be my favorite among all of them. I have a small hedge of seven Vanilla Strawberry hydrangea around my back patio and the panicles are lovely but droop way down low.
I appreciate your focus on trees. I see a beautiful redbud in the front and is that a weeping cherry to the right of the front door and a Japanese maple to the left? I planted several trees, but have a long wait before they provide any shade. I am not planning to go anywhere, though.
I love roses, too! I planted over 40 of them here. This time of year, when the heat, black spot, deer, and Japanese beetles all converge, I think that was probably too many, but I am a sucker for roses, especially David Austin's English roses.
You have such a fun tradition to put up a number of Christmas trees around the house. A couple of years ago I bought and decorated my dream Christmas tree (faux, so it's ready every year). I enjoy putting up holiday decorations and then enjoy the clean and fresh feeling when I take everything down.
Apologies for getting so off-topic.
Hi @yssie
I'll look forward to sharing with you!
I think I mentioned to you a while ago that I was collecting small opals. In the next month or two I'm hoping to start a pair of opal and diamond drop earrings to add to my rose gold collection as a dressier pair of earrings than plain hoops - which is all I have in rose gold for earrings at the moment.
I'm doing opal and diamond drops: a bezeled trio of 3 point diamonds, then a bezeled opal, then same diamond configuration - then another opal - then diamonds - then opal. So - 3 opals and 9 diamonds in each earring. I have all the opals and diamonds - I just need to get them made now. I'm STILL working on She Who Will Not Be Named (ie my enamel and gold charm bracelet) - but when that's done, I'll be moving forward - posthaste!
It’s interesting, you and I, we both think in sets, but we don’t define set in quite the same way: I default to organizing by which part of the body pieces adorn - fingers, ears, wrists, other… Probably because my sets involve having at least one ode to each era I’ve decided I need representation of. Your sets are more practical - complete looks for various occasions. And doesn’t that just fit our personalities perfectly The backgrounds… @mrs-b, woven white linen, again - how very You! Simple and subtle. Mine are always floral - in fact, in many of my photos bright flowers draw first focus. More parallels. My skin tarnishes silver in astonishing fashion, so I can’t wear it regardless of personal opinion, but soft and malleable silver holding diamonds scares me! I know it was the norm for many eras. It scares me anyway. I have only one diamond bangle, much smaller than yours (1.15ctw), and that thing sparkles like it’s trying to light the room up - I can imagine what your pair must look like in-person… At night, across the dinner table… Your light skin and fair hair would set blue in the ears off beautifully. Sapphire halo studs? And I remember your Dixon memorial, of course. I hope these two are getting lots of wear through whatever your Covid day-to-day looks like these days. Sometimes there really is just no match for sentiment.
If you have designed it yourself, is that something you have a fair amount of prior experience at? I love what you've done with it, and I would like to create something similar with our yard, but I find myself utterly overwhelmed at the magnitude of both knowledge and effort I would need, and I'm curious how you got to being so good and knowledgeable on these matters.......
I'm finally back here with time to breathe.
I adore collection threads.
They tell you so much about a woman. The pieces that she shares showcase her style, of course. Her luxury priorities. I knew you had a number of pieces but I didn’t appreciate just how many, @mrs-b! And yet they all fill some unique niche - I don’t see many aesthetic duplicates. Something for any occasion.
Then there’s how she decides to organize her thread - does she share by sentiment? By look and feel? By utility? By gemstone genre? By era? By how often they’re worn? I can honestly say that it wouldn’t have occurred to me to organize my thoughts the way you have here! But this methodology is so You
Okay. Your casuals. All your whites, actually.
How do you wear that asscher band? Do you pair it with your three stone or EC, or is it a standalone?
I’m loving those stud-&-teardrops, but for me they overlap stylistically with your cluster studs - I’d wear either with a blouse, jeans, and boots. I’d probably wear neither with a dress - for a dress I’d go to either your hoops or your SS drops. what sorts of events our outfits disambiguate them for you?
How often do you wear your 0.33ctw studs? I confess, my eyes go straight to those giant SSs - white body, silver overtone! They must be fabulously bright in-person. I very recently got a pair of SS studs of my own - similar size, but I asked for as strong pink overtone as was possible. I didn’t think I was a #LargePearlStuds type of person, but they are GLORIOUS in the ears, and I don’t know that I’ll ever wear my smaller white pearls again!
I’m glad you went with platinum for your diamond bangles. Am I allowed to say that?
But y’know, I think you need more blue and white! Just one band does not a set make!!
Your yellows…
Your wedding pendant is so sweet
Can’t get enough of that opal. I’m REALLY looking forward to seeing your other opal projects come to life. Hurry up H!!
I think your dressy yellows are where your collection and mine have most in common. That EC. Not nearly enough words… No, actually, a full sentence of words: I cannot wait to try this on in-person one day
Are the GSS bezels in 18k YG too? The gold colour looks a little different. Might just be the photo, or my monitor.
Your pinks are pretty different, aren’t they? Here's your nod to vintage. What’s the remainder of this story? It got cut off -
That tourmaline is something special. I hope you wear hats. I hope you wear this in those hats. This stone needs head-time! I was going to say “this stone needs sunlight” - well, that won’t be any problem when you’re in Australia, but knowing where you are right now, I compromised
Oh! Re-reading prior posts. Why are you splitting your charm bracelet up?
Maybe I'll do a collection thread of my own one day. Honestly, my collection seems very... well, I do see it every day, so it's very normal! Not esoteric. Not something that anyone else would get terribly excited about. But everyone who creates these threads sees their collections every day, and I know how much I enjoy others' threads! Maybe one day, after some sleep!
A tri wire band to go with my new EC ring
@mrs-b, I can't thank you enough for posting all this. I've never seen so much beauty in just one thread. I'm overwhelmed by the beauty, the planning, the intentionality of all of it - your jewelry, your home, your garden......I find myself, as time goes on, as much if not more interested in the psychology - the "why's" - of others' choices of their jewelry as I am in the technical details, and you have provided such a delightful feast of that here. And as much as I'm enjoying all the beauty and thought behind your jewelry, I was surprised to find even more delight in your home and garden!
I have a few questions, if you have a moment and don't mind, about your garden in particular (as I just had a bit of an uneven first summer attempt at some serious gardening myself): have you done all the planning and design yourself, or did you consult an outside professional landscape designer? It certainly looks utterly professionally designed - but considering how you've designed your jewelry, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if you are entirely responsible for the garden as well!
Hi @OboeGal
All my life I've been a fan of beauty - and homes and gardens are my absolute obsession. Jewelry pales into nothingness compared to my love for a beautiful home. I started designing homes when I was 5 years old, and have just run with it ever since.
I have a highly visual brain, and can picture things accurately and clearly. Consequently, I've been asked to design weddings from go to whoa (the invitations to the dessert!), houses, gardens, parties - and so on and so on. I've been asked to do this a lot - both for friends and occasionally professionally, despite this just being an interest. I do love it, tho, and always enjoy it. I've done some work for real estate agents on properties that weren't selling, and I have a saying: ambience can be bought. (True, too!) I did over the house of my best friend in the US when he was selling. His house was hugely undercapitalized and very plain looking for such a great property. So I asked him to give me $80k, and in 2 months I did over his house from top to toe. It was exhausting! I had 2, 3, sometimes 4 groups of tradesmen there on any given day, but 2 months later the house sold, full price, on day one of its listing - for $350k over what the agent had told him it would sell for. Anyway, that's just a few examples of the sorts of things I've done; all aesthetic and/or design orientated.
So - all that to say, yes, I designed all the garden beds and the layout and so on. I had a landscaper come and put it all in for me, but I chose all the plants and did all the design and so on. What I've learnt, I've learnt through experience, trial and error, talking to professionals, and endless, endless reading. And let me be clear: I'm an utter amateur at gardens! There would be a thousand women on PriceScope better at gardening than me! But visuals are my strong suit, and that's where I come into my own.
Beauty is restful and I find that soothing. So I actively aspire to filling my environment with it. I like an environment that doesn't look like there's a bunch of things than need to be done. That equates to living in the middle of a jobs list for me and is the antithesis of restful.
Does that answer your questions, OboeGal? Tell me if I've missed the mark on this.
I can see "it" in my mind, whatever "it" is. I can see it, I can turn it, I can tweak it, like it's a live model... I really can't draw, though, and I never put the time into learning CAD, so I've got no good ways to get what's in my mind out of my head and over to anyone else 
Easy carefree chic! And goodness knows you've earned time to be carefree these past two years. I can definitely understand wanting more predictability, more routine, more foresight - and if paring your collection down gives you a little more of what you're looking for then I'm all in. My collection is still learning what it wants to be - it has many to emulate! I think I'm a lot like @OboeGal's description in that the sheer magnitude of an undertaking is sometimes so overwhelming, it paralyses me into doing nothing at all. Mentally "unsealing the file" on those sorts of projects, breaking them up into smaller portions, executing on each part without worrying about everything that's still to come, setting reasonable expectations, not "closing the file again" on failure - I think I'll always have to consciously work on thinking these ways! The only projects like this that I'm not tempted to sit on eternally are work-related. So from my perspective your story about taking on turning that house inside out, which netted your friend his full asking price - is just such an incredible achievement. Thank you for sharing! 
How does DK handle your concurrent projects? Does he execute one at a time or do parts of all finish in parallel? Will one of the motifs be the pansy that you were talking about several months ago? I remember that it was to be inspired by one of JAR's works? I classify my pieces as either wearable art or artistically wearable. For pieces that are the former, well, I expect them not to shatter if I sneeze on them, but not too much beyond that. For the latter, though - jewellery that's supposed to be artistically wearable but isn't doesn't ever get auto-promoted to wearable art! If your charms weren't wearable, and you wanted them to be wearable, then you *know* the extra headache of making them wearable after the fact will be worth it 
Hi @OboeGal
All my life I've been a fan of beauty - and homes and gardens are my absolute obsession. Jewelry pales into nothingness compared to my love for a beautiful home. I started designing homes when I was 5 years old, and have just run with it ever since.
I have a highly visual brain, and can picture things accurately and clearly. Consequently, I've been asked to design weddings from go to whoa (the invitations to the dessert!), houses, gardens, parties - and so on and so on. I've been asked to do this a lot - both for friends and occasionally professionally, despite this just being an interest. I do love it, tho, and always enjoy it. I've done some work for real estate agents on properties that weren't selling, and I have a saying: ambience can be bought. (True, too!) I did over the house of my best friend in the US when he was selling. His house was hugely undercapitalized and very plain looking for such a great property. So I asked him to give me $80k, and in 2 months I did over his house from top to toe. It was exhausting! I had 2, 3, sometimes 4 groups of tradesmen there on any given day, but 2 months later the house sold, full price, on day one of its listing - for $350k over what the agent had told him it would sell for. Anyway, that's just a few examples of the sorts of things I've done; all aesthetic and/or design orientated.
So - all that to say, yes, I designed all the garden beds and the layout and so on. I had a landscaper come and put it all in for me, but I chose all the plants and did all the design and so on. What I've learnt, I've learnt through experience, trial and error, talking to professionals, and endless, endless reading. And let me be clear: I'm an utter amateur at gardens! There would be a thousand women on PriceScope better at gardening than me! But visuals are my strong suit, and that's where I come into my own.
Beauty is restful and I find that soothing. So I actively aspire to filling my environment with it. I like an environment that doesn't look like there's a bunch of things than need to be done. That equates to living in the middle of a jobs list for me and is the antithesis of restful.
Does that answer your questions, OboeGal? Tell me if I've missed the mark on this.
@DorotheaBrooke -
Why is it that perspective is always so lost in photos? Ideally, I would always prefer to plant climbing roses on an arbor. But, just out of the shot, there is a tree on either side of the path, and when they grow the one on the left will be substantial, but the one on the right will be massive. So climbing anything is out of the question, I suppose. Something I *do* want to do, tho, is to put a row of stone along the edge of the property, then a capping piece on top of that. It would edge the lot nicely and, hopefully, would stop the crab grass seeds a little from blowing in from the neighbor's lawn across the road.
The first 2 years we were here, my gardener told me regularly that I was putting his son through college. So I hear you on the overall expense. But - what a lovely thing a beautiful garden is! I'd not spend money on jewelry before I refrained from spending on my garden - no contest!
North Carolina has always looked wonderful to me. Gorgeous public spaces and so gentile in so many ways. I'd love to get down there one day; perhaps we could meet up at that point? I'd love to meet you!
And - needless to say - English country gardens are my all time favorite as well. Did you ever see the photos of my little house in Australia? It has a very English-y feel to it - I suspect you'd love it!
I very fond of them and have collected them with great sentimentality over the years. I don't have a bunch of them, but the ones I own are precious to me.
Thanks, @Polabowla! I love that ring, too, have never started a thread on it, and basically have never had a single comment on it! Yet it's a gorgeous ring - colorful, beautifully made, substantial, easy to wear... The whole ball of wax. And for someone who would prefer to live their entire life in denim jeans and a white shirt - it's about the perfect piece!
And as for my pins - thank you for your comment!
And now, if you wouldn't mind, perhaps you could post a gazillion more photos of your heart ring?? I LOVE that ring and will NEVER get tired of more photos - of which, frankly, at this point, there have been not nearly enough!!
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